Sip And Surf

Manjit Lall, a 24-year-old computer salesman, works for a large distributor of IBM products based in Singapore. On a sales call in Delhi last month, Lall nearly missed bagging the biggest deal of his career. A Delhi-based pharmaceutical company had promised to order 30 IBM Thinkpad laptops and 120 desktops, provided he could undertake to offer certain service and maintenance guarantees for two years and also offer at least a 30 per cent discount on the price. Lall ran back to his hotel room and fired up his computer, plugged it into the telephone socket and dialled his Singapore office knowing the clearances would come through - and the sale would be as good as clinched. But then he discovered his fax modem card was acting up. Not a hardware specialist himself, Lall panicked. He called up the hotel desk for assistance and the pretty assistant at the Maurya Sheraton suggested a way out: Why doesn't h e try using the hotel's cyber club instead?

 

The Maurya Cyber Club, when started in September 1995, did not exactly have the likes of Lall in mind. Set up at an expense of nearly $ 35,000, with four Silicon Graphics machines, and a leased link to VSNL's Internet node, the Internet surfing cafe of the hotel was more by way of an additional service offer to its guests who wanted to spend some time leisurely sipping coffee or a beer and surfing the Internet. For some like Manjit Lall who had to dole out some Rs 1000 in e-mail expenses to the hotel, but bagged the order before the day was out, the cyber cafe was a saviour.

Cybercafes were launched with much fanfare almost two years back, and the Maurya was one of the first alongwith the Leela Kempinsky Cybercafe in Mumbai. Once the initial enthusiasm waned, the Leela cybercafe saw little attendance; but the Mauyra Cybercafe survived. Now, all metros in India have at least one Cybercafe while many smaller towns and state capitals are all set to have their own surfing centres.

The Maurya Internet club is not just restricted to guests anymore. Just walk in, and surf the Internet for Rs 800 per hour or send e-mail for an additional Rs 250. Guests have to pay just Rs 250 for an hour of surfing the Net - and Rs 150 for sending e-mail. Those seem to be the charges in most high-profile cybercafes now. Those may seem high, but the primary idea behind a cyber cafe is to cater to occasional users like a family out for an evening, with the kids munching wafers and pastries, and sipping cocoa and browsing for games in the cafe.

The experience has not been that easy though, for the Leela Cybercafe. Using Apple Macs, the service was primarily intended to connect to the Apple-exclusive service, E-world. Last year, when E-world closed shop, the main attraction vanished. "Positioning of the cafe as a business centre was also a problem," admits Pritish Nandy, media personality and internet buff, who was actively involved with the project. After temporarily downing shutters, the Cybercafe is all set to come back with a greater focus on entertainment, as part of the Cyclone Entertainment Zone.

Net-stacy - a small cyber cafe in Delhi's posh Greater Kailash area - is trying to cater to a different segment. Though a small set up with four computers and a dial-up link, the cafe is targeted at school children and the general masses. Net-Stacy, which started a year ago, charges four rupees per minute for surfing the Net. This translates to about Rs 240 per hour. "We also offer to collect mail for the regular users," says Rohit Juneja, proprietor of the cafe. "Everybody should be able to use the Internet," he says. "And for this you need places of public access," he adds.

Mumbai too has its cosy little cyberclub, the Exploria, promoted by Interactive Technologies Pvt Ltd. And it offers more than internet unlike the Leela Cybercafe. Explains Dhiren of Interactive Tech, "Exploria has its own CD surfing and CD take-home schemes. We all want our children to leave TV behind and come back to something informative."

From corporate bigwigs to toddlers, any one can avail of Exploria's benefits, says Dhiren. For internet surfers the annual fee is Rs 5000 and Rs 2750 , for a half-yearly scheme.

With Cybercafe pulling down shutters, Exploria expects to draw in the multimedia crazy lot of Mumbai to its premises. The long list of CD titles at Exploria shows a deliberate inclination towards kids.

Operating from Ahmedabad and based at Sion, Mumbai, Exploria offers services through more than three counters. Hiten Shah of Miracle Computers in Borivli which is one of their sales counters, is optimistic. With such a long list of CD titles to offer, Exploria foresees success. Children would come to the cafe for the games and CDs, but soon they would get interested in the Net too, feel current users.

Cybercafe, Bangalore was launched last November at by the Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company Pvt Ltd. at an expense of Rs 1. It expects to recover about Rs 60 to 65 lakhs in the first year of operation.

Here, a person coming to this cafe must buy a cup of filter coffee, and to access the Net for half an hour. There are two rates here, at Rs 60 per cup where you use one of the then machines in the ground floor, or go for the more exclusive one at Rs 100 per cup, and surf on fast machines with large 20" monitors.

The cafe uses 64 kbps leased lines for their machines. Generators compensate for the frequent power cuts, and nine systems personnel guide the user and maintenance the systems.

About 600 customers visit this place out of which about 45% go to the systems. Most still prefer to have their coffee rather than surf, say its owner V T Narendra. "This is an area where coffee consumption is the highest in India. And they are all connoisseurs. So we offer seven different flavours of pure filter coffee - from Italian, Indian (4 kinds), Brazilian and Gautemalan. "Internet awareness is picking up in Bangalore, so this is the ideal place for the Cybercafe." It is said that it is the coffee that gets the people here and the internet that holds them down.

During the budget alone (which was offered live on the Net at different web sites), there were about five people per system viewing it. Two surfer-packed hours can earn the cafe around just Rs 4000.

Summer internet camps are also being organised at the Bangalore cafe starting this April. Rates will be Rs 900 for two weeks at two hours per day.

Location too has helped the Bangalore cybercafe. It is located near a number of hotels, offices and schools and colleges. The crowd varies depending upon the time - afternoons see teenagers milling around, while at lunch time executives and at night, family crowds visit the cafe.

After the initial slow start, business looks all set to bloom. Many have already approached Narendra for franchices. If his plans work out, we will see similar cybercafes in Chennai, Coimbatore, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram.

"It is not just entertainment, though that is the primary idea," says Aslam Shems of Combit advertising. "It is also a new way of life in the Internet era," he says.

Shems himself will be opening four cyber cafes -under the brand NeonX -within this year in different cities of the country. "We will expand this to 16 in the next two years," he says. "There will be no waiter, or menu in the traditional sense. It will be on-line. You walk in, log on, check the menu, click on what you want to order and continue to surf. The bill will be presented to you at the end of your time on the screen, for which you can pay on-line," he paints a picture of the future cyber cafe.

The real benefits the cybercafe culture should trickle down to the common Indian, who is still unable to afford an Internet connection but want to surf the infohighway. "For cybercafes to become really popular, they should become a mass-user business," says Anindo Ghosh, of Media Web, an Internet expert who had helped set up the Maurya club. We are still not there that, but all indications point to a time when anyone will be able to surf the Net at minimal cost.

Gajendra Upadhyay in

Delhi, Kanchana in Bangalore and R Sanjeevkumar in Mumbai.