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October 1-15, 1999 FRONT END |
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Unleashing the Powerpack A well-attended exhibition saw Indian Net startups peddling some unique services, while the conference featured serious discourses on technology trends. Sudha Nagaraj
Made in India, For the World Speaker after speaker in the sessions that ran alongside warned entrepreneurs to steer clear of local markets. "Sell Churan, but target the worldwide market," said Rakesh Mathur. Abhay Havaldar, partner, Draper International, opined, "It is okay if you start off small-look at it as niche business, but not a local one." EasyDo.com is "made in India for the world" and is the first interactive yellow pages and search engine combined with a reverse auction process with online mail boxes both for the buyers and sellers to interact directly. Simply put, take for instance a person who wants to fly to India from the US. She can just log on, give her requirements and get a comparative pricing from various vendors. Prithu Nath, a Delhite who started EasyDo is awaiting three patents! He did not wait to hear David Triggs, Asia Pacific program director, E-Services Solutions, HP to tell him that portals were moving towards comparative purchase models, did he? Move on. Want to find a valentine diamond pendant bid which starts at Rs 200? Go to Wonderline.com--Chennai's answer to eBay. Log on to a number of other innovative solution providers like Cyberboltz, an interactive financial portal with online trading. eInfochips from Ahmedabad offered eSynergy, a shrink wrapped Intranet designed for small- and medium-sized entrepreneurs and eExtractor, an E-mail collector. I2iNet.com unveiled a "virtual desktop" that had enquiries pouring in. Hyderabad-based Vsplash.com created a sensation with its ready-made Web-page services. Sober Show by Large Corporates That IT giants like IBM, HP and Microsoft did not make an appearance did not steal the Net thunder. The Indian presence made up for that. The slant was on the business-to-consumer transactions: very little was discussed or showcased about business-to-business moves. Amidst the razmatazz, behemoths like Tata Consultancy Services, Planetasia, Cisco and Bharti-BT had only a benign presence and token announcements to make. Cisco displayed its new IP telephone handset and technology for IP-based TV, Kale Consulants launched intranet products and Ericsson showed of its datacom systems and solutions. In the IIW halls, young men addressed each other as "dude". Bespectacled geeks sat through Planetasia president Anand Sudarshan's talk on cyber laws and Exodus co-founder B.V. Jagadeesh's tips on leveraging Net data centres. The response to recruitment drives of several companies at the stalls presented the other side of India's Internet dream: a talent pool queuing for greener pastures. But NetAcross managing director Manish Modi did not find anything wrong with that. "Why hold it against an ambitious person who finds the place he is in not conducive enough to make his dreams come through?" he lashed out at the most honest panel discussion of the show-Leveraging the Net for Business -Challenges for Indian Corporate Leaders. Experimentation is on But the moot questions still remained: "Are these companies here to stay? Will they make money?" All the corporate heads participating in a panel discussion at the close of the session were in agreement with Pradeep Kar, who was quoted as saying that "the entire E-business model is built on negative cash flows, and the money, as profits, only starts to come in over a seven to ten year timeframe." But India Net, it seemed, was prepared to take the plunge. Andrew Zolli, vice president, Interactive Media, Siegel & Gale, summed it up: "1995-1996 was the time to mark you presence on the Net, 1997-98 was for transactions, and 1999-2000 is for differentiation." At the exhibition, there were several examples that proved him right. MakESS ERP from Eastern Software Systems Ltd, is the first online ERP solution. KodeNet a worldwide leader in the ISP industry, speaks of the K-Shop, which helps you open an online shop in five minutes. IIW '99 served as an eye-opener to all. On the one end there were start-up enthusiasts raring to go, and on the other experienced hands striking a note of caution. There was no attempt to present a rosy picture. On the contrary, all the energy and enthusiasm was flowing from the other side of the fence, while the industry seemed to be advising restraint and talking of the hurdles. Now this is possible only when a medium is on its way to mature. It's time to identify and tackle the problems while continuing on the journey. However, the best postscript to the show which started out with a lot of talk on the need for cyber laws was in the shape of a lone pamphlet distributor at the gates when the curtains came down. He had, in his hand, a booklet from a cyberlaw consultancy firm. India may lack the infrastructure, but its Netpreneurial zeal is waiting to be unpackaged. |
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The single most striking feature of the second India Internet World show,
hosted by Micromedia and Penton in New Delhi last fortnight, was the number of local
Netpreneurs who had ventured out with their ideas-some drawing crowds at the stalls that
they put up, some making furtive enquiries and some eagerly lapping up all that the
talk-shops had to offer. Not all of them are going to make waves, and India is definitely
a far cry from the Palo Alto area in California which nurtures great start-up successes.
But a beginning has to be made somewhere. So why scoff at a www.webdunia.com or a
Hungama.com? India may lack in infrastructure, political will and perhaps a techno-savvy
populace, but one visit to the IIW '99, touted as Asia's largest Internet event, makes it
clear that the 'domestic netpreneurs' do have an eye for business-big or small. 
When Hema Parameswaran,
marketing manager, Internet and E-commerce, LG Soft India, called upon Indian businesses
to jump on to the Net despite the risks, she had a point. "If you wait for all the
problems to even out before you take the leap, it may be too late. Obsolete yourself,
before your competition obsoletes you." Rakesh Mathur, famous founder of Junglee.com,
stressed the same in his keynote, "It's one of the strong Darwinian forces-have lunch
or be lunch." Vouches Pradeep Kar, chairman of Micromedia: "IIW '99 is full of
small Internet shops that were possibly not in existence last year." 
