Rediff.com bags two cyber Oscars
Economic Times, August 28, 1998

When The Economic Times and Microland decided on Oscars for Cyber India, the biggest constraint they faced was time. What came in handy, appropriately enough, was E-mail.

As Mr Pradeep Kar, managing director, Microland, told the audience on Wednesday, the judges were invited from across the globe and sent their confirmations, all via the Net.

Ditto for co-sponsor Computer Associates. Managing director (India & Saarc) Ian Hughes e-mailed his yes in less than 24 hours, while star invitee Sabeer Bhatia, founder and CEO of Hotmail, rejigged his itinerary and travelled 32 hours non-stop to be present for the awards ceremony.

In the end, it turned out to be well worth the effort. Giant videoscreens and foot-tapping items by TimesMusic artistes Jean Michael and Sanjay Maroo provided a perfect foil for this trend-setting awards for cyber-excellence. And as Bhatia bravely fought off jet-leg, the crème de la crème of India.com were showcased and lauded.

In a sense, the award was an ode to the future - to laud pioneering efforts in a medium that will change the face of commerce and business in the next millennium. Besides Bhatia, the other star of the evening was no doubt Rediff Communication.

It bagged two out of the five awards for its site Rediff.com - the Most Popular Website and the Best Designed Website of the year.

The Most popular Website award was given away by Mr Arun Arora, CEO, the Economic Times and Mr Kar. And the Best Designed Website award - for which Rediff beat nine nominees, including Air-India, Reliance, National Stock Exchange, Colours of India, Timex and CRY - was presented by Mr Hughes.

The Most Useful Site of The Year award - given away by Mr Bhatia - went to HomeIndia.com. The site belongs to Multinet Infosys Private Limited which offers Web-based business tools, intranet consulting and Web site development services. The site offers free postal service for NRIs, too.

The Cyber Corporate of The Year award was a well-deserved tie. Presented by Mr Hughes, it went jointly to ICICI Bank and NSE. The young Mr Malay Nagda was chosen Best Web Designer of the Year and received his trophy and citation from Mr Arora and Mr Kar.

Earlier, Mr Bhatia had a few pointers for the audience in his keynote address. Fresh from his $400 million deal with Microsoft for Hotmail, he cited two criteria on which the future success of Web ventures will be pegged: "On customer focus and the site download time."

Timely advice. And well-taken, hopefull.