Asia Catches .Com Fever

The shy, bespectacled Jain set up IndiaWorld the same year with money saved from his job. "I wrote my business plan on Post-it notes," he jokes. The site was built almost entirely using public domain software, such as the free Linux platform, and it was maintained on widely available Apache servers. "In our entire five years, we bought only three software packages--Windows, Office and Photoshop," he boasts.

The first two years were spent persuading advertisers to take a flyer. Typically, IndiaWorld managed to grow handily in terms of hits while its profit last year was an imperceptible $58,000. But IndiaWorld earned buzz, and Jain suddenly found himself courted by angel investors, foreign venture capitalists and banks eager to lend. In the end, he decided to get out of the game entirely by selling to Satyam Infoway, one of the largest Internet service providers in India, which doesn't allow foreign competition in the field. "We already have a substantial audience in India," says chief executive R. Ramaraj, "and with IndiaWorld, we have acquired an India-interest audience globally."

Satyam Infoway now claims 30 million page views a month, and its share price has doubled since the IndiaWorld purchase. The deal helped kick off an Internet frenzy among Indian entrepreneurs and financiers, which has been fanned by New Delhi's public commitment to develop India's information-technology sector. Dotcoms are sprouting across the country, spurred additionally by the entry of big international investment funds. Some Indian-born Silicon Valley programmers and engineers are finally coming home to put their skills to use. But Jain has been happy just to put his money in the bank.

--With reporting by Wendy Kan/Hong Kong and Saritha Rai/Bangalore