According to Ashok Mirza, chairman of Apcom group of companies, the portal will go for the first round of its VC funding of Rs 2 crore to Rs 3 crore by July 1, 2000 to meet the shortfall. Of the Rs 8 crore, Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore would be spent on advertising and promotions to get the Indian woman's mindshare. The rest would be spent on operations, including signing stores for the nationwide e-tailing it launched with a first of its kind `compare shop' facility. It has already signed-up 62 retail stores across the country.

The company plans to add verticals to the portal by July this year, to help add value to the Indian woman, said Mirza. It is planning to add one interactive every month. The portal currently has 1500 pages, including 10 to 12 interactives. It is linked to 100 Websites (59 of which are Indian and three for the Indian woman), which have useful information for the Indian woman.

The portal has some interesting features like `recipe machine', `dream interpreter', `e-perspective' etc. Mirza was speaking at a pressmeet organised to announce a 40 per cent increase in the turnover of Apcom Computers during the fiscal 1999-2000 at Rs 50 crore. More than 30 per cent of the growth came from Dax Internet modems, launched by the company over a year ago. The sales of Dax contributed Rs 17 crore to the turnover, while the rest came from its networking products. The networking company is targeting a 50 per cent growth for the year 2000-2001 at Rs 75 crore. About Rs 40 crore of that would come from Dax sales, according to Deepak Mirza, director, Apcom Computers.