The First Poster boy of the Net : Rajesh Jain
September 10, 2005 – 2:13 pmIf Sabeer Bhatia hit iconic status among Internet entrepreneurs in the US, Rajesh Jain achieved similar status back home when he sold his IndiaWorld portal to Satyam Infoway(now Sify) in 1999 for Rs 500 crore. That was one of the Asia’s largest Internet deals. This astounding deal, amid the Internet boom, sparked off the dotcom frenzy in India. Everyone wanted to be Rajesh Jain.
Rajesh Jain’s Biography::
A graduate from IIT-Mumbai, Jain completed his masters in electrical engineering (communications) from Columbia University. He worked in the US for two years before coming back to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
Before fame and money embraced Jain he swallowed many failures. His foray into software development failed, forcing him to take a break in the US in 1994. Fascinated by the power of the Internet, he started IndiaWorld, a Web-based news and information service for NRIs, with his savings.
IndiaWorld made rapid strides in collecting content as well as making eye contact. Consisting of Khel.com, Khoj.com, Samachar.com and Bawarchi.com, it became one of the largest India-centric portals.
The party did not last long. The dotcom bubble burst and brought down the valuations of the Indian companies.
Looking back at his dotcom days, Jain feels that a positive aspect of the Internet boom was that it triggered a “flavour of entrepreneurship”. He wished that the boom had lasted a little longer. “With any new technology, we tend to overestimate what it can do in the short term and underestimate what it can do in the long term,” he says. “For anything to work, the eco-system has to fall into place”.
Jain spent the next two years with Satyam before hitting the entrepreneurial road again. Now, he is on a mission to take the Internet to 100 million Indians through his venture, Netcore. He has joined hands with Ashok Jhunjhunwala, professor, IIT-Madras – who made telecom solutions for rural India – to develop low-cost computing devices.
Check the following Link on Rajesh Jain’s Blog
2 Responses to “The First Poster boy of the Net : Rajesh Jain”
A really good one ! Let the Breed of Rajesh Jain grow in leaps and bounds! That is what Indian requires at this juncture.
By Varghese on Sep 12, 2005
I was searching information about Rajesh Jain and luckily found in your blog. The information is very much accurate. Thanks for the link to his Blog.
By Ajith on Sep 14, 2005