BT Dot.com: What's Hot! [Pg.2]

STATS & STRATS
"Star Gives Us Marquee Value"

His dark blue socks scream "Bad Boy", but Sunil Lulla, CEO, Indya.com-known for his collection of socks, numbering over 10,000 pairs-displays an almost angelic sang-froid about the changes that have impacted his dotcom of late. It was only 18 months ago that Indya was kicked off with a high decibel advertising campaign. In the last couple of months, Star Networks has taken over the portal, closed its travel channel, and gone part offline with its acquisition of Big Tree Interactive Ticketing. BT's Vinod Mahanta speaks to Sunil Lulla on the shape of things to come for Indya.

S. Lulla: communication, entertainment, and off-line services are part of his gameplan

Q. How did the Star takeover impact the portal?

A. Well, for Star it was a continuation of its media interest into the internet; an opportunity to extend its media reach. It's also a strategic investment to develop customer relationship. As for Indya, it gives us a lot of marquee value; our interactive services will grow. Star's channels will drive users to Indya.com and also allow people to indulge in their favourite programmes beyond television hours. It is possible for us to customise solutions integrating online and television offerings.

But soon after the takeover, you closed the travel channel, net2travel...

In travel, we realised that we would have to make larger investments than we had envisaged, and that it would take us longer to rake in revenues. Given that, we thought this business would not give the expected revenue results. Meanwhile, Star had already invested in Star Asia Travel, and it made more sense to leverage that.

A History Of Indya
Founded	April 6, 2000
Workforce	120
P2P (old)	Ad revenues, e-commerce
Date of Star's acqauisition	August 2, 2001
P2P (new)	Communication, Entertainment, Transactions, Offline ticketing
Breakeven plans	3-5 years

Indya seems to be on a layoff (or, rightsizing) spree of late...

We came in late into the field. It was important for us to scale up in terms of content and people. So we ramped up fast. This effort was done to develop the business. Now, we have rightsized in the content and technology areas, keeping in mind the fact that we could leverage some of these from Star also. The current workforce strength is 120; at its peak, it was 240.

And how does the revenue pie look post-acquisition?

The ad sales and marketing solutions have the dominant share in revenues. Next come ticket sales and then the transactions. Currently, ad revenues are 65-70 per cent, ticketing contributes another 20 per cent, and transactions chip in with 10 per cent. Over two years, all the three businesses will grow. And advertising sales will account for 60 per cent, ticketing 25-30 per cent, and transaction revenues will be 10-15 per cent.

What does the future look like?

We are rolling out a communication product (instant messaging tool) soon, and will soon have our own payment gateway. Our surfers will be able to do multiple transactions. We'll add an online trading utility in association with icicidirect next month.

The India Internet World Expo Through Their Eyes...


Deepak Chandnani, Country Manager, Yahoo! India ''We had over 1,000 visitors a day. Any more, it would've been unmanageable''	Pradeep Kar, CEO, Microland Group ''Instead of dotcoms, platform and tech solution providers dominated this year''

Jayesh Thakkar, Cons. Director, Computer Associates ''Actually we didn't expect it to be so. But lots of relevant people came to the show''	Sanjeev Mehra, CEO, Oxfordbookstore.com ''Our lucky draws were instant hits. Overall, the response was really great''

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