Abhishek Rungta

Internet services were made available to citizens of India on 15th August 1995. I entered college in 1996, and someone told me that it is cheaper to use email over ISD (international calling) to stay in touch with friends who went to the USA.

Email was not at all common in those days. After a little bit of asking around I found a service provider who would allow me to send an email at a cost was Rs. 70 per email 😂

My inquisitiveness led me to understand that there is zero marginal cost for sending an email. And this looked like a good business model to copy.

Soon, I discovered a few Bulletin Board Services (BBS), Email Service Providers  (yes, we used to have those dial-in email service providers!), and of course the mighty Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) who can provide the connectivity to start my “Email Service” business, where people can walk in and send emails to their friends, family and business associates around the world.

Soon, I figured out that I needed to buy a modem to connect my PC to telephone, and then to the servers of these email services. I took money from my father to buy a modem (a 9.6 Kbps modem used to cost Rs. 20K). And then subscribed to an Email Service Provider – as BBS were quite casual, and VSNL was very intimidating.

The company which provided us the email service sent us their expert who configured the modem, and I was up and running. But before I could get a single user to walk in and make my first penny, the Email Service Provider’s server got hacked, and the company folded up!

And with this, my first business folded up, leaving me with my most expensive investment – a modem, which I didn’t even knew how to configure.

I could not get my head around this whole mess for quite some time, but this got me to learn about the mystic world of Internet. The more I learnt, the more I was drawn into it. In no time, I was into it – and the banking sales job that I was doing at that time looked primitive and boring.

This whole experience made me decide and desire one thing – “I want a career in Internet technology, as it connects the world, networks, and people – and the power of this connectivity will grow exponentially, and the possibilities are endless”

The same modem + learning + desire to explore made me look into corners of Internet, learn, and start INT. a year later in 1997.

I don’t have a lesson from this experience – I was too young and naive to reflect and extract lessons. But, one thing got clear to me – “Internet is a goldmine”, and “Everything happens for a reason”.

This holds true even today – after 27 years. I was fortunate to get this realisation early on, and decided upon a career that was never a job for earning livelihood for me.