Most Indian doctoms, it is said, won't survive. Perhaps sensing this from within, the rush at the exits has already begun. It is a motley bunch of techies, journalists, designers who are looking out. What are they good for? Jobs back in the brick-and-mortar world which they left not so long ago? Or new and untried roles in the expanding horizons of the information business.?Even as we prepare for dotcoms and their cyber cousins to go down with a collective sigh, it is worth asking what impact they have had on the people who have worked in them and the business environment which they have shaped. What exactly are the changes in perception and attitude that they leave in their wake?
First, of course, is the exposure to IT and the speed with it traverses the spectrum of human activities and takes possession of content. It makes you think and express yourself differently. People who have even flirted with Internet content cannot expect to be quite the same again.
Second is the spirit of entrepreneurship. Never before have ideas turned into businesses with such ease. The low entry cost of the Internet has made this possible. So someone who believes that car pools make sense in Delhi can, with a few thousand rupees, have a site and, with a little perseverance, a varied and valuable database of people.
Similarly, medical sites have proliferated. People go to doctors for millions of little things. Doctors make fortunes out of people. You bring the two together at a site and hope to make money out of both. The Internet has also encouraged the ubiquitous tutor to reach out. Gone are the days of going from dining table to dining table. Now a tutor is just a click away. Or take the small cities which have an Internet presence. Meerut, Gurgaon, Mussoorie all have dotcom identities.
How many of these little busineses will make money? Perhaps none, but the appetite to experiment has been whetted. It has brought individuals with their ideas forward. Read the stories of business school graduates who turned down offers to take a shot at their own start-ups. This wasn't so before when if you didn't go to a business school you went on to be a babu in the government and if you were not good for either you humbly trudged around looking for modest employment.
Dotcoms are new and zippy organisations in keeping with the medium with which they work. They don't represent staid and stolid certainties.There is little room for escape when failure strikes. What they leave behind is a middle class which has lost the fear of flying.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.