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The write idea

Priya Ganapati

From Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, to Austin, Texas, it has been a very predictable journey for Satya Prabhakar, 35, MS in computer science and MBA in international finance, University of Florida.

Son of a mathematics professor in Machilipatnam, Satya Prabhakar, like many other engineering graduates in India, wanted, more than anything else, to go to America.

"At that time, the lure of going to the US was more than that of the calls I got from the four IIMs [Indian Institutes of Management]. I did not opt for an MS because I wanted to study technology. I think it was more influenced by the desire to go to America," admits Prabhakar disarmingly.

Two years ago, when he decided to start his own dotcom, it was again a walk down a well-traversed road. In 1998, when dotcoms had begun to mushroom on the Internet, Prabhakar decided to set up his own venture: sulekha.com

"A friend, Arun Kumar, came up with the name in eight seconds flat when I told him I wanted a name for my site. Sulekha means 'good writing'," recalls Prabhakar.

From a tiny Web site that owes it origins to an email group started by ex-IIM Calcutta guys, sulekha.com (http://www.sulekha.com) today gets about one million hits a month.

Sulekha.com has content entirely contributed by readers. From news reports and movie reviews to columns on the latest political happenings, the readers decide what they want and how they want it. With a million hits a month, a readership that extends across 45 countries, and content that is completely outsourced from its readers for no charge at all, the Web site has one of the biggest creative and vibrant online community of Indians coming back to it.

Prabhakar explains, "When you let people talk, you hold them back into the community. The amount of stickiness that we have for our site is extraordinary. We don't pay users any money, they write for us because they love to write. They write because they love the exposure and the feedback they get."

It is this desire to write and share ideas that sulekha.com has exploited beautifully. The more than 45,000 pages of content on the site have been generated entirely by readers.

Unlike most online sites that dish out fare written by a few journalists for their readers, Sulekha believes in readers deciding what they want to read and also gives them the chance to write it. For example, the latest movie reviews are posted by readers. And those who don't agree with the reviews can write and put up their own feedback.

In the favourites section, Sulekha's visitors can recommend great books, movies, Web sites, recipes and travel spots.

"The site is not so much about writing. It is about people wanting to share. I created the site so that a community of Indians could share their experiences. Every article on the site has a form that allows for instantaneous feedback," says Prabhakar.

Prabhakar began his career as an engineer with Honeywell Corporation in 1989. Six years later he moved to a telecom company to lead a team to manage its foray into e-commerce. With nearly 10 years of strategic, technical and managerial experience in the areas of ideation, Web media property management, electronic commerce, databases and interactive multimedia, he resolved to strike out on his own.

Along with his wife, Sangeeta Kshettry, whom he met when she was doing the same MBA programme at the University of Florida, Prabhakar decided to join the dotcom bandwagon.

He recalls how it all began. "I was part of an email group called 'Dakghar', in which non-professional writers used to share articles with others. I realised that most of the articles in the email group were written very well. But those stories would be lost to others once they were read. I felt that it would be nice to put all those articles up on a Web site where many others could contribute too."

Sulekha.com boasts of over 550 contributors from nearly 45 countries and diverse backgrounds -- like a Russian immigrant who teaches at Harvard and writes a column on Urdu poetry for the site, a librarian from Stanford University, and even an IAS officer from India.

Despite the huge number of contributors, the editorial board is a team of just six persons around the world who co-ordinate and edit all the articles mailed to the site.

"We do a little bit of editing. But we don't do such a good job. After all it is an amateur effort," he says shyly.

Sulekha's USP is that it is an entirely user-driven site. But that is also its biggest vulnerability. Content on the Internet suffers from the problem of credibility. In a medium where just about anybody can put up their own Web site, how does Sulekha ensure the quality of the news and articles it publishes? And how does it monitor the credibility of information on the site if any reader is free to post his views?

"The Internet is a fundamentally different medium. It is instantaneous. I did not want people to send information to me so that, like a king sitting on a throne, I could decide what goes and what doesn't. I want to encourage people to react," argues Prabhakar.

And react, people do. But certain controversies bring out the worst of those reactions. At Sulekha, readers' views are posted immediately. So where is the line between freedom of speech and libel drawn?

Prabhakar says, "Everybody draws a line. There is nothing like absolute free speech. You have to decide for yourself where you want to draw your line. If someone is persistently abusive, we send an email to warn them. If it continues, we put that IP address on a hit list and try to block the user from that address. But ultimately it is the community which monitors itself."

The Sulekha team does try to ensure consistency and quality. The ratings and reviews section reflects the overall response of the community. The columns on the site are by writers who have proved consistent and articulate in their views.

Prabhakar agrees there is no control over the quality of material in the section called 'coffeehouse discussions', a discussion board where Sulekha visitors chat on and debate a variety of issues.

"We do not want to produce content. We want the community to do it and take responsibility for it," he emphasises.

But for the team of sulekha.com, the battle is yet to begin. Prabhakar concedes, "The easiest part has been to attract people to contribute to the site. You will be amazed to know the awesome amount of intellectual power that we Indians have, probably better than any [other community] in the world. Of course, that is my unscientific opinion. But come to the site and you will see that it is great. We never have had to ask or pay people for articles."

The biggest challenge before the site is scalability. In terms of hits, the site is growing at the rate of cent per cent every three months. Which means it will probably get about 12 million hits by the end of this year.

Prabhakar says, "Till now, most of our work is essentially handling email and replying to it. We always have had this policy of answering the mails in a day. About 50 to 60 per cent of our time is spent on it."

The obvious answer to the problem would lie in having a bigger and more organised effort at the backend. And Prabhakar intends to do exactly that. He plans to soon hire a team and get the task done on a more professional basis.

He is already talking to a few venture capitalists about that. But all he is willing is to reveal now is, "I am exploring various options for venture capital."

Prabhakar plans to introduce multimedia content on the site too. The site already offers readers the facility to send in photographs. Sulekha.com now plans to convert the photo album compiled with photographs contributed by users into e-cards.

"Some of the photographs we get are stunning. I felt that instead of sending e-cards from the site with xyz picture on it, why not convert the beautiful photographs we have into cards?"

Today the overheads for the site are quite low and Prabhakar and his wife are able to manage the costs. "Advertising pays for the cost of the ISP. Beyond that we really don't have anything more to pay off," he smiles.

But once the site scales up and venture capitalists step in, Prabhakar estimates they will break even in 2003.

He explains their revenue model. "We plan to make money in three ways. First is through ads and sponsorships. Second, we hope to have a highly attractive community of Indians as our readers. Now, how do Indians choose what to buy or what not to buy? Simple. We ask others. We already have the community in place, so when we tie up with affiliates for e-commerce we can send traffic to their sites and get a part of the revenue generated from that traffic.

"Third, we hope that finally we will be sitting on valuable member-contributed content which can be sold for a price. The revenue from that will be shared with the contributors."

Despite the hype and hoopla, Prabhakar has not chucked his job. Currently on "leave of absence", he says, "I come from a small town in Andhra Pradesh. I know it is an irrational fear, but it is not so easy to give up the feeling of job security. My wife quit her job 18 months ago. But I keep thinking, what if this idea doesn't work out?"

He adds, "I haven't yet told my parents I am considering something like giving up my job. I don't know how they will react!"

With refreshing candour, Prabhakar admits, "The site was primarily driven by my need to write. I never really saw it as an opportunity to do something big till about four to six months ago. If you notice, the dotcom fever caught on only in early 1999. But then I would be misleading you if I said we are doing the site only for the love of it."

Next: US will face shortfall of 850,000 IT workers over next year

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