His first entrepreneurial venture was a tele-medicine start-up, Innova Health Systems, he co-founded with Vardhan in 2000, much before second generation Internet services took shape. Next in line on Indyarocks is localized content with features in regional languages.
NAVIN MITTAL, 33
Business head, Fropper.com
Started: April 2003
Users: 2,400,000
He was the first off the block in drawing users on to the Indian social networking space by launching Fropper.com in April 2003.
Early entrant: Fropper’s Navin Mittal says it’s all about having a good business model
Back then, the site mimicked the traditional look sported by older social networking sites such as orkut. It was a place where users logged on to make new friends and chat. But, as new-look Indian social networking sites innovate furiously in a bid to retain the attention of restless youngsters, Fropper has had to learn new tricks, too.
“Being comfortable with English is not a requirement to be on a social networking site. Regional language blogs will soon appear on Fropper,” says Mittal. He claims the site has about 2.4 million registered members and racks up 20–30 million page views per month. Going desi in a bid to draw in users from smaller towns and cities is the next stage of growth charted out by Mittal.
“Our USP is the citizen of India. Fropper is all about understanding Indian users and developing offerings for them,” says Mittal, who feels Indians are conservative by nature, and moderation of user groups to weed out abuse, spam and pornographic content is crucial.
Fropper has also benefited by being part of the People Group that has built successful Internet services such as shaadi.com, a matrimony portal that raised venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital. The site has focused on attracting big-ticket advertising and also earns subscription revenue from users who list their profiles on the relationships section. “We do not believe in burning money, there has to be a business model in place,” says Mittal, who spends close to 12 hours a day on the computer tracking user behaviour.
Earlier, it was email and chats that Indians logged online for but today, it is a lot more participatory, with users seeking out communities they can be a part of. “Earlier, one chatted with a person to get to know them, now you can read their blogs, listen to them discuss various topics. It improves a relationship,” says Mittal.