Think big! Dotcom can make you a CEO at 20

Convinced that “no one can offer teenagers better entertainment than teenagers themselves,” the two friends spent 20-hour days since December conducting informal surveys, market research, a revenue model, and a “power-point presentation” that persuaded their parents to finance MastHungama.com

Now they plan to make money by offering cash-on-delivery flowers, chocolates, cinema tickets, and online services from palmistry to blind dating, insults and selecting just the right mate for your dog! “Today no one takes me seriously. But the challenge lies in selling my ideas and starting from scratch,” says Darpan, who insists his sound revenue model won’t allow the infant company to simply fold up. Hoarding space already booked in Mumbai, Darpan and Samit are optimistic about venture capital funding once they “make it big in Mumbai in June.”

All of 24 years and directors of Inika Technologies (where the oldest employee is only 29) Pradeep Natrajan and Niket Vaidya say they “already feel too old for dotcom.” Pioneers of virtualpune.com, Natarajan, a fresh engineering graduate, brushes off any business doubts about the venture. “In just over a year, we’ve paid off our debts and grown at over 125 per cent.”

True to dotcom mania, Inika technologies received nearly 500 applications for the post of one web designer last July, “but only 10-15 suited the job requirement,” says Natarajan.

At the upcoming brainvisa.com on the look out for content editors, “freshers or people with 10-15 years of experience in totally non-IT fields like medicine, sales, food and metallurgy turned up,” says content developer Arun Albert.

At Crossover Information System and Technologies, it is the “sir, give me a job,” requests from twenty-year-olds that technical director Renji Panicker describes. “Only five to ten per cent of the applicants are experienced. I doubt the rest even know what dotcoms are,” says Panicker.

Confronted daily with applicants swayed by dotcom myths from glamour to fat pay cheques, the industry insists there is room only for talent that exudes fresh ideas to make portals tick despite long stretches of seven-day weeks, 18-hour days and no job security.

DOTCOM BUG

Though more and more management students at the University of Pune are now launching independent dotcoms after “six to eight months of working experience,” Dr Sharad Joshi, director department of management sciences, UoP, says the dotcom bug has to still strike big at the campus.

“We look at dotcoms with caution, for the general feeling is that over 70 per cent will fold up soon, and have an uncertain future after two to three years, especially because of high investments and no entry barriers,” he says.

Of the 60 companies at the University’s campus recruitment drive this year, 15 were dotcoms “accepted by students either because they had no alternative, or because they were looking mainly at a year’s work experience,” he admits. Top students were absorbed by established finance and software companies.

At the Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) 30-35 per cent of the batch joined dotcoms this year at campus recruitment, says SIBM director Pramod Kumar.