IT@TT - Online

NetMagic Solutions is a world-class data centre in Mumbai. Sharad Sanghi, Managing Director, discusses with Amrita Ghosh of IT@TT the need for, and future of Internet infrastructure in India. Excerpts...

IT@TT: Why did you feel India needed a data centre?

SS: India lacked world class facilities (like Exodus) that could facilitate outsourcing of mission critical sites. We saw an opportunity to provide value added Internet services.

IT@TT: I believe you started NetMagic 5 years ago. How did it suddenly attract funding of from the co-founders of Exodus?

SS: I returned to India 5 years back. NetMagic was started on 31 July 1998. We met Jagadeesh and Chandra in late 1998 and presented them the first version of the current business plan. However, that version of the plan did not truly leverage our skills. Since at that time there were several governmental restrictions (international gateways hadn't opened out, private ISPs had only just begun, etc), they asked us to re-work the plan.

We started providing consultation to service providers. In parallel we refined our plan knowing to include a world class facility as a neutral player to exchange traffic, leveraging our skills to address these shortcomings. In November 1999, we presented a modified plan to Jagadeesh and he agreed to fund it in Jan 2000.

IT@TT: Are there other venture capitalists?

SS: Our lead investor is eVentures India. We also have investment from Global Technology Ventures, Bangalore. Apart from BV Jagadeesh and KB Chandrashekar there are other angel investors including Kanwal Rekhi.

We have several strategic business partners including Cisco, Compaq, SUN and Tivoli. We have not out sourced our operations to anyone since we believe that is the core of our business.

IT@TT: Could you tell us more about the services you offer?

SS: We offer managed hosting services, which includes monitoring services, performance tuning, load balancing, managed firewalls, security audits, storage solutions including data backups. The other services are outsourcing of corporate and portal email, providing VPN solutions to interconnect corporate offices and providing dial VPNs to facilitate tele commuting and extranets.

We also offer virtual ISP services or "wholesale dial" services, where we can out source the entire remote access infrastructure for an ISP or a corporate. We do not retail. If an ISP would like to setup an asset less service, we can facilitate the entire back end infrastructure. This improves their time to market, and also provides them a scalable infrastructure.

IT@TT: There are other companies operating along similar lines. So how do you plan to differentiate yourself from your competitors?

SS: The differentiation is in our technology skills. And our experience in scaling Internet services worldwide. We are also a completely focussed and efficient organization with the ability to respond to customers quickly. We have within our organization experience in running large networks in the US, in Asia and in India. We have been able to customize services to address the needs of customers in India.

IT@TT: Where is your Indian Data Centre located? Was there any specific reason to choose this location?

SS: Currently we have one data centre in Mumbai. We plan to expand to Delhi and Bangalore. The reason for Bombay being first include the fact I live in Mumbai. The city also has two international fibre landing points. The VSNL backbone has a hub-and-spoke architecture with the hubs in Mumbai ensuring the best connectivity domestically. Mumbai also has the best power infrastructure. And is probably our biggest customer base in India.

IT@TT: Are you limiting your operations to India? Do you have any expansion plans?

SS: No, not at all. We plan to make India our base. However, we'll provide services across the world once we have proven our model in India. And once the bandwidth to the rest of the world becomes abundant and affordable, thereby giving us a tremendous cost advantage.

IT@TT: You worked on NSFNet; the backbone of the Internet. Could you tell us more?

SS: I attribute a lot of what we have achieved to the experience in running the NSF backbone. From routing technology to providing world class customer service and operating scalable networks to bandwidth provisioning were all key elements in providing the kind of services that we provide today. Not to forget the credibility and contacts that I developed while being part of the NSFNet backbone engineering team.

IT@TT: Has NetMagic accumulated any cornerstones of success?

SS: We have the privilege to host several customers. Some of our prominent customers include Srkworld.com, Indiainfoline.com, Hungama.com, Sugartrade.com, Netpilgrim.com, Planetcustomer.com, Indiaparenting.com, Orange,and Makemytrip.com.

IT@TT: How do you rate the present market scenario and what changes do you expect?

SS: Internet infrastructure in India has come a long way since it was launched commercially in August 1995. However, compared to the US, we're several years behind. In fact, in the early nineties, we worked on speeds (45Mbps) that India saw in the year 2000. Today the total bandwidth emanating out of India, is a fraction of the bandwidth used by Exodus alone.

I see several improvements with more players laying fibre and also setting up international fibre landing points. I believe that bandwidth will be abundant and affordable by mid-end 2002.

IT@TT: Do you get time to surf the Net? Could you share with our readers some of your favorite websites?

SS: I do occasionally browse the Net. Some of my favourites include www.quote.yahoo.com to look at the US stock market, which I still follow, since it sets the trends worldwide. I also go to www.cricinfo.com to check cricket scores, because I don't get time to watch one-days anymore. I also visit www.espn.go.com to check basketball and American football scores.

Interviewed By Amrita Ghosh
[email protected]

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