Quizmaster and Trinamul MP Derek ’Brien put Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia in the hot seat during Infocom 2011, the IT conference and exhibition organised by Businessworld, an ABP Group publication. t2 tuned in.

Sabeer, can you tell us how it all started?

We started Hotmail with the aim of making e-mail accessible on the web. It was called Hotmail because it was made using html technology. It has been crazy ever since we launched it and now there are over 700 million subscribers of Hotmail.

According to David Ogilvy, a person cannot generate more than one great idea in his entire life. Would you please comment on that, since you’ve just launched another great idea?

Our latest innovation is Jackster.com, which we launched a few weeks back. This technology enables people to send text messages from the cellphone through the Internet, absolutely free anywhere in the world. There are over one billion cellphones in the world today that are data-enabled and this service can be accessed from any such phone.

How do you think technology can help in better governance in India?

In my opinion, there should be an interface for communication between the people and government officials. There could be a system where people can send an SMS to a government official about a certain issue that could be addressed. With so much of cloud technology taking place, a virtual platform could be created for interacting with these officials, like leaving voice mails... a better option than text messages.

What is your opinion about Steve Jobs?

My inspiration for becoming an entrepreneur came from Jobs when I was working for some time at Apple Computers. He would come for training sessions and I would wonder how this man managed to do something so big. I decided to put my PhD on hold and become an entrepreneur.

What is your take on entrepreneurship and failure?

Those who do want to become entrepreneurs must also be able to cope with failure. Most of Silicon Valley in the US is based on failure. One out of 19 new ventures will succeed but that does not deter anyone from taking risks. People in Silicon Valley invest their hard work in shares and equities and make good money in the long run.

There is a bigger issue that lurks over social networking sites. When there is absolute freedom to post whatever you want, what happens when religious or political sentiments are hurt? I am not talking about censorship, but what about these issues?

Censorship in social media is a bad idea. It impinges on democracy and the right to express oneself. If it’s illegal, that’s a different issue. These are not private networks and any comment is meant for public broadcast. At the same time, social media does not endorse anything. People are free to react and comment on anything that is objectionable. So I think social networks have their own methods of policing and eliminating what is unacceptable.

Dalia Mukherjee

Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha