Life After IPO - I

Apologies for the gap in posting. We just returned from a long trip overseas meeting investors and updating them on our financial results for the previous year.

Barnstorming twelve cities in five countries across three continents in 15 days has left me clueless about which time zone I am in and consequentially am wide awake as I write this blog at 3AM.

I think I am one of those people who get badly affected by jet lag. Frankly I don’t know how people do this for a living. I had thought life was supposed to get simpler after the IPO process was over.

Although I must admit we got into this with our eyes open. People older and wiser than I had told me before the IPO that a lot of time and effort would have to go into investor relations on an ongoing basis, we would be under a very public microscope, we would be riding a tiger etc. etc.

Well actually the benefits of doing a successful IPO far outweigh the occupational hazards. Going public has put us in a different strategic space altogether. We’ve got cash in the bank, our stock has currency, employees have seen the value of the ESOP, we are finding it easier to attract quality talent, the VC investors got liquidity, we can take larger bets, we are insulated against a downturn, it’s great for branding, we have unlocked shareholder value and so on.

On the flip side – our numbers are public. Competition knows more about us than we about them.

We were happy with our results and also with the numbers Rediff posted. I called Joy to compare notes and SMSed Ajit to congratulate him. The Rediff turnaround is great for the industry as it validates the confidence that investors have placed once again on the Internet in India. For a company that once traded at under a dollar on NASDAQ, the bounce back makes a great story.

The best part about meeting investors is that the smart ones challenge you with their questions and thereby force you to think in strategic directions that you otherwise may not have. At least some of our good ideas in the last year have come about as an unintended consequence of probing by investors.

One area that every investor we met on this trip asked us about was the penetration of the Internet in India. So how many internet users does India have actually? Is the estimate for usage in Cyber Café’s real? Why do estimates of Internet users in India vary so much? What’s happening on the Broadband front? What about wireless? How fast will Internet penetration grow? What’s happening on usage on the mobile? How many years behind China is India on penetration? How low will PC prices go? When will usage go beyond the big cities in a meaningful manner? How significant is home usage?

I wish I knew the answers.