Dotcoms die but Mahatma’s website grows with one million dollars from VCs

A million dollars, even in the name of Father of the nation, is considered a rare funding today, considering the fact that angel investors are discreetly keeping away from giving capital to virtual sites. In fact dotcom is considered to be a losing proposition since the April collapse of the Nasdaq this year, and a definite downswing of the Indian dotcom companies ever since. Indiainfo.com, Chaitime.com, Zatang.com — to name a few.

“I have received the maximum contribution of half-a-million dollars from the Mumbai President of TiE, Harish Mehta, who is the CEO of Onward Novell. Another quarter million was given by angel investor from Silicon Valley, Kanwal Rekhi, and B V Jagadeesh of Exodus; while the last quarter million came from TiE members Suhas Patil and Chandra Shekhar of Exodus,” Tushar Gandhi informed Mumbai Newsline.

The money was given in spite of the dotcom bust; though Tushar pointed that his site is actually not a dotcom but a `dotorg’ meaning a non-commercial organisation. He added that the funds will now be utilised to create a high quality Archives Section on Bapu at the website which is on the Net for the last two years. “With the money I shall retrieve rare archive materials on Bapu from all over the world and put them up on the site. For example there are over 100 rare cartoons and caricatures of Bapu dating way back to 1901, done by various European artists; I plan to collect them,” said Tushar, who is also a Congress worker.

He will also try to bring back rare audio and video clips of Gandhi from the archives of BBC and Voice of America. Already, the site contains a lot of data on the books written by Mahatma, his famous quotes and speeches, a detailed description of his last days in the month of January, 1948, and many rare pictures.

Surprisingly, the money for the site has been given by the VCs, without considering any business model of financial gains. “The money was given simply because we want it to be the best peace site on the Net,” commented Harish Mehta.

Another TiE chartered member, Vijay Mukhi, added that the fund expenditure will be closely accounted for to ensure total transparency. “TiE is happy to make some contribution to tell the story of a small lad fondly called `Monio’ who later went on to become the Mahatma,” added Mukhi.