In his first exclusive interview at the threshold of his start-up venture -- yet to be christened -- which involves an initial investment of Rs 5 crore, Jain spoke to The Financial Express on his future plans, the new venture, and of course, a ride down memory lane. Excerpts:

A brief on the new venture and the financial details involved?
The e-venture has an initial promoters capital of Rs 5 crore (for around six months), with an almost equal stake held by each promoter. The venture is primarily promoted by me (Ashok Jain) as managing director and CEO, and CY Pal of Cadbury India, as the chairman. Strategic skills will be injected into the venture with co-promoters Ashok Wadhwa, CEO of Ambit Corporate Finance, Rama Bijapurkar, strategic marketing consultant, Anirudha Malpani, leading doctor, Hiten Patel and Saurin Shah of Ashtech Infotech. An initial advertising budget of Rs 2-3 crore will be used for advertising both offline and online.

Are you looking at venture capital too?
We are not looking at a venture capitalist at this point in time. But, we will consider this six months down the line once we have established the brand. We are still in the process of registering the company. We have a few ideas, we have the skills and we have the money. The idea is to build a brand around this.

What is the nature of your new venture?
First, we will develop our own portals and e-commerce transactions on it. We have zeroed in on four-five portals -- a health portal, a marketing portal and an infotech portal -- to start with. Depending on the nature of the portal, there would be business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. Secondly, we will enable companies to have their own Websites and help in strategising by giving them consultation. We are also looking at a Web advertising agency that will be responsible for marketing of Websites and marketing on Websites. This could be floated into a separate company at a later stage.

How will your start-up be different from the rest?
The idea is to build value drivers in a diverse set of areas like creativity, logistics, relationship management, community building, commerce, what-have-you.

What will differentiate us from the others is the content and brand, per se. We plan to recruit about 50 people in the next six months for content development, design and technical purpose. It is also about how you deliver the product.

How will you tackle the logistics problem in product delivery?
We are looking at vendor development and retail distribution development. Internationally, with just a click of a mouse, goods are delivered at the doorstep. E-selling/e-tailing in India is different. So, we would plug onto an existing distribution network. A tie-up may also be looked at for this, but it is too early to discuss now.

How encouraging is the current state of the Internet business in India?
There is low penetration, low Internet usage here. But this is expected to grow tremendously in the future. A place like a cybercafe can be the in-thing because that is where a lot of people will go for accessing the Net.

After a successful stint with an FMCG company, why did you think of suddenly getting into the Net business?
(Smiles) Because the Internet is where the future and fun is. That is what makes your adrenaline flow...I have done everything which has been at its peak, be it the ice-cream business with Dollops, or the beverages business where the competition was at its height. Now it is the Net!