Rajesh Jain has a lot in common with Marc Andreeson, co-founder of Netscape. Just as the Netscape IPO in 1995 is widely believed to have sparked the Internet boom in the U.S., Jain ignited a dot-com storm in India when his portal -- IndiaWorld -- was sold in November 1999 for $115 million to Sify, an Internet service provider. That deal signaled to millions in that country that the web was not just a passing techie fad and that entrepreneurs could make serious money from it.
In recent years, Jain, 39, has deliberately kept a low profile in the media, though he makes his views on technology issues widely known through his blog, emergic.org. Jain, who is now the CEO of Netcore, a Linux-based messaging software company, was a panelist earlier this year at the 2006 Supernova conference in San Francisco. He met with Knowledge@Wharton in his offices in Mumbai to discuss how mobile phones could hold the key to the Internet's evolution in India and other emerging economies.
Knowledge@Wharton: You were among the first entrepreneurs in India to recognize the potential of the Internet when you launched the IndiaWorld portal and websites like khoj.com, samachar.com, and khel.com. What was your assessment of the infrastructure of the web at that time, and how does it compare with your view of the Internet in India today?
Jain: When we launched IndiaWorld in March 1995, commercial Internet access was not available in India. In fact, the portal that we launched at that time was essentially meant for Indians who lived outside the country. Commercial Internet access in India became available in August 1995. So initially we had to dial the U.S. in order to upload our content; we had our servers there.
Since then, of course, the Internet has grown quite a bit in India, but I believe that it has two real shortcomings.
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