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 Anupam
Mittal took tradition and put it on the net. The rest,
as they would probably say,
is shaadi.com
It is a touch ironical that the man who owns the
highly popular matrimonial site shaadi.com hasn't put
himself up for grabs on the site yet. Of course, he
is just 32, but Anupam Mittal is, as ever, a pragmatic
man. "My lifestyle doesn't permit me to get married,"
he says.
At a time when Indians were yet to discover the potential
of the internet, Mittal, a techie from Silicon Valley,
decided to head back home and set up what is today one
of the country's largest web-based companies. The Rs
100-crore People Group, which he heads as chairman and
managing director, straddles a variety of internet-based
businesses and a film and television show-producing
arm, ventures funded by venture capitalists like WestBridge
Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Intel Capital.
An MBA from Boston, Mittal worked with an American dotcom
in the late '90s and would have been happy doing just
that, except net-based businesses were in a nascent
stage then, and it was, he decided, the best time to
make a headstart as an entrepreneur. Mittal's first
venture was shaadi.com. And how can anything connected
with weddings in a country obsessed with the happily-ever-after
concept ever go wrong - shaadi.com is rated among the
fastest growing technology companies in the world today.
"On a daily basis we see 30 to 40 success cases,
people who have met on the site and decided to get married.
The actual numbers could be six to seven times more,
since not everyone tells us about it." Over five
million people are members of the vertical portal and
at any given time, two million are active members.
"In India, there are an estimated 10 million weddings
a year. Matrimonials are tailor-made for the internet,
because the shelf life of a newspaper is just about
a week at the most. Matrimonials are about numbers and
the internet can provide a prospective bride or groom
both, the numbers and the reach," says Mittal,
who turned shaadi.com into a paid site in 1999. "We
have listings from Indians living in ten countries.
We get 6,000 new registrations a day. There are an estimated
25 million internet users in India and this figure is
expected to climb very fast. As it climbs, so will our
reach."
Mittal says that the success of the matchmaking site
and the People Group can be attributed to a mix of conventional
and unconventional marketing strategies. He went down
the conventional route for net businesses by cross-promoting
his vertical business on other sites. "We set up
matrimonial sites for MSN and Yahoo, and paid them some
amount of money to run those."
The unconventional way was to go offline in a bid to
expand the online business model. So People Group has
set up Shaadi Points, brick and mortar versions of the
website. There are 75 centres on the ground, which have
been franchised out and work as registration points
linked to each other. "The idea is to attract the
attention of parents who still drive marriages in India
and are largely not net savvy. We have taken the internet
to them."
The success of shaadi.com, which has entered Silicon
Valley folklore as one of the few net ventures to actually
make good money, has led Mittal to experiment with other
vertical portals like fropper.com (India's only dating
and friendship site, which draws in the younger crowd),
astrolife.com (all about astrology, the other Indian
fixation) and mauj.com, a mobile content vertical or
a GPRS portal that provides and manages content for
vendors like BSNL, Idea, MTNL, Hutch, Airtel and Reliance.
"Content on the cellphone will be big business
in a few years from now," says Mittal, who was
recently appointed chairman of the governing council
of Internet & Mobile Association of India.
Then there is People Films, whose first venture was
Flavors, an Anglo-Indian film. "Lavish weddings,
films and cricket, Indians can't do without these. I
have already touched on the first and the second. Flavors
was a film set amongst NRIs, a community I understand
well because I was once a part of it. Relationships,
monotony of life and loneliness - these are the issues
we looked at, but with a touch of humour."
The film's two directors - Raj Nidimoru and Krishna
DK - won the Best Director Award at the 2004 Asian American
Film Festival Flavors was also judged the Best Film
at the Florida Festival in the same year. "The
only problem is that we lost money on it," says
Mittal, with a grin. "The film industry is the
biggest amusement park in the world, but the entry price
is really heavy. If it works, it is the biggest joy
ride."
But the experience has left him hankering for a bigger
pie of the entertainment industry, so he plans to make
several more "funny and intelligent movies".
The next obvious step is television production and their
first show, Games Bond, ran through its quota of 13
episodes on Star One. On the cards are two more Bollywood
films and a couple of reality shows.
Clearly, it's not been a conventional path to success
for Mittal. Son of a prosperous Mumbai-based textile-mill
owner, he worked for a bit in his father's business
after college and then ran a small business that failed.
People Group wasn't even a gleam in Anupam's eye when,
in his early 20s, he decided to bum around Europe and
the US. "While working for dad's textile business,
I spent two hours travelling to our factory everyday
and that was a soul-destroying experience. One day I
decided to throw it all up and travel," says Mittal.
"My first stop was Europe where I took up a lot
of odd jobs, a great experience, since it made me street-smart.
I enjoyed being in the US and decided to spend more
time there. And I did the best thing I could: got myself
an education."
He calls the years spent travelling through Europe and
then studying operatic and strategic management at Boston
College, his formative ones or the crucial turning point.
"When I decided to stay on in the US, I had to
find myself a job and landed one at the lowest rank,
as a technology consultant or system analyst to MicroStrategy
Inc. I was very disturbed by the fact, but it gave me
a chance to stay on."
In hindsight, says Mittal, it was a good move because
MicroStrategy, a Nasdaq listed company, was a global
vendor of
e-business software and an incubator of revolutionary
internet businesses. In a little over three years, he
rose from an entry level consultant to the director
of Strategic Partnerships and was managing businesses
worth several million dollars.
 Yet,
the desire to be an entrepreneur and set up his own
company hadn't died. Even while he was working at MicroStrategy,
Anupam established a web design business in India. "When
I came here in 1997, the web was just taking off. I
put in about Rs 3 lakh and hired three or four people
to manage and run a web design business. We did some
big verticals for companies like Bata and Nike."
The Big vertical-wedding-portal Idea hit him when he
met a marriage broker, who offered him free lowdown
on how the entire matchmaking thing works. Shaadi.com
came into existence in 1997 but Anupam continued to
work at Micro
Strategy, managing his small web company from the US,
till the great Internet bust happened. "I can even
tell you the day the bubble burst. It was 12th March
2000, and we were in some ways responsible for it,"
he says. "MicroStrategy announced an accounting
irregularity. We lost 40 per cent on the Nasdaq that
day. Other internet company stocks lost about 15 per
cent. By the end of December, Nasdaq went from 5000
points to 1400. The company itself went from 300 people
to about 20. We were forced to discard all delusions
of grandeur."
Enough to put anyone off any kind of new age business
or anything connected to the net, you'd think. The bust
actually proved a boon for Mittal. The first step on
the ladder of success, he avers, is to believe in your
business model and make it sound enough to survive almost
anything, even an industry crash.
Not only did he come back to spearhead the growth of
People Group, Mittal also expanded and worked on his
company as the bubble burst. "Busts in any industry
are a great time for a serious entrepreneur to build
his business. When the industry is down, everything
is cheap: labour, rent, the cost of strengthening the
enterprise. Many people dabble in various businesses
but at the slightest weak sign, abandon them. We have
tried to look ahead of the industry and our competitors.
We have tried to move fast and move early."
This probably explains his expansion into several other
vertical web portals and along the line, into other
entertainment businesses. "Net, like TV or film,
is an entertainment option for a lot of people,"
he says. "We started out with a small idea, online
matrimonials and are today positioning ourselves to
be leaders in several different businesses. The idea
is to think ahead at the right time."
But sometimes, despite your good intentions and hard
work, you may fail. "Your ability to bounce back
after a temporary disappointment will assure your success.
We consolidated at a time when internet businesses were
closing shop by the dozen."
Ayn Rand, in her novel The Fountainhead, wrote, "It
is not in the nature of man, nor of any living entity,
to start out by giving up." A philosophy he obviously
swears by. "You should have a strong faith in your
idea, capabilities and yourself."
Knowing the business inside out is obviously essential.
But as important, is to get the right kind of people
to run it. "To be effective, you need to identify
your strengths and concentrate on it. You will become
more successful if you are able to channel your efforts
to areas you do best. Seek help or assistance in areas
you may be poor at."
The biggest frustrations and joys along the way, he
feels, have pretty much been different sides of the
same coin. "Not finding the right people is perhaps
the one thing that hassles me most. Unfortunately, businesses
such as ours, lack strong resource base. On the flip
side, sometimes you meet exactly the person you are
looking for and that is very pleasing."
Ask him about his mantras for success and he laughs.
"It is funny how often I am asked that. It is even
funnier that I still have to figure that one out. I
guess we are all looking for a formula. But if I were
to take a stab at it, my list of success mantras would
read: good fortune, support of great people, hard work,
perseverance, never breaking my word, maintaining high
levels of credibility, taking ownership (even when things
go wrong), staying focussed and above all that, an unshakeable
faith in your ownself and your dream." It's also
a given, says Mittal, that you need to be passionate
about what you do. After all, as he points out, success
comes easily if you love what you do.
The one thing Anupam regrets about this decade-long
journey is getting just a wee bit out of touch with
reality. "And that is a high price to pay. Very
often people are not honest with you. Keeping your feet
firmly planted on the ground is essential."
Sometimes, the stress of running an organisation does
get to him but he takes time off by designing spaces,
his office and home, for instance.
Right now, his entire concentration is on the People
Group. Anupam is nowhere ready to take a step back and
enjoy his success. "In fact, we could have moved
faster," he feels, though sometimes he does ask
himself, 'Am I getting what I want out of life and my
career? Is the rat race worth it?' To me the answer
is simple; I will continue with this career until it
aids my personal growth. The day I start to feel this
is not happening, I will explore alternatives."
And as a note to his investors, he adds, "I don't
expect that to happen for a very long time."
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