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BUSINESS:
DOTCOMS
Net
Losers
As the
much-feared shakeout begins, many companies look for an exit while others
change strategies hoping to emerge as eventual winners
By Rohit
Saran
From
.com to .con to .kaun to .gone to .comeback. However much one stretches
the vocabulary, nothing, just nothing, quite captures the current mood
of the dotcom business in India. Nothing can. For right now it's a land
where failed promises have come to coexist with new visions, where closures
are announced along with launches and where everybody sounds wise, even
if they do not act wise.
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| Netizens
at IIW surf through opportunities and challenges |
The India
Internet World (IIW), an annual exhibition of Internet industry held in
Delhi this past week, displayed all this and much more. From netpreneurs
to venture capitalists (VCs) to financial analysts to management gurus
there was an amazing unanimity on the emerging thumb rules of Internet
business:
- The Net
is not a new business, it's a new way of doing old business.
- New economy
(loose term for it and Internet) will not survive without some handholding
by the old economy (traditional businesses).
- A good
idea is no more the most important ingredient for success. It's a good
execution team.
- The Net
has made consumers infinitesimally more powerful than producers. Markets
will have to come to customers, and not vice-versa.
As the nuggets
of wisdom rolled in the conference halls, elsewhere in the exhibition,
lofty Net dreams were on sale through portals such as salahkarindia.com,
khuljasimsim.com and allofsteel.com, to name just a few. Everyone,
of course, believed-and tried to make others believe-that they had what
it takes to succeed on the Net.
But when
it came to talk of the industry as a whole, the verdict was indisputable.
As INDIA TODAY, and many others, predicted some four months ago, less
than 10 per cent of India's B2C portals-portals selling things directly
to consumer - will survive by 2002. Indiainfo.com is widely reported
to be in dire straits. Footforward.com, one among India's 20-plus
women's portals, sold itself out to rediff.com.
"The
shake-out has already begun. I get at least one offer a month for buyout
of a dotcom mired in financial mess," says Andrey Purushottam, managing
director of asiacontent.com, a company running portals for global
giants like Cnet and MTV across eight Asian countries. Indya.com CEO
Sunil Lulla agrees: "The process of flushing out has begun. The days
of lavish and foolish spending by dotcoms are over."
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In
India, youth is marked by impetuosity and prevented from getting ahead.
Elsewhere, of course, the young rule the world, says INDIA TODAY Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 
