Trading in information

My Big Idea

Bikky Khosla's experience as an importer and exporter made him painfully aware of the problems and information gaps that businessmen in those fields face.

In 1990, with a minimal capital of Rs 1 lakh, Khosla launched the Exporters Yellow Pages, which became a valuable trade information guide and is today in its 13th edition.

A few years later, his company Infocom went online with the website www.trade-india.com, bringing it closer to an even larger base of information-starved consumers.

Today Infocom provides information on over 200,000 businesses in hundreds of product categories, has branches in 12 cities and a turnover of Rs 7 crore.

From an early age, I was very interested in international trade. After graduating in commerce from Delhi University, I joined Old Village Industries, which was into garment exports, as a management trainee.

That was in 1980. After three years with the company, I left to start a small exporting business of my own.

In 1985 I moved to the US and spent three years there in the business of imports and distribution.

Working on both sides of the fence "" that is, with importers and exporters "" gave me an insight into the problems faced by both parties.

By the time I returned to India I had identified a gap in information, which had been constricting both importers and exporters.

In 1990 I launched Infocom Network Ltd, to fill this gap in trade promotion and information dissemination.

As it turned out, the timing was just right; the opening up of the Indian market the following year led to a sudden increase in trade relations across the border and an immediate need to identify the right buyers and sellers.

Our first project was the launch of the Exporters Yellow Pages, the first of its kind in India. The directory has grown every year and today it provides comprehensive information on over 100,000 Indian exporters, manufacturers and service providers under over 600 product/service categories.

To complement this, the Indian Importers Directory was launched in 1996. Close on its heels in 1998 came the International Pages, which aims at linking global exporters with the ever-growing community of global importers.

We went online for the first time in 1996, with the launch of the website www.trade-india.com. Initially, only the contents of the Yellow Pages were available on this site.

But in 2000 we expanded the website, adding new sections like online product catalogues and weekly newsletters. It's interesting that we saw our biggest growth at the time of the dotcom bust, but then we weren't just splashing funds around thoughtlessly; we had a solid idea.

Once you get into the website business, of course, the key thing is updating data all the time and keeping it 'live' "" after all, addresses and phone numbers are changing all the time and with so many companies listed we can't afford to be slack.

The Trade-india.com site has over 225,000 registered users and the number is growing all the time. The majority of our traffic is from the US, but interestingly we get a lot of users registering from China as well.

When we began Infocom in 1990, we only had a Delhi presence but the very next year we moved to Bombay and today we have branches in 12 cities across the country.

We are now targeting smaller cities like Amritsar and Jodhpur, not through full-fledged offices but by establishing resident sales executives in those cities.

A couple of years ago, my brother Vinod, who was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, picked up a stake in Trade-india.com, which has enhanced our growth prospects.

In 2002, we invested Rs 2 crore on back-end technology and also expanded our offices, manpower, and hired consultants.

Infocom has grown from a three-member company in 1990 to one with over 400 employees today.