By T.R. Vivek

Five months back when BT looked at the health of the newborn travel sites, they were in the pink (Going Places, BT, June 6, 2001). Travel on the net was seemingly one model that couldn't go wrong. On cyberspace's travel horizons were entrepreneurs of all hues; plain vanilla travel agencies who discovered the new way of doing business, application service providers (asps), and content providers.

Then September 11 happened. Sites like Makemytrip and Services International's (SI) Indiatravelinfo that were hoping to chug along at a rate of 40-50 per cent this year are now looking at a more modest figure of 15 per cent. ''Things were starting to look very good in August when we had a run rate of around 2.5 crore, but post September 11, we lost 25 per cent of our business,'' rues Deep Kalra, CEO of makemytrip.com.

But despite the World Trade Centre bombing and subsequent travel setbacks, there's an optimism in this dotcom world. Constantly innovating and striking deals, travel sites increasingly make for a good case study in dotcom survival. Kalra, for instance, is hopeful that his company will be cash flow positive by May 2002 with a constant monthly gross margin of Rs 28 lakh. He says Makemytrip has generated revenues of Rs 16 crore and netted commissions of Rs 1.1 crore over the last year-a rate of close to 7 per cent. Makemytrip focuses on the high margin inbound travel driving to dole out attractive packages to India visitors. It has marketing offices in the US, UK, and Australia.

In July, Makemytrip hived off its CRM wing to Ebookers.com, a European travel management dotcom and the earnings from the sale, says Kalra, ''will go into refurbishing our core business, which is online ticketing.''

Not too long ago, SI was just another travel agency operating from Delhi's old Rajinder Nagar. Today, Vinay Maheshwary, its co-director, says that the online sale of travel packages accounts for 50 per cent of SI's revenues. Apart from Indiatravelinfo and India-travel, its flagship portals, SI has over 200 domains giving out city-based tourism and accommodation-related info to hook overseas tourists who use search engines to seek information on popular Indian destinations. His low-burn high-profit net business suffered with nearly 70 per cent cancellations post-September 11, a loss of close to Rs 2 crore. He is banking on people's short memory and hopes for a strong revival by early next year. ''We have started getting 100 e-mail enquiries every day, which shows that things are getting back to normal,'' says Maheshwary.

At the other end of the spectrum is Etravelindia.com, India's largest travel technology and travel management company It has already built a business of over Rs 80 crore using technology-based travel services. It focuses on corporate travel and has more than 70 medium- and large-sized corporates like Monsanto, Xansa, Honeywell and Arthur Andersen. The company has alliances with over 200 airlines worldwide. ''The terrorist attacks have affected the leisure travel more. Corporate travel has also been hit, but not much,'' says Sanjeev Agarwal, CEO, Etravelindia.

Till September, Etravelindia's income for this financial year is Rs 35 crore. ''Now we want to develop a premium range of asp model of business in the travel industry,'' says Agarwal. He has earmarked Rs 10 crore towards developing the technology platform for the asp model of his business.

Success stories of such travel dotcoms have encouraged newer players like Journeymart.com, which offers airline companies and tour operators a platform to market their packages at discounted rates.

Purveyor Of Dotcom Energy Dies

Great net hope indya.com reportedly died, Wednesday, October 31, at Koramangala, Bangalore. It was 18 months old.

Its caretaker CEO Sunil Lulla and other top nannies were asked to look for other jobs. Indya is survived by its parents, Pradeep Kar of networking giant Microland and Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., who once put in $50 million (Rs 235 crore) for a 33 per cent stake as strategic investor in Indya's future.

Its parents denied it was dead, only that it was moving into another world. While Indya seems dead to the world, Star is not yet ready to bury it. Some 25 caretakers from its original list of 240 will remain to use what's left of Indya to further Star's interests in television and radio. While on life support, it will be looked after by Sunil Rajshekhar, CEO of Star's New Media and Convergence Division.

The eclipse of Indya was preceded by a bout of employee sackings and the takeover of its life-support systems by Murdoch's older child, Star TV. For many, its demise was not a surprise. In the last few months, Indya was ailing, cutting down on many channels, including the popular Hindi channel.

In the brief yet eventful history of Indian dotcoms, Indya deserves more than just a passing mention. Not just for its catchy name and the buzz it created, but also for the fact that it built a brand equity strong enough to entice someone as savvy as Murdoch to sink in millions.

Indya was noisily born on April 14, 2000, when its parents joined hands to create what was meant to be the country's premier entertainment, news, and youth portal. It was a time when the dotcom arena was charged with a gladiatorial portal war between Rediff and Sify. Like all parents, Kar and Murdoch believed their child would be able to take on the best, despite its late entry into the new age.

Flamboyant Indya tried hard, splurging much of its parents money in coming-of-age announcements in every major newspaper and television channel. Its brief existence was marked by energy, euphoria, and a number of alliances with other dotcom wannabes.

Though CEO Lulla, once the poster boy of the portal world, had made clear his intentions of quitting quite some time back, he will be with Indya till November 30, to oversee the final hand-over of his charge to Murdoch's estate.

''I will be an entrepreneur,'' Lulla said determinedly to BT. ''I'm planning something related to technology and marketing.'' He won't say more about his future, but it's safe to assume that he will steer clear of media ventures after his MTV and Indya experiences. Lulla said the main reason for Indya's failure was that ''the internet sector just hasn't lived up to expectations.''

His disappointment was obvious. After all, Lulla raised Indya as his own these 18 months.

He said Indya was not just sound, fury, and hype. ''We had some of the best talent available in the country. The originality, speed, and the wide range of our content could match any of the news services. And we had the most impressive set of investors in Chase and News Corp.''

Indyans, as the portal's users called themselves, are keen to see if Star will give the dotcom a dose of the divine elixir sanjivani. Watch this space.

-T.R. Vivek

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