I first heard the name of Sabeer Bhatia when I was a school boy. It was the time of famous Hotmail deal between Sabeer and Microsoft. More than 10 years have passed since that deal. Today both Sabeer Bhatia and hotmail are flop. He never repeated the success of Hotmail. While other email service providers like yahoo, gmail, rediff are much ahead of hotmail. Actually, after the dot com bust he is not able to recover(even today when there is internet boom). After hotmail, Sabeer came with two projects, Arzoo.com and blogeverywhere.com.
But these projects did not work out for him. Now the news is that he has re-launched Arzoo.com with web 2.0 features. Its look and feel is also better than previous version. Arzoo offers Air Ticket Bookings (Domestic and International), Hotel Bookings, Holiday Packages (Domestic and International), Car Rentals, Travel Insurance, Foreign Exchange for Travel etc. One of the biggest drawback of Arzoo is that it offers ticket booking for only big giants like Jet Airways, Indian, Kingfisher Airlines etc. Air Deccan is missing here. In my opinion low cost airlines should be integral part of such travel portals as they catch maxmimum traffic in a developing country like India.
Now let’s talk about blogeverywhere.com. It is based on the idea of integrating websites with a browser allowing users to read and post comments He has invested $5 million to develop blogeverywhere over the past two years. According to the website…..
BlogEverywhere is a simple way for you to log your thoughts and comments on any web page as you surf the web. It enables a virtual water cooler discussion on every web page. Over time we build up an online journal of your first hand accounts and unique perspectives on pages of interest to you. Everyone visiting that page can view your comments giving you a potentially large audience. Other viewers can reply to your comments thereby creating a two way conversation.
At present its toolbar only works for Internet Explorer. Besides launching new websites, he also wants to develop a new city in India by the name of Nanocity so at to replicate the vibrance and eco-system of innovation found in the Silicon Valley. Sabeer’s extensive and interactive relationships with global leaders, thinkers and educationists will play an integral role in the creation of Nanocity. There is no doubt Sabeer Bhatia is one of the top enterpreneurs of India particularly in internet field. He is still working hard in projects. I hope, he will repeat the success of hotmail in the years to come.
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