Reply-to: indiaentrepreneurs@egroups.com Subject: Re: [IndiaEntrepreneurs] Not The Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Of Portals

Judging by the number and type of mail received on one's ramblings on portals in India, one should hasten to add that one is:

* not Nostradamus or . One is usually a rather bullish person.

* not suggesting that all broad Indian portals won't make it or that the world will come to an end on some unspecified date

* merely suggesting that it probably is going to be difficult for any one indigenous portal to make more than $10 million in revenues from advertising plus margins from ecommerce in the year 2001 - and most may actually make significantly less

* also suggesting that other kinds of sponsorship revenue - ie what rediff charges for buying placement on its navigation etc will slowly be on its way out - large etailers like amazon are moving away from them as they are not cost effective customer acquisition tools - only second tier retailers have bought them and are now hurting - and now _their_ VCs too are not giving them too much money to throw around

* hence suggesting that it might not be easy to see exponential revenue growths in the years ahead for any of these players as they may have forecast

* which might bring into question the needs and hopes for the huge sums of money being raised and spent: in point the $75 million ADR to top the $25 mil that rediff has already raised, or the $60 million plus that indya.com has raised or whatever indiatimes seeks or 123india seeks etc.

* so the investors in those sums of money may have have to wait a long time to see true financial returns (ie, not merely silly stockmarket valuation multiples)

* which in itself may not be a bad thing

salud,

my $0.02

Mahesh