Time to get real for Indian dotcoms

The initial euphoria of Net-based companies pursuing user `eyeballs' has given way to a maturing industry poised to exploit the commercial potential of Internet. Anand Parthasarathy reports from Delhi, on the 3rd India Internet World show which concluded last week.

THE TIMING was fortuitous to say the least. On the morning, last week, when the annual India Internet World (IIW) Conference and Exhibition opened in Delhi, the business pages of almost every newspaper on the stands, highlighted a study by the global banking and securities firm, Goldman Sachs which predicted spectacular growth for India's Information Technology industries. By 2004, it would capture five percent of the world's IT business - or $ 30 billion in revenues, the report said. The cyber revolution was yesterday's stale news. Get set for India's e- volution - seemed to be the new mantra.

Hidden within the 196-page report was another implicit message which said in effect: forget about all those proliferating dotcom companies; the big opportunity - and money - lay in IT-enabled services.

Professor Mohanbir Sawhney, head of the Technology and e-commerce group at the Kellog Graduate School of Management in the (US) Northwestern University, is a recognised guru of the global Internet economy.

At the IIW, he was hailed in the earthy Delhi fashion as the ``sensible sardarji'' - even if it was hurtful to many an e-biz aspirant. To quote the headline in The Economic Times, Sawhney felt ``Indian dotcoms were as flaky as cornflakes''and almost all of them would fold up within a very few years. Only the largest players in the consumer market would be able to do business on the Net - and make money out of it.

The savvy thing was to provide Net-based services to US and other companies. You make your money, they take the risks, seems to be Sawhney's crorepati solution.

Many of the participants in the IIW exhibition seemed to doing just that. They provided combined hardware and software solutions to those keen on setting up e-commerce-enabled websites.

The Delhi-based Biznetindia.com, offered Jaiz.com a complete e- transaction solution, complete with store front management system, a virtual catalogue creator, a shopping cart software link and real-time order processing facilities. They also offered Windows NT and Linux-based servers, preloaded with application software at a wide selection of prices.

Aptech, better known as a premier IT trainer, showcased their Application Service Provider (ASP) site , BconnectB.com which it called ``Asia's first intelligent ASP''. Three different modules named SupplierConnect, DistributorConnect, and CustomerConnect, provided the basic building blocks with which to design a web- based business. Another ASP player was the Bangalore and US-based Exatt Communications (www.exatt.net)

Domain names

ICANN accredited a number of agencies which can register new names or renew old domain names. Many of these agencies banded together to form the Open Shared Registration System (Open SRS; at www.opensrs.com) significantly bringing down the cost of registering domain names, to around $ 20 a year.

The Ontario, Canada-based Tucows Network (www.tucows.com) was present at IIW offering a range of domain name services - and an open source marketplace for a huge collection of freeware and shareware.

The Chandigarh -based Pugmarks InterWeb (www.pugmarks.net)is a well known name in Web hosting since 1996 and also a big player in the domain name business - an arena in which other Indian players like vSplash and net4domain are also aggressively marketing their services. As a result, the price of domain registration is now down to between Rs 200-300. In one year alone nearly 1 lakh Indian names have been registered.

`Convergence is king'

Elsewhere, the name of the game was convergence: the coming together of PC and TV technologies to create a `sangam' of information, communication and entertainment (ICE). Many Indian IT players seemed to believe that Convergence was King on the Net of tomorrow. BPL is poised to deliver a slate of broadband convergence products, through its newest corporate creation, BPL Innovision. Merging its cellular and internet business and using this infrastructure as a launching pad, the company hopes to deliver convergence products like a television set top box which will provide affordable Internet to those who already own a colour TV and a phone connection.

Broadband Services Pvt. Ltd (BSPL), a company formed in partnership with the Maharashtra government, by the US-based Enron Corporation is the new entity responsible for developing Internet data centres (IDCs) and exchanges providing world class web hosting services across the state, as well as outside. The company hopes to activate host capacity for 10,000 servers in its data centres, connected through a nationwide broadband network and via international gateways in 2001.

Within the national capital region (NCR), cable and Internet provider Spectra Net, used the occasion of IIW to inaugurate it's 600 km net of fibreoptic cabling, with a hightech hub in Okhla, which will enable its franchisees to deliver Internet-via-cable on TV sets to thousands of households which are already wired.

The company is simultaneously setting up a similar network in Bangalore where 100 kms have already been laid. Initiatives like these provide the pipes to carry amasala mix of multimedia content; what about the stuff that flows down the pipes? The Chennai-based Pentamedia Grapics Ltd, showcased numtv.com, an initiative geared to sending rich video content round the clock to its subscribers. The Sun TV group of channels as well as select Sony and Raj channels have already been put ''on stream`` - though this canny move anticipates a time when more customers will have the necessary, zippy 300 kilobits per second connection either by cable modem or using the Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connection.

Hardware help

Gilat, The Israeli maker of Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT's) for satellite-based content delivery, demonstrated their most popular platform - the SkyBlaster, widely used worldwide to send and receive high resolution interactive TV signals as well as other broadband traffic. Yet incredibly, the core of the VSATs electronics had been shrunk to a few cards - and as Senior Gilat Manager Puneet Jhingan explained to me, you could install these cards in a PC and with a dish antenna, your VSAT was in business.

Gilat hopes to interest Indian agencies in the potential of their platforms for Internet based voice applications in rural areas otherwise difficult to connect by landbased telephone systems. Both Citrix and Microsoft displayed the software that could drive third party Internet servers. Indian PC maker Zenith promoted just one model -the New Zenith Corporate PC which was aggressively priced at under Rs 55,000 with a spec. that included a 733 MHz Pentium III chip; 15 GB of disk space; a 17 inch colour monitor and a 52X CD drive. The company also demonstrated a prototype of its ''X-treme`` PC a realistic play system complete with a steering wheel, foot pedals and a joystick, that should be in the shops by year end.

Software solutions

When it came to software solutions for the small business sector, one of the most interesting came from Okhla-based Eastern Software Systems (ESS), whose Ebizframe allows enterprises to seamlessly merge their conventional ``bricks'' business with the "clicks" business of the Net. But their most daring product is "Makess", an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package that one can download from their website (www.makess.com) for Rs 9000 - making it the first ERP product you can buy on the Net.

Another interesting presence was a delegation of 6 IT service providers all from a single county - Montgomery - in Maryland US, a state that borders Washington DC. All of them were Indian owned or operated and a representative from the county's Economic Development department, Ms Sheila Khatri was on hand to encourage other Indian companies to set up their US operations in Maryland (email econdev.khatrs@co.mo.md.us). After so much hype about Indian software skill, this was one earthy demonstration that Indian entrepreneurs were being actively courted to do business in the US.

From the other direction came Jack Ma, Chinese Internet pioneer, whose Alibaba.com, was a respected B-to-B trading site. He already number some major Indian businesses among his clients and hopes to set up a dedicated Indian operation very soon. Another Asian entrant here is the Japanese antivirus provider Trend Micro whose niche is virus protection of Internet gateways and servers. The company has tripled its sales within the first six months of 2000 and offers a range of virus protection software for individual and corporate users, says Frank Leu of Trend Micro's Taiwan unit.

The job seeker sites, the Net based auction wallahs, the growing family of Internet access providers, all had their corners atIIW - and the huge crowds of youngsters they attracted with their glitzy shows, must have been a tonic for the more serious visitors who visited the Internet service companies. The subscriber base of Indian Internet ( currently 1.6 million), will be 2.5 million by March end 2000, says NASSCOM, which means a user base of 7.5 million.

That translates to a lot of eyeballs - and a lot of money waiting to be spent. And if cautious entrepreneurs were still worried about the return of investment (ROI) that going the e-commerce way might or might not bring, a prominent participant at IIW reminded them of the remark of Intel founder Andy Grove, when quizzed about his company's internet ventures:

"What's my ROI on e-commerce? Are you crazy? This is Columbus in the New World. Did any one ask him what his ROI was?"

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Science & Tech
Previous : Powdery mildew disease of rose
Next     : Residential gateways