In this age of Information technology it is almost dubbed as a crime if one comes across any person but devoid of any email address. But have we ever thought of the person whom we should give our thanks and hratiest congratulations for this spectacular innovation! He is Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of the famous Hotmail and also a noteworthy entrepreneur.
Sabeer Bhatia was born in Chandigarh, India in 1968. His father, Baldev Bhatia, started as an officer in the Indian Army and later joined the Indian Ministry of Defence, while his mother, Daman Bhatia, was a senior official at the Central Bank of India. Bhatia was schooled at the St. Joseph's Boys' High School in Bangalore. He started his undergraduate education at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, BITS, Pilani and transferred to Caltech after two years at BITS. After graduating from Caltech, Sabeer went to Stanford to pursue his M.S. in Electrical Engineering. At Stanford, he worked on Ultra Low Power VLSI Design.
Doing his masters of science at Stanford, Bhatia attended lectures by such legends as Steve Jobs of Apple and Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. Listening to them speak, Bhatia "realized they were human. And if they could do it, I could do it too." After Stanford, Bhatia found work as a hardware engineer at Apple. "I think my parents expected me to stay for 20 years," he says. Bhatia lasted nine months. In his cubicle, he read about young men starting up for peanuts and selling out for millions. Bhatia pondered what the Net could do for him, and what he could do for the Net. Then he had an idea. It was called Javasoft - a way of using the Web to create a personal database where surfers could keep schedules, to-do lists, family photos and so on. Bhatia showed the plan to Jack Smith, an Apple colleague and they got started. One evening Smith called Bhatia with an intriguing notion. Why not add e-mail to Javasoft? It was a small leap with revolutionary consequences: access to e-mail from any computer, anywhere on the planet. This was that rare thing, an idea so simple, so obvious, it was hard to believe no one had thought of it before. Bhatia saw the potential and panicked that someone would steal the idea. He sat up all night writing the business plan. "Then we wrote down all variations of mail - Speedmail, Hypermail, Supermail." Hotmail made perfect sense: it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write Web pages. A brand name was born. Bhatia had $6,000 to his name. It was time to find investors. Drive through San Francisco today and every other billboard touts some Internet company or other. It was not always like that. "Four years ago it was a hard story to sell," says Bhatia. "Few people believed the Net was real. They thought it was a fad, like CB radio." By the time he reached the offices of venture capitalists Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 19 doors had slammed behind him. Steve Jurvetson and his colleagues quickly saw the potential and put up $300,000. Bhatia and Smith stretched the money all the way to launch day, July 4, 1996. By year-end they were greeting their millionth customer.
When Microsoft came knocking, 12 months later, they'd signed up nearly 10 million users. But what were 10 million subscribers worth? Was it $160 million as Microsoft said? More? Less? Bhatia polled his investors. Doug Carlisle, whose firm Menlo Ventures had pumped $1 million into Hotmail, guessed $200 million. Bhatia chided him for giving the lowest estimate and joked that he might hold out for a billion. Carlisle promised that if Bhatia made $200 million he would erect a life-size, bronze statue of him in Menlo Ventures' foyer. Bhatia didn't know how to sell a company. But he did know how to buy onions. "In India you've got to negotiate for everything," he says. "Even buying vegetables, you've got to negotiate." When the bargaining started, Bhatia felt right at home. "They came in low with $160 million, so I came in at $700 million! And when they said: 'That's ridiculous! Are you out of your mind,' I knew it was just a ploy."Bhatia wouldn't budge and Microsoft's representatives kept walking out. Or rather storming. And shouting and swearing and hurling insults. But the Hotmail team had been warned of Microsoft's tactics. "It was like a record being played," says Jurvetson, "which we thought was pretty funny. It gave us a real sense of strength." That and Bhatia's unshakable faith in the product. During the negotiations, he had bumped into a British backpacker in Prague. Bhatia asked him how he kept in touch with family and friends. Hotmail, of course. Bhatia went back and told Microsoft: "If that is the brand we have built in one and a half years, imagine what it will be in 20 years. Hotmail will easily be bigger than McDonald's." At $200 million, Doug Carlisle started looking for a sculptor. At $350 million, Hotmail's investors agreed: Sell. Bhatia returned to the table, alone, and once more said: "No." The contract was inked on Dec. 30, 1997, Bhatia's 29th birthday. The price: some three million Microsoft shares - worth $400 million at the time and twice that now.
After selling Hotmail, Bhatia worked at Microsoft for about a year and in April 1999, he left the company to start another website, Arzoo Inc, which was shut down when the dot-com bubble burst. In 2006, he relaunched Arzoo as a travel portal.
In November of 2007, he released an online office alternative to Microsoft Office, called Live Documents. This application allows users to use their documents both offline and online, edit, collaborate and share documents in real-time with others, and sync documents between various computers and users. Users can also download their Microsoft Office plug-in, which allows them to get the best of offline and online offices suites, along with full compatibility for all office document formats.
He also pushed for a project enabling access to the internet through cable television in Indian homes. However, due to bureaucratic problems it is very unlikely that this will reach completion.
Future plans of his include the development of a new city in India by the name of Nanocity. The aim of Nanocity is to replicate the vibrance and eco-system of innovation found in the Silicon Valley.
Today Hotmail users are signing up at the rate of 250,000 a day, and the firm is valued at some $6 billion.
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