Looking for something to try his hand at after his outdoor advertising company closed down, Rajiv Chugh sensed a new opportunity. The Internet boom was just beginning and web-hosting held promise.
So Rajiv started Economical Host in 1998 by the simple process of buying a computer and acquainting himself with the requirements of the business.
Today his clients include BSNL, All-India Radio and Tropicana, and his business has survived the dotcom bust, with a turnover of around Rs 40 lakh.
I come from a Delhi-based business family. My father was an industrialist "" he worked in bicycle-manufacturing "" but after some family disputes he lost his business. So you might say I was equipped from a very young age to start from scratch!
I completed my schooling in Cambridge School, Delhi, in 1984 and then graduated in B.Com (Hons). I had artistic inclinations and my father "" who enjoyed writing poetry "" even wanted me to take up journalism. But practical considerations won out; in those days chartered accountancy and MBA were the "secure" careers, and hence the decision to do B.Com.
However, I did manage something a little different by doing a post-graduate diploma course in advertising and public relations. During this course, I joined an agency as a trainee, and it was here that I became interested in outdoor advertising.
In 1988 I set up a small company and friends helped out by giving me orders for hoardings. The business did reasonably well and I got orders from big clients like Hero Honda. But in 1997 we had to close shop.
I then joined a specialist magazine called Electronics For You in the position of business manager. My work here opened my eyes to the fact that the Internet was taking off and there was promise in the web hosting industry. I had made a lot of contacts in my advertising business and I realised they could provide me with business if I got into web hosting.
So, entirely on my own, I began operating out of a small room in Punjabi Bagh. Economical Host was born in 1998, my only investment being a computer with a Net connection. I spent more than 18 hours a day teaching myself everything about the web hosting business and how it worked.
Once I was confident about my knowledge base, I bought a server from a US company called Alabanza for Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 per month. Alabanza also provided me with a lot of technical support and valuable information.
The big opportunity came in 1999. Until then, all Internet domain booking was being handled by a company called Network Solutions. This scenario changed when the global governing authority, ICANN, distributed governing rights among 50 more companies.
Alabanza now offered me some domain names that I managed to sell at just half the price Network Solutions had been asking for. The dotcom boom was in full flow now, and people started lining up to buy domain names.
As you know, things did change in the industry. While our business has grown at a steady rate over the past three to four years, we have naturally also been affected somewhat by the dotcom bust.
But it's also been good in a way "" because now we only deal with serious players who are looking at the long-term, whereas earlier there were many customers who would buy domain names just for the fun of it. So the business is more streamlined and professional than before.
One problem we face is that many small players get into the web-hosting business without adequate knowledge. When they fold up, leaving customers high and dry, it gives all of us a bad name. This is why many people are under the misconception that all Indian web hosts are unreliable.
So we have to work extra hard to provide the best quality to our customers. We only use top-of-the-line Intel Pentium servers with SCSI drives, bought from the US.
In the near future, I plan to offer dedicated servers to our customers. We will also be buying servers from the US and leasing them out.
