Business Today Net Special

Netopia from Netcontinuum?

By Venkatesha Babu

If the utopia on the internet is having a zip drive-with streaming video, graphics, and customised news being read out, then it might be realised sooner than you expect. That is, at least one company whose R&D centre is based in Bangalore, is trying to do.

Netcontinnum, a Silicon Valley-based company, which has recently opened an R&D centre in Bangalore, is launching a slew of Internet infrastructure products, which its CEO Ravi Sethi says "will provide the basis of next generation hosting and content delivery networks."

This, he said, will be possible because of Netcontinnum's purpose built systems, which have been developed on patent-pending technology, include custom designed ASIC's and an integrated hardware-software architecture. These technologies will enable ISPs, hosting companies and content providers to provide significant advances in terms of performance and scalabilty for delivering content over the Net, he added.

"This will help our target market to use our technology, with which they can enable content routing, peering, and personalisation to deliver new services at the scale needed for the emerging broadband, and optical Internet, he pointed out."

Sethi also said that its integrated hardware-software system solutions will allow content providers and service providers to meet the bandwidth demands of a rapidly expanding user base and to tap the opportunities created by availability of new broadband services. Sethi says that these solutions will combine hardware and company designed chips and all these will be based on open standards. This will also help service providers to significantly scale the amount of bandwidth and the number of users served from a single device.

Netcontinuum's products are designed to address a rapidly growing market that is projected to be worth more than $10 billion by 2003, according to Sethi. It has received $9 million first round funding from venture capital firms Menlo Ventures and MKS Ventures. The Bangalore R&D center, which has 50 engineers, has been started with an investment of Rs 5 crore. The company expects to plough in another Rs 10 crore in the next two years for this research center and increase manpower threefold. Watch this space.

The low end of Net travel

By Aparna Ramalingam

Naresh Khattar, CMD Avalon Resorts Pvt Ltd, belongs to the old school. Or, at least he says so. A builder by profession, he belongs to the brick world. But, this hasn't detered him for exploring the terrains of the new economy.

An RCI-affiliated destination, Avalon Resorts, Mussorie, became operational in 1997. The investment was around Rs 12 crore in building this resort. It also has about 20 Service Apartments in Mehruali, New Delhi. These apartments primarily cater to business travelers and people who come on transfers. Khattar claims such service apartments are ideal for short stays. The turnover from the bricks business was around Rs 4 crore in the last financial year.

Then, Khattar decided to incorporate a bit of clicks in his bricks business. It relaunced its website avalonresorts.com on October 1, 2000. Yes, there was an existing website but that was just a silent page, a dead site with no dynamic facilities. "I spent around Rs 60,000 in developing that site three years ago. But we never got any business from that site," reveals Khattar.
Looking back, Khattar admits that it was his fault. "We ourselves did not open our account as we didn't know anything about it," he said.

But three years is a long time in internet parlance. Realising the importance of the web, the company got its act together and relaunched the site. According to Khattar "travel is a big business on the Net," and also that fact that now the Indian population also got onto the intrernet in a big way. So they did not want to lose anymore time.

Khattar hopes that the web will contribute around 30-40 per cent of Avalon Resorts' total revenues. The investment in relaunching the site has been to the tune of Rs 3.5 lakh. If Khattar is to be believed, business worth Rs 2.5 lakh has already been generated from the site, which claims to have 6,000 hits since its launch in October 2000. And about 1 per cent of that has translated into revenues. Bookings are done online, though the final payment is transacted offline. "We believe that the web will take over the offline within months," says a confident Khattar.

The site has banner relationships with Bharat Samachar, Travel India, IndiaReacts, tajmahalindia.com. "It's too new to have a financial relationship," says a cautious Khattar. A point to be noted here: the company doesn't advertise much and is dependant mostly on direct marketing. Its target market is the domestic tourist.

Once everything is in place, all the activities could be web generated. The Net is an exciting medium and that excitement had made Khattar postpone his retirement plans. After a faulty start, Avalon has made a beginning in the lower end of travel segment on the Net. Of course, he is operating in the services segment and fulfilment is the key word here. As Khattar himself puts it "Fulfilment is the main aim if we can achieve then that's the name of the game." Can avalonresorts.com deliver on that promise?

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