For a man who sparked India's dot.com goldrush Rajesh Jain sounds unfashionably old-economy. "It's not easy being an entrepreneur in India. When you don't have enough money, then you get really creative. People [read dot com entrepreneurs] are not thinking hard enough about how to make money; having a proWt model that works is still the key." Seven months ago, in November, this 32-year-old Indian engineer sold his four-year-old internet portal, IndiaWorld, to an Indian internet service provider, for an audacious $115 million cash.
The buyer, Satyam Infoway, seemed to have overpaid but its shares soared on Nasdaq soon after, adding more than $600 million to its market capitalization.
That had scores of young Indian entrepreneurs scrambling to set up dot coms. High-Xying executives, bankers and consultants in Mumbai are trashing their prized jobs for a shot of adrenaline and, hopefully, a pot of gold. In a country where businesses are largely family-owned and selling equity is akin to hawking family silver, the deal caused a stir.
TV Raghunath, an investment banker, says: "The new Indian entrepreneur is completely devoid of emotion when it comes to selling his company and that's a big change."