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The B2B Social Network of the 1980s IT industry

Sunil Agarwal was the first Dataquest Editor in December 1982. He talks about those early days when DQ gave a sense of belonging and identity.

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Sunil Rajguru
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Sunil Agarwal

Sunil Agarwal was the first Dataquest Editor in December 1982. He talks about those early days when DQ gave a sense of belonging and identity to the IT industry. Edited excerpts from a video interview

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The inaugural issue and selling DQ…

The first issue came out and it was extremely successful. There was a guy who kept selling the subscriptions by going from one IT department to another. That was a big thing, because all IT departments of companies had a budget for publications. An Indian publication for computers got subscribed to immediately. Rs 72 was the annual subscription at that time.

Not circulation,

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but reaching the right people…

Even though the circulation was small at that time (some 5,000), most of them were given free. The premise was that it had to reach the right people who would buy computers. At that time, the total sales of the entire computer industry was 100 and something crore Rupees. Apart from being the Editor, my job was to do the marketing, based on what the manufacturer wanted. (There were only 15 at that time.) Next job was to create the product which would have the right mix of articles that the buyer wanted. And then connecting the two together. And hence the magazine became financially very viable.

DQ’s success was based on the fact that we understood people’s needs and catered to those needs. We were very good at networking. We networked the hell out of this industry.

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What if DQ had not been there?

In those early days, simply put, vendors would not have been in touch with customers. We were in touch with the customers, the vendors were not. We used to replay the voice of the customers and tell the vendors objectively. The vendors would position their products accordingly. We were, to my mind, reasonably instrumental in making the vendors succeed in the mid-1980s. 

Finally, DQ gave a sense of belonging and identity to the IT industry. People did social networking of the B2B kind.

Catch the complete video interview here...

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