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Bharat Kumar

Ram Shriram loves ideas centred on the Internet and that reach out to thousands. Junglee, Amazon, eLance, Google and, now, Plaxo. So, who said the dotcom was dead?

Ram Shriram

DO you have a good business idea? Do you think your product would appeal to thousands of people? Then take it to Ram Shriram. Chances are that he'd listen to you more eagerly than would another angel investor.

Okay - we might be wrong here. But that's the impression we get when we look at some of the companies he has been associated with. Many are names that have become known throughout the world. Not because they have spent loads on advertising. But because they offer a service that anybody on planet earth could use. Consider these: Netscape, Amazon, eLance.com and of course, Google.com.

Actually, that's the reason we started out chatting him up over e-mail recently. Google is offering its shares for sale to the public and Shriram is all set to receive a huge bounty if he decides to sell his 5.3 million shares in the company. Though all that he has to say to that query was: "Due to SEC regulations and US securities laws, I will decline comment on any matter related to Google."

Significantly, he added that he had been involved with Google from its inception, and that "I remain on its board of directors."

A short bio before we tell you what he has been up to recently: He was part of the early team at Netscape. Later, he started Junglee.com, which sold out to Amazon.com. While at Amazon.com, he helped raise the customer base from 3 million to 11 million and helped get some 300,000 Web sites linked to Amazon as part of its associate programme. He then quit and started Sherpalo that invests in companies. At www.sherpalo.com, you can find names of 21 companies that Shriram has been associated with in some form.

When we first met him in 2000, he sounded excited about eLance.com. It's a site that lets people buy and sell services. He had said that he wanted eLance to be the "eBay of services". (eBay allows people to buy and sell goods over the Internet while eLance helps the trade of services on the same medium.) We asked him for an update on eLance.

"Elance continues to do very well as a meeting point for buyers and sellers to exchange `services' of various kinds including, Web site design, PowerPoint presentations, creative work, programming tasks, legal and accounting work and the like."

He had been concerned about the grey market eating out eLance's share of the pie. (That is, if buyers and sellers of services meet over eLance's Web site but choose to conduct the transaction outside, then eLance loses out on commission earnings despite facilitating the meeting.)

Says Shriram, "The grey market has been an issue for us, but we do hope that the sellers will realise the long-term value of having a site like eLance do the work of congregating buyers." This would especially hold if it is hard for smaller sellers to reach buyers located far away and if sellers cannot afford the marketing costs of reaching qualified buyers.

According to him, "We call this phenomenon the `eLance economy'. What you see here is one more piece of evidence of how the Internet is making globalisation happen more quickly."

That's all right as far as the retail market is concerned. In addition, eLance is also selling a software product that helps companies manage their buying (or procurement, in industry lingo) functions.

Says Shriram, "This product addresses the needs of Fortune 1000 and mid-size companies that have large non-employee work forces." eLance has approximately 20 large customers for the software.

All right, but do any of his initiatives have ties to India, apart from Google, which has set up a research and development centre in Bangalore? "eLance has a software development partnership with MindTree Consulting in Bangalore," he says.

And Shriram's latest association is with Plaxo. Plaxo allows a user to download a toolbar that runs in Outlook or Outlook Express (an e-mail software from Microsoft) and allows users to keep all their contact data updated. Sure, eWorld has come across this service. Ask for more details and Shriram will only tell you,

"You will see this product from Plaxo grow in new and interesting ways to add daily value to users' experience and needs." Okay. We'll wait for the big news. After all, if it addresses two million users and if Shriram has invested in it, there must be something round the corner. The mass market, remember?

bharatk@thehindu.co.in

Picture by Shaju John

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