On a strong wicket

Bharat Kumar

Raja Simhan T.E.

THERE are few pleasures in life to equal that derived from cricket. Is life worth it if you can't tarry awhile, even if you are already late for work, to watch Tendulkar hammer Warney out of the ground? Or if you can't steal a furtive glance at the TV score, with the ``mute'' on, in your company's conference room, when you are expected to be serious and sit stoic with a stiff upper lip?

But you always do these things with a bit of guilt - you report late for duty and avail half-a-day's leave, or you watch TV in office, something your boss naturally won't approve of.

At Cricinfo, the atmosphere is different. We trudged in early for our appointment with Dr Badri Seshadri, Director, Cricinfo.com, and what do we hear but the commentary, on loud. (Dr Seshadri was momentarily held up and we caught up with the score. India was playing Sri Lanka in the recent Coca-Cola cup and had to win to entertain any hopes of getting into the final.)

We discovered that this was one office where you could watch cricket without feeling guilty. For, cricket is the company's business. And what's more, despite the doom and gloom around, the company has grown from 30 million page views a month a while ago to 250 million a month at the peak. Even the lowest month's figures are at 150 million. A conversation with Dr Seshadri makes for interesting reading. Not because anything dramatic is happening but because Dr Seshadri is still keeping his fingers crossed, for all the company's global visibility and muscle in the cricket portal business. Much used to hearing the average CEO claim that his company's the best, we were pleasantly surprised to hear Dr Seshadri voice a few home truths, on himself and the dotcom industry.

Here's the second in our series on dotcoms taking to challenging changes to survive. (Please refer `Quiver full of ideas' in eWorld dated August 8, 2001.)

What did the dotcom industry do wrong?

There are three counts on which all of us were wrong - the West and the East.

First, we were not wise enough to appoint a good CFO (chief financial officer). Even the pavement vendor knows how important it is to manage working capital efficiently. But the industry did not show financial discipline or business acumen on this front. Having accountants to keep track of your money is not enough. You need someone with the depth of financial substance to tell you where you are wrong.

Second is the lack of appropriate guidance from venture capitalists - the chaps with the money. The mistakes the industry committed had nothing to do with dotcoms in particular, a poor market environment or whatever.

The third factor is the failure to facilitate business development or negotiating for big alliances. As a country, we are weak on the third count.

How has cricinfo fared since you realised that there is a better road to take?

We can now see that we lacked financial discipline. If we had had someone prudent to guide us, we might even have turned profitable by now. We squandered a good opportunity and what pinches our conscience most is that we have failed someone who invested in us -- and he might have investors from the public. So, our learning experience comes at the cost of public money.

But, we are certainly learning from our mistakes. We have now realised that a great idea is not necessarily a money-making one. For instance, we began selling DVDs of cricket broadcasts. On sale now are V.V.S. Laxman's historic innings against Australia. We have made a profit alone of 4000 pound sterling by selling to a mere 600 people. We have introduced interactive voice and mail feedback sessions as part of our live audio commentary on the Internet. But, if we had started the business with such proposals, we would not have got the money. But one learns to make money as one goes on. For instance, one of our products that is reasonably profitable is the audio commentary broadcast for radio stations. (As we speak, he connects to the Net, and lets us hear crystal-clear, no-disturbance commentary on the India-SL match. Asked who is commentating, Dr Seshadri says, ``That's our one-man team in Sri Lanka.'' Noticing our surprise, he continues: ``We are all now multi-skilled people. The commentator is easily capable of running the business, commentating and is even clued in enough into technology to uplink the commentary.'')

When do you hope to achieve break-even?

We thought of aiming for a break-even in 2003. But it needs to be hastened. We are looking at March 2002 for this milestone.

What are you doing to ensure you reach there faster?

We have several cost-cutting measures. We haven't reduced the size of our manpower in India because ours is a global organisation. If anything, we will be hiring in India. On the Net, most work is location-independent. We'd rather have someone work here than in England. One of the things we found interesting was that it became normal practice for a section of the print media to source stories from the Cricinfo site or for pager companies to beam live scores with the help of TV or of our site. Our involvement was rarely acknowledged, nor was our permission sought to use such matter. We have gone around educating people. Now, even if they don't pay in cash for the use of scores or articles, we get advertisement space and our logo is displayed prominently in our articles that they feature. This has helped bring our marketing budget down to almost zero. This kind of barter revenue is equivalent to about Rs 2 crore a year. Of course, I can always resell the print space I get, but we don't have the manpower to do it on a consistent basis.

Do you think this is the right time to acquire companies or would that be spending precious cash?

It depends. You have to make a call. We recently acquired a site, www.cricketgurus.com. It provided interactivity with cricket enthusiasts in a way that Cricinfo has not. Cricinfo started off as an entertainment site and has now become an information site. This is where the acquisition brings value-add. In due course, the site will be relaunched as a service to our pool of 10 million viewers. Also, the site was acquired through a stock transaction rather than downright cash payment, so that isn't exactly cash outflow.

Who do you see as your single largest competitor?

Among cricket sites, none. Rediff is our competitor since some surfers still log on there to check scores. In that sense, we have competition.

What are the things you did, but wouldn't do, if you began all over again?

We would get our maths right before bidding for cricket broadcast rights for the Internet as a medium. The fees for the rights have to be appropriate, rather than exorbitant. We never really did a financial analysis of such projects.

Second would be the way we interact with cricket boards. We spent huge sums on managing our relationship with the boards. Now, we have learnt to be blunt with them. Else, it doesn't help. At the end of the day, we realise there is no substitute for experience.

Pic.: Mr Badri Seshadri.

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