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| Steve Jobs is (the inspiration) for my professional life. What he has done, how he came back and saved Apple and resurrected it from almost bankruptcy to become one of the most valuable companies not just in America but in the whole world.... In my personal life I am really influenced by Gandhi, his philosophy of non-violence and the belief that the truth will always win |
Sabeer “Hotmail” Bhatia, the co-creator of the first free email service, has been hopping in and out of the city to be with his in-laws, promote his latest venture JaxtrSMS and engaging in virtual brainstorming for Team Trinamul. t2 caught up with Calcutta’s Jamai Raja for a chat at his in-laws’ house on Sarat Bose Road.
THE MAKING OF MR HOTMAIL
Let’s start at the beginning. What made Sabeer Bhatia an entrepreneur?
I was actually inspired by Steve Jobs. I remember I was a student in the electrical engineering department at Stanford and I took a course called business for electrical engineers. We had different founders of companies coming and talking to us about how they started companies, what was their motivation, what kind of business problems they solved. So the likes of Steve Jobs, Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy came in and I was inspired by all of them. I thought if they can do it, if they can create such great companies, I can do it too.
And I think it is also true of Silicon Valley. Just like in Hollywood people aspire to be actors, in New York people aspire to join the finance industry. In Silicon Valley people dream of becoming entrepreneurs and hitting it big by way of entrepreneurship. In fact, I was doing my PhD and I decided to put it on hold.
I finished my Masters from Stanford and went on to start my career at Apple Computer. I worked there for a year or so and then I joined another start-up called FirePower Systems. Since then, I just decided to venture out on my own and started Hotmail with my partner and co-founder Jack Smith.
What did you want to be before being bitten by the entrepreneurship bug?
Actually when I first went to the US I wanted to be a scientist. I loved math, I loved physics, my goal was to be a researcher. But somewhere along the line, as I mentioned to you, because I went to Stanford, because I went to Silicon Valley, I became inspired to be an entrepreneur.
Did education in the US play a role in you taking the risk?
My education did have a role to play, especially my higher education at Stanford.
The other thing is that the US gives you the freedom to think. There is intellectual freedom in the work that you do at universities. I remember the first paper I was asked to write at Caltech [California Institute of Technology] was on philosophy. You had to read three-four books to write the paper. I read those books, wrote the paper that had the ideas of those four books, which is what is done in India. I got a ‘D’! I went up to my professor and said that I had read all the four books and he said ‘Ya, I’ve read those four books too. I wanted to know your point of view not what the point of view was of those four books’.
That is what we are taught in India. Learn what’s in a book and repeat it in an exam. There I was told I had to think independently. So, for the first time a light bulb went off in my head and I said wow, this is an amazing country where they genuinely want to hear your point of view and not what is already there.
I think since then I’ve always questioned status quo. Whether it was the creation of Hotmail, which was to question why can we not have email free, why can we not make email available on the web, to Jaxtr now, which questions status quo, why should you have to pay for text messaging? When you have the data connection why can’t you message for free? All of this in some way or the other comes out of the freedom to question what already exists and I think that ability to think and question probably came to me because of my education at both Caltech and Stanford.
How did Hotmail happen?
I was at FirePower Systems after Apple Computer and two of my colleagues from Stanford had gone on to start and co-found Yahoo!, Jerry Yang and David Filo. And I was like wow, they got a million dollars just for a list of different websites. I started playing around with the Internet and I’m like, this is going to be big one day… huge. Because more and more people are going to be using it and it ties different platforms together. So I started playing around with different ideas and I knew that there were lots of things that were yet to be done and then I went and recruited my partner Jack Smith to come and join me.
My original idea was to do a small web-based database on the Net. When we were putting this company together, both my partner and I were working at FirePower Systems and the company installed a firewall around the corporate Intranet and that made it impossible for us to access our personal email accounts outside of the firewall. We could access any web page on the Internet but we could not access our personal email accounts. I could not access mine at Stanford and he could not access his at AOL. And that’s when it occurred to us, what if we make email available on the web? Not as a separate thing which requires an Outlook or a separate client to access email. And that was the killer idea. We decided to do it. Not only did it solve a problem for the two of us, today seven-eight hundred million users are using Hotmail.
Are you tired of the Hotmail/hot male joke yet?
Ya ya, that is old! I have obviously moved on and I am really excited about JaxtrSMS.
How was it working for Microsoft after you had been doing very much your own thing with Hotmail?
It is different working for a large company. You don’t have control over all the decisions of the product and decisions get made much more slowly than in a start-up.... And it was a big company culture. It was hard for me to work in a big company just because I was so used to thinking of my own ideas and just doing it.
And then you started Arzoo…
Arzoo in its first form was like an eBay marketplace for ideas and opinions but that didn’t do very well and in 2001 I had to shut it down. But it’s now come back again as a travel portal in India and it is doing great.
After Arzoo I started this company SabSe Technologies which is the parent company of Jaxtr and we’ve got a number of products. The year before last I had this idea to do JaxtrSMS and started working on it. It took almost a year and a few months to develop the product and we went live with it in November. And now we are growing at 30,000 users every day.
How successful do you think Jaxtr will be in India?
Internet penetration in India is growing. If there are about 850 million phone connections, there are roughly 85 million Internet-enabled phones but with the advent of 3G, and all these other Wi-Max services, the rate of growth is the fastest in data-enabled phones. Today, anybody who goes to buy a new phone buys a data-enabled phone. So even though it is 85 million right now it is expected to grow to 500 million over the next three to four years and we hope to ride that wave.
What’s next for Sabeer Bhatia on the career map?
To grow JaxtrSMS, to make it profitable and to make sure that it becomes a very sticky application. We don’t want it to remain just as an SMS app but to do things beyond text messaging, you know, to build in other features so that people use this as their main application.
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| Tania is from Calcutta.... Ever since we got married Tania and I have been going to the movies. She loves to watch Hindi movies. I was never very much of a Hindi movie buff before but now we go and watch movies |
THE MAN BEHIND THE MAIL
How did you and Tania meet?
I met Tania in 2001. We were introduced to each other by a mutual friend who is from Calcutta and who I met in Goa. I was in Goa in 2000. He suggested I talk to Tania and I got to meet her in Delhi and we became friends. We were friends for seven years and then we decided to get married.
That is where your Calcutta connect began?
Yes. She is from Calcutta, she was born and brought up here and then she went to Delhi. She was in Delhi for the last 10 years before we got married.
So how often do you come to Calcutta?
I come to Calcutta pretty much every year. Usually for a shorter time but this time it was longer because she wanted to spend some time with her parents.
What do you like about the city? Any particular favourite?
First of all, driving around Calcutta, I went to the races on January 1... I’ve been to the Victoria Memorial... it is a really charming city. I mean it has got some of the most beautiful architecture, almost Londonesque architecture. But unfortunately, all the buildings despite being so beautiful are in a state of disrepair.
What stands out in terms of Calcutta is obviously the people. They are so friendly, warm. They are all very intellectual, everybody loves to have a debate and have a point of view and an opinion.
I really like the whole sporty club culture of Calcutta — Tollygunge Club, RCGC. It has got a lot of history associated with it. Especially British history. I am told that the Royal Calcutta Golf Club is the second oldest golf club in the world.
It has got a lot of history associated with it....it has got a lot of potential. Unfortunately it was neglected for almost 30 years and so now hopefully the seeds of entrepreneurship and the spirit of entrepreneurship is back in Calcutta.
What about the food?
Oh I love the food here. I mean all the places that have kathi rolls, kebabs, the local fish. So far I have eaten at ITC Sonar Pan Asian, Tolly club... I eat there all the time, I play a lot of golf. Yesterday (Tuesday) we had some biryani from Shiraz. Last time, I had Bengali food at Kewpie’s.
So you take time out to play golf here?
Oh, I go to Tolly and RCGC to play golf and tennis. I love the outdoors and the weather has been brilliant for golf and tennis.
What kind of music do you listen to?
On my Blackberry I’ve got everything from Coldplay to Lady Gaga to Christina Perri, mostly pop music. My favourite radio station here is 107.8. So I listen to everything that is contemporary. I used to listen to a lot of music from the ’60s — CCR, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, stuff that you do when you are in college. I spent two years in BITS Pilani, so I got a lot of influence from my college days as well.
The Internet apart, what is Sabeer Bhatia passionate about?
I love sports. I love the outdoors. In the winter months I love to go skiing. I play tennis on a regular basis, golf at least once a week. I love to go hiking up in the hills, in the mountains. In San Francisco there are a lot of hiking trails, something like 20,000 hiking trails.
Is there anyone apart from Steve Jobs who has inspired you?
Well there are two people actually. Steve Jobs is for my professional life. What he has done, how he came back and saved Apple and resurrected it from almost bankruptcy to become one of the most valuable companies not just in America but in the whole world.
In my personal life I am really influenced by Gandhi, his philosophy of non-violence and the belief that the truth will always win. His book The Story of My Experiments With Truth was truly inspirational to me. His thought process was such that even after hundreds of years people will come to the realisation that that was the right way to do things.
In that sense I’m quite an admirer of Anna Hazare. We need a cleansing over here because otherwise I think we are living in a hypocritical society. And as more and more people come out and speak up against corruption and really stop it... that is something that is really holding India back.
We relax browsing the Internet, your job is the Internet. How do you unwind?
Tennis. I come home and I play tennis. Ever since we got married Tania and I have been going to the movies. She loves to watch Hindi movies. I was never very much of a Hindi movie buff before but now we go and watch movies. I love to listen to music. But sporting activity is what keeps me going. We also go wine tasting, especially since we are so close to the Napa Valley.
Your Calcutta connect has now gone beyond the personal. What has it been like to work with the ruling party?
It was excellent. I am glad, obviously, that Trinamul won. It’s a very progressive party. The leader is an honest, sincere leader of the state who genuinely wants progress to occur in this state. They are working very hard to attract different companies, specially in hi-tech and IT to come and revive the industry in West Bengal.
West Bengal certainly has the potential. It was great working with them, I am glad we are working together to introduce a state-wide SMS-based communication system for better communication between the government and its people and between government institutions. I have been very encouraged not just by the chief minister, whom I met yesterday (Tuesday), but also by Partha Chatterjee, the IT minister.
How was it working with Derek ’Brien?
Oh great! Derek is like one of us you know. I am glad we have got more well-educated politicians in the Rajya Sabha and representing both the state and the country. We spoke together at Infocom [the IT conference and exhibition organised by Businessworld, an ABP Group publication]. He is a smart individual genuinely working towards the improvement of the state.
Any new ideas for the party’s Net presence?
We are looking at other opportunities such as helping the state government to embrace cloud computing in a big way. It will dramatically reduce the cost, improve scalability. So we’ve got a couple of proposals in with the government for that.
What are your thoughts on Brand Bengal? Any suggestions for building the brand?
The opportunities for Brand Bengal are fabulous, because whenever you are beginning from a small base you always have room to grow. We have seen time and time again a good leader, a strong leader and a visionary leader can make a big difference. Take the case of the state of Bihar. Who would have thought, you know, people had given it up as a lost cause. Today Bihar is one of the fastest growing states. So if there are well meaning, able-bodied, visionary leaders, and I believe we have one in West Bengal, the future is very bright for the state....
I would advise them to really encourage entrepreneurship because that’s the engine that drives economic growth. It’s to help the small, little guys, whether they are in IT or in manufacturing or in retail to come to West Bengal and to encourage entrepreneurship among the people of West Bengal themselves... with small loans, digital literacy and training.
We saw a parallel between the virtual election campaigns of the Trinamul and Obama. Is that where election campaigns are heading?
I think so. It’s a quest towards becoming more open and the more open the governments are, the parties are, the more successful they will be. And I think adoption of technology for the purpose of electioneering, for reaching out, spreading the message of the party, for the government, is the way.
Today, Obama is constantly on Twitter. Everybody gets to know his thoughts. He may not be tweeting himself but he has got a department that’s taking care of it. Most of people’s opinions today are being debated out in public and with the likes of Twitter and Facebook, now Jaxtr, every individual has the option of voicing their opinion publicly.
Click, click..
Bollywood or Hollywood: Fifty-fifty
Apple or Microsoft: Apple
iPad or Kindle: iPad
Pune, Bangalore, Calcutta or California: California
Cricket or football: Both but tennis better
Favourite cricketer: Dhoni
Favourite footballer: Messi
Favourite club: Barcelona
Favourite tennis player: Federer
Favourite author: No particular author. Right now reading Michael Lewis’s The Big Short Favourite holiday destination: Whistler, Canada
Most comfortable in: Jeans
Likes: Golf, good food, great wine
Dislikes: Messy, lazy people, people who are not genuine
Favourite actor: Anthony Hopkins, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Aamir Khan
Favourite actress: Katrina Kaif, Jodie Foster
Favourite search engine: Google!
Most active on: Linkedin and email
Favourite tech tool: Golf GPS application on my phone
Is Sabeer Bhatia your role model? Tell us at t2@abp.in
