Business Today Net Special

IIW 2001
The Show Still Goes On

The techies came, the marketers came, and even a few VCs came. But conspicuous by their absence were dotcoms, who as recently as last year, had laid a virtual siege at India Internet World 2000. Here's the lowdown.

By Vinod Mahanta

What the delegates and the spectators had suspected as they were walking into the Delhi's Pragati Maidan complex for India's net Woodstock India Internet World (IIW), Pradeep Kar, the Microland honcho and chief organiser, calmly confessed at the first instance. Though in the typical of Kar sort of measured "visionary" speech---he had only recently sold off his dotcom, Indya, to Star Networks---he addressed the gathering saying this year IIW was going to be lot more "focussed". And that it was going to be "compact" unlike the melees of yesteryears. We knew we were going to miss that quasi-woodstockian feel---the blaring music, the insane crowds, and the screaming media---which used to mark out IIW from the rest of the shows the venue hosts every other week.

The following days and conferences asserted Kar in a more expanded way though. For one, expected international stars like Mohanbir Sawhney, John Sculley, Jack Ma, et al were not to be seen, some due to last minute cancellations due to US bombings.

Journos but had their fill. Kiran Karnik, the new Nasscom chief, was the next to speak---his first major IT conference after he too the mantle at Nasscom---though revealing precious little about what direction Nasscom will be taking post-Dewang Mehta.

With the welcome address over, we sauntered into the spacious halls, most empty, the rest with bored staff giving dull site demonstrations. Yes, the Verisign booth was there, all abuzz, displaying the latest in Internet security. Its bevy of Red T shirt clad girls, hosting a on-the-spot quiz show, just added to the aura.

The discussions were but drawing good crowds. In fact, topics like Convergence and CRM had house-full audiences. The speakers had some views too. "It has scaled down yes, but it is very focussed now," said Madan Mohan Rao, Editor, Inomy.com.

The participants, expectedly, gave mixed signs. "It was OK but not good we were expecting some big companies to come but most of the companies were from outside Delhi." said a disappointed Ravi Kapoor, Regional Manager, 24X7 learning solutions who had spent nearly 1.5 lakh on the stall. Where as people like Net4nuts Chirag Patel, had a different version. "People were complaining about the low turnout, but this time the crowd were more focussed and relevant."

But hey did we mention any blue-blood dotcoms in this piece till far? To the incorrigible optimists, yes, there was Yahoo! India. The sole horizontal dotcom to set up stall at IIW 2001 had its own share of the crowd. "It gave us the opportunity to expose some of the yahoo properties" according to Deepak Chandnani, Country manager, Yahoo! India. And for the flamboyant-CEO-of-the-fete post, there was the all-black-clad Sanjeev Mehra of oxfordstore.com and teastall.com, with his trademark yell for a lucky draw: " Gentleman try your luck".

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