Not content with his larger than life presence in the real world-CEO, youth icon, marathon man, and more recently Member of Parliament—Anil D. Ambani, 45, the Vice Chairman and Jt. Managing Director of Reliance Industries, Chairman of Reliance Energy, and newly elected member of Indian Parliament's Upper House, Rajya Sabha, has acquired a digital spoor. The URL www.anildambaniforindia.com went live in the first week of August. The idea, according to Ambani, is to be a true representative of people by listening to their ideas (or complaints). And so, the website lists a number (a 24X7 line and it is a local number in 533 cities across India) at which one can leave a message for the man, a four-digit mobile messaging number at which one can send him a SMS, his co-ordinates in Delhi and Mumbai, and an e-mail address. The site also boasts extensive sections on his personal and professional life. India's Minister for it and Telecommunications, Dayanidhi Maran, who launched the site on August 6 was impressed enough to proclaim that every mp would do well to emulate Ambani. P.S: Maran himself doesn't have a website.

Power Play

The photograph on the left dates back to February 2000 and was shot in Delhi during a visit by the man in the picture, Arun Sarin, now 49. Sarin was then a senior executive at Vodafone, having been a director at AirTouch Communications, a company acquired by the former in 1999. He left the company soon after (which could explain why we never used the photograph and the interview he gave us), but last year, he took over as CEO of the $57 billion (Rs 2,62,200 crore) company. In between, he worked at dotcom flameout Infospace and with boutique investment firm Accel KKR telecom (that's right, the KKR stands for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts). Now, Forbes magazine has named Sarin as the seventh most powerful businessman in Europe (L.N. Mittal is #15). It describes the IIT Kharagpur alum as ''part of the Indian disapora that is rising to lead banks and tech companies in Europe''. Just so you know, the man hasn't changed much.

The Dot King

The thing we like most about K. Vaidyanathan, a 40-year-old engineer and alum of IIT Madras is that we can use long-forgotten terms such as b2b, path to profitability and offline presence while writing about him or his business venture. That's Autopartsasia, a dotcom that did some Rs 40 crore of business last year (it hopes to do Rs 80 crore this year) finding suppliers for some 200 overseas companies, and then shipping the products to them. At the heart of the company's success-it was founded in 2000, turned profitable in its second year of operations, and will close this year with Rs 5 crore in income-is Vaidyanathan's contrarian strategy. ''We decided to be buyer-oriented rather than merely offer a neutral technology platform.'' The other b2b auto parts sites played safe and see what it got them!

Direct-To-Home Hopes

One man who will be praying that DTH succeeds in India is TVS Electronics CEO Gopal Srinivasan. ''Wireless technology is in,'' says the 46-year- old whose company makes set-top boxes. ''Cable has a limited reach outside cities.'' Already, TVS-E has struck a deal with Zee, which will purchase around 15,000 set-top boxes a month from the company for its DTH venture Dish TV. And with the Tata-Star combine set to launch its DTH venture later this year Srinivasan and TVS-E would appear to be on firm ground. This year, the company hopes to generate around Rs 20 crore from the sale of set-top boxes. That's not a bad ending to a story that began when Srinivasan found himself saddled with Rs 5 crore of inventory of set-top box components when a customer cancelled an order placed in anticipation of the conditional access regime taking off.

Arise, Sir Kaggerman

At a time when home-grown it czars (at least, some of them) are threatening to move out of Bangalore, the city has acquired an unlikely white knight. Dr Henning Kaggerman, the 53-year- old CEO of SAP AG, was in Bangalore recently (a follow-up to his 2003 visit), and announced that his company would be investing an additional $24 million (Rs 110.4 crore) and hiring an additional 1,900 engineers over the next two years. SAP's Bangalore centre is already its second largest centre in the world (the largest is at its corp HQ). Coming as it does now, Kaggerman's words should provide some succour to a local government under fire from all sides.

-Contributed by Venkatesha Babu, Priyanka Sangani, Priya Srinivasan & Nitya Varadarajan