"India Needs No More Dotcoms"

Arzoo was to be launched on April 15. But two weeks before the launch, you pulled the plug on the project. Why?
A number of our product partners went out of business - healthshop.com, valueAmerica.com. I knew that the original business model would not work and decided to re-engineer the company. I lost a number of talented people who just could not stomach a business plan change. Most first-time entrepreneurs would have given up at this stage. But adaptation is one of the keys to survival. Had we not done that, we’d have been dead.

What’s Arzoo all about now?
There are 600,000 companies in the world which use technology in some form or the other. If your company, say, uses Oracle and wants to switch to Oracle 8x, you hire new experts who know Oracle 8x, or retrain your existing people. Now you can use arzoo for a real-time consulting solution. On the other side, there are about 400,000 software professionals in India. With arzoo, they don’t have to leave their environment to make a living. They can monetise their intelligence by offering their expertise on arzoo.com, to solve technology-related problems. It’s like an eBay for information technology. To begin with, arzoo has to build a top-quality network of world-class software experts from all over the world. That’s why I’m here in India, to get the word out. Arzoo will pay these experts between $50 and $500 for the questions they answer. Our customers - emerging technology start-ups, established corporations, government agencies - will pay us a retainer for using our real-time technology consulting network. They’ll be able to use the arzoo surfboard - a 200k browser plug-in - for live chats, real-time notifications and collaborative learning.

But will you be accountable?
Absolutely. Our own supermoderators select our experts, and make sure that the questions asked by companies have sufficient information and are answerable over the Net. Then they will get bids from experts all over the world and select the best answers.

Like Hotmail, would you hawk arzoo as well?
It’s very conceivable once arzoo is up and running. I like the challenge of the entrepreneurial spirit, of starting things from scratch. I’d probably hire a ceo for arzoo and start something else. I’m an entrepreneur, not a manager. Management is not one of my fortes.

Why aren’t you in New York, where Prime Minister Vajpayee, right now, is meeting US leaders to discuss issues of global IT trade?
I hope to be there on September 15 for a lunch with Al Gore. I’ve just heard that I’ll be invited (laughs). For my part, I’ve been working independently with the Vajpayee administration and the US administration to get them to form a relationship that is based on economic cooperation, instead of a relationship based on solving the Jammu and Kashmir problem.

What do you think of the dotcom boom in India?
I don’t think India needs more dotcoms. We have too many already, and nine out of 10 of them will fail.

You’ve made money, what next?
That’s behind me. I have more money than I can spend in a lifetime. Now it’s about doing something new and exciting. That’s why I didn’t stop after selling Hotmail, I moved on to arzoo.

What has life been like, since you sold Hotmail?
One phenomenal ride! Most people hope so much would happen to them in one lifetime. I’ve experienced it in just three years, from one high to another. Eating dinner at the White House with Clinton, inviting the US vice-president for dinner to my place, meeting the Indian prime minister. What have I done to get all this? Maybe it’s just good karma.

How do you think you can give something back to India?
How do you help a country where the statistics are stacked up against you? Literacy, poverty? The answer is to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit of the country, not to pump in lots of money. To teach people how to use limited resources to generate tremendous amounts of wealth and millions of jobs, by spreading the message, by setting up mechanisms that enable entrepreneurs to become successful. The message is: you don’t have to work for a big company, start a small business. Arzoo can be the conduit for all the intellectual capital that is locked up here.

Would you move back to India?
Not permanently, although I do plan to spend more time.