Once Upon A Time, $400 mn Ago

Sergey Brin's after completing his masters in computer

science at Stanford University he launched a search engine venture named as

Google with his college-mate Larry Page in 1998. In the next few years, Google

became a behemoth, and its founders were on the Forbes list.

Netscape's IPO was launched in 1995, Marc Andresseen, the

founder of the company, was a super star. This was first big success of the

cyber world-the beginning of the 'great Dotcom rush'. Netscape was bought

out by AOL and in 2005, Marc launched a venture named Ping.

Sometime between the launch of Netscape's IPO and Google,

a non-descript Sabeer Bhatia with his co-worker Jack Smith launched an e-mail

service titled as Hotmail. It was an instant success, clocking millions of users

in the next few months. In 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail for $400 mn. Sabeer

arrived in the US in 1988 on a transfer scholarship. He was nineteen and had

some $250 dollars in his pockets. By the end of the next decade, Sabeer was a

millionaire. He was the new wonder boy in the Silicon Valley. Jettisoning across

the globe, meeting up with venture capitalists, getting invited to A list

parties, Sabeer had become 'hot'.

Sabeer Bhatia

From that point on, every venture that Sabeer would float

would always be compared with Hotmail. Yet he does not begrudge the comparison

and has no misgivings about how things have turned out.

Nowadays, he is shuttling across the globe, and is a

constant visitor to India. He had come down to India for the launch of his

latest ventures, Voi-fi, an IP-telephony service, and Blogeverywhere.com.

He is quite passionate on his latest offering and is not ruffled even on being

grilled on the value proposition. Hardly surprising, as Sabeer carries a

reputation of being a master negotiator, a clever, astute businessman.

A few years back Sabeer launched Arzoo, an online venture

where people could pose their tech problems to experts for a small fee. The

venture was a disaster and the company folded up soon enough. Indeed, if Hotmail

can be termed as Sabeer's zenith, Arzoo would be his nadir and Sabeer is

trying hard to redeem himself.

So is he one of the flash-in-the-pan success stories,

doomed to spend rest of his life trying to duplicate his early success? Hard to

answer that one, but one thing is for certain, Sabeer is trying too hard.

Lady Luck seems to be biased for young, zestful people in

twenties; will she smile again on Sabeer, who has recently turned 37? Will he be

able to break the jinx? Time will only tell what she has in her store for Sabeer.

Shashwat Chaturvedi, Minu Sirsalewala





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