The Hindu Business Line : Instacall to launch new software tool for the Net

Bangalore, Nov. 19 Mr Sabeer Bhatia, Hotmail founder, said on Monday that Instacall, a company in which he has invested, will launch a new software product for the Internet in two days.

“I think the opportunity is even bigger than what we did with Hotmail 10 years ago,” Mr Bhatia said talking to reporters on the sidelines of a Nasscom Product Conclave, 2007 here.

“Everyone with an Internet connection will be able to use the product,” he said, without giving more details about the product.

Mr Bhatia said the product will target a global market of $20 billion a year. It was developed in Bangalore by a team of less than 100 engineers and also ruled out selling the product to a bigger player in the future like he did with Hotmail to Microsoft. Instacall allows transfer of files of unlimited size from one computer to another. It has only 50 users currently.

Mr Subash Menon, Chairman and Managing Director of Subex Azure, said India had the capability to exploit the emerging opportunity of both the domestic and international markets to achieve $15 billion revenue by 2015 in the IT products space.

Mr Sharad Sharma, CEO, Yahoo! India R&D, Mr Srini Rajam, Chairman and CEO Ittiam Systems, Mr Mahesh Mehendale, Chief Technologist, Digital Entertainment Product Development, Texas Instrument, and Mr Deepak Visweswaraiah, Director, Information Management Software Group, felt that a strong stratagem based on close linkages between software and hardware producers and other players in the value chain could help India become a product hub soon.