To begin with, could you briefly explain who the investors in India.com are and the shareholding pattern of the company?
India.com has been promoted by Mail.com, the owner of domain names like USA.com, Japan.com, Asia.com, Canada.com and Britain.com among several others. Mail.com has invested $20 million in cash and the remaining in terms of tradeable stock (Mail is a Nasdaq-listed company) and assets like the 150,000 registered users of India.com's mail service and their ad network among others. Mail owns 89 per cent of the company. An 11 per cent stake is held by four investors who invested $ 14.2 million in August this year. These include, Sycamore who has invested through the Asia Star Fund, EMC˛ and venture capital funds Kaufman and Primus.

There have been reports on Mail.com's intention to dilute its stake in India.com, can you spell out Mail's plans for the company?
Mail is the incubator of India.com but they do not plan to run the business in the long term. They have announced their intention to dilute their stake and maybe even part with a majority holding in the company and are now ready for an investment from big players. We are however funded until mid 2002 so we are taking out time to look for a significantly big player before we dilute.

India.com seems to have been cherry picked for development from the slew of domains that Mail currently possesses. Why do you think this is the case?
Yes India.com and Asia.com are currently being developed by Mail who has chosen these over names like USA, Japan, Canada and Britain. This is because India stands out as an emerging market with strong Internet skills. The cost of outlay in India is lower and there is an opportunity to evolve with the market which is not the case with markets like the US. I would imagine this is the primary reason for the choice.

Given the powerful brand name that you possess, how would your brand strategy and business differ from the existing horizontal portals?
In terms of the business we are no different from any other portal but as far as the brand goes, while we have certain distinct advantages we also have to be exceedingly careful with the brand image. First of all, I don't want to bank too much on the brand name and plan on building a portal that stands up to the name. The brand does have certain advantages at the moment, the main one being that it affords us a lot of room to incorporate various elements. Currently I don't run the risk of being seen either as a funky portal or an exceedingly serious one, I can incorporate elements of both since the India.com brand name offers that space. The brand is not bogged down by any image which could potentially restrict its business activities.

Having said that, I should also be careful to ensure that this does not ever happen. For instance, nobody would want to do business with a portal that features rock stars in its ad campaigns.

What is your overall business strategy for India.com?
The consumer portal India.com is only the visible tip of the iceberg which will draw the online business. We also plan on storefronts and feature web designing and hosting services on the portal. So small businesses can actually feature their entire product catalogues online on micro sites. We have also started a computers, printers, peripherals and box software business which is currently seeing an annualized rate of sales of about Rs 45 crore and plan on investing on business messaging services in which Mail.com has a strong presence in the US. We would be their resellers for the Indian market. We are also looking at the CRM market. We see it as a logical extension of the customer service element that the portal has. We see India.com as a platform which owns and operates a set of businesses.

Can you explain your strategy for expansion, alliances and acquisitions?
We will use the pool of funds available to us to grow along three axis' - in terms of width of offerings, depth of offerings and businesses which will help us move along the value chain. We would consider all sorts of business relationships including alliances and acquisitions to achieve this. But as things stand today I don't think the acquisition route is a great idea, alliances are better since they result in a win win situation without any major investment of resources on either side. I will opt for the acquisition route only if the offering fits into my strategic direction and fulfils the condition of being an economically viable and independent business. Also very importantly, the cost of acquiring the company should be lower than the price I will incur if I was to get into building the business my self.

Who are your alliance partners at the moment?
We have 23 alliances, 12 of whom are with technology companies like Vignette, Verisign, Oracle, Talisma and Google to name a few. Also we are Vignette and Sapient's first large scale visibility in India and so their commitment to the project is huge. For content we have tie-ups with PTI, ANI, Credence, Dun and Bradstreet and Amadeus.