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The poster boy of the Internet boom is back, this time with a collaborative software product that he is touting as the next big thing. By Venkatesha Babu
His story by now has passed into tech lore. How a 19-year-old Indian who went to the US on a CalTech scholarship with $250 in his pocket co-founds and eventually sells his free e-mail service, Hotmail, for a sum of $400 million to Microsoft even before he turned 30. That was circa 1997. For two years he stayed on at Microsoft to complete the transition till March 1999. "However I was chafing under the strain. Microsoft is a great company. But there was something in the Silicon Valley air in the late 90's that made anything look possible. I wanted the adrenalin rush and the environment of a startup. I did not want to be bogged down by the hierarchy," says Bhatia. In April 1999, he started Arzoo (Urdu for heart's desire) to "facilitate e-commerce on the Net". In hindsight he says he should have done his homework better. "It is execution and not the idea. Technology and market decides the strength of an idea. The quality of people I got was no good. They wanted to take advantage of my fame and the people who joined were just looking for a quick buck. It is a cliché to say all business is people business. But it is true. Probably if I was not too trusting and if I had been more assertive, things would not have gone the way it did." By June 2001, when it was clear that Arzoo would not make it, Bhatia decided to exit the company. But the entrepreneur in him wanted action. In December 2001, he bought into Telivoice, which had launched the Navin Mail Service, a phone messaging service. He was also well known in social circles for partying as hard as he worked. "Buying the latest car, an island, you name it, I did it. I did live the easy life but somewhere I lost self-esteem and wanted to get back to what I do best: technology." Among his cars are a Porsche Boxter, Ferrari F1 355 Spider and a BMW M3. He still owns a horse ranch in California, and has made several real-estate investments in San Francisco. Now Bhatia is trying to reinvent himself. He says he is back to a disciplined lifestyle. He is now actively involved with three companies. "I am hands on in these three though my portfolio of investments include more than 20 companies such as NetScaler and FarmQuest. People talk of serial entrepreneurship. I want to do parallel entrepreneurship." One company whose product he recently launched was that of InstaColl, an instant collobration software that allows multiple users to work on the same document. Bhatia says he is excited by its prospects. "It will change the way collobratrive work happens the way e-mail changed communication." Two other companies in which he is involved on a day-to-day basis are right now in the stealth mode. "They will be unveiled shortly. Right now we are putting things in place." What about critics who say that Sabeer Bhatia is a one trick pony who just got plain lucky? (Especially in the light of the fact that no e-mail service has been able to make money and the segment is still dominated by free service providers.) For a moment the carefully modulated voice grows harsh and his brow furrows "I don't have to prove anything to anybody. If they say I have been lucky, I am happy that I have been lucky enough for more than a lifetime. For those who say I am a one trick pony, all I can say is wait and see, I will prove you guys wrong." At 37, it is still too early to write off Bhatia. The tech world will definitely be watching his moves.
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