Webmaster's masterstroke
Unlike many other B-school products, who start their own ventures, make it a success and then sell it off for a tidy profit, Vivek Pahwa, a graduate from Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business, harboured an entrepreneurial dream and lived it.
Social networking is all the rage now, but Pahwa and three of his buddies — Ankur Warikoo, Umang Kumar and Bharanidharan Viswanathan — had the foresight to enter the networking segment three years ago by launching www.desimartini.com, an Indian social networking site.
“We started with a social networking site that was much more than what Orkut or any other site was,” says 28-year-old Pahwa.
Soon, desimartini.com swelled to about 300,000 registered users and in 2007, it was bought over by HT Media for a little less than $10 million (around Rs 480 lakh). Pahwa says, “It was the right decision to go for the deal.”
It was after this deal that Accentium, the company that Pahwa now heads, was floated. Since then, the serial entrepreneur has launched several other ventures.
Pahwa’s next venture was www.secondshaadi.com, a matrimonial portal for second marriages. According to Pahwa, secondshaadi.com is the number one website for remarriages and has a registered user base of 1.2 million. Although registration to the site is free, in order to connect with any other user, there is a subscription charge. There are three subscription models — lifetime membership (Rs 3,000), three-month membership (Rs 2,000) and a 15-day pack (Rs 1,000).
Last year, Accentium added two more web portals, www.gaadi.com and www.AdLift.com. While gaadi.com is an automobile portal, www.AdLift.com is a digital marketing and branding solution plus services provider. Though gaadi.com is still trying to find its feet, Pahwa is confident that it’s a space whose potential is yet to be exploited. Accentium, which recorded a turnover of Rs 2 crore last year, has set itself a target of Rs 10 crore by 2010. Accentium also has a stake in a portal called www.sitagita.com, which focuses on women’s brands in various spaces like beauty, fashion etc.
Coming from a business family, entrepreneurial spirit seems natural for Pahwa, who is already on his way to launch more web ventures, including one that will focus on helping students find information on colleges and universities.