"Personally, I was always more comfortable about getting all the information I needed online rather than calling some salesman who could never answer any questions," says Ajit Balakrishnan, who heads up India's largest B2C (business-to-consumer) Internet portal, Rediff.com. "And I thought, hopefully, there are a lot of others out there who think like me."

It would seem that there are. Rediff.com manages to get more than 50 million page views a month, from Indians both in India and around the world. Crammed on the site - which is available in four languages aside from English - is a cornucopia of content.

At its core are India-related news stories and features, written in the breezy style that has become de riguer on the Net. But users can also participate in online interviews and chat shows, manage their stocks, avail of matchmaking services (for both romance and marriage), look up their daily astrological forecast, share recipes, check out job ads, book hotels rooms, airline tickets, train seats and movie tickets and buy books, clothes, flowers, and CDs. Rediff was the first site in India to offer such a spread.

A former advertising man who also briefly ran a software company, Mr Balakrishnan, 49, has big plans for Rediff, which he started with about US$1 million (S$1.7 million) of his own money before the venture capitalists came on board. He believes he has plenty to be excited about - an exploding user base, a rapidly expanding Internet infra structure and easy access to the sort of talent he needs.

Although India has fewer than five million Internet users today, Goldman Sachs projects that by 2003, it will have a total of 70 million, either via dial-up or cable.

"Just about everyone now thinks that if their kids do not have a PC or are not on the Net, they are somehow deprived, because the path to the future lies there," Mr Balakrishnan says over coffee in Rediff's spacious offices in suburban Bombay. "People are inspired by the stories they read about all these new dotcom and software millionaries. So in three to four years, we are looking at a user base that's larger than the UK, far larger than Australia, and probably among the top five in the world."

He's also hopeful about improvements in infrastructure. Whereas until recently, India's state-run international telecom company VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd) monopolised the ISP business around the country, there are now 10 ISPs in Bombay alone." "A year from now there will be 25, he says.

In India today, DSL (digital subscriber lines) and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) services are already available, and at least three players are planning to introduce broadband Net access.

But what most interests Mr Balakrishnan is an ambitious joint venture by India's DoT (Department of Telecoms) and Carnegie Mellon University to link some 25 cities via a WAN (wide area network), which will obviate the need for international calls to use the Net. This in turn will reduce the cost of Net access by about two-thirds, which will bring in tens of millions of additional users hungry for regional language content.

This is where he hopes to really rake it in. Eventually, he reckons that about 70 percent of India's Net users will be accessing non-English content, which he is gearing up to provide.

He has a mixed view of the Indian government's role. On the one hand, he is relieved that it is adopting a largely hands-off approach to the internet. "The government calls people in the IT business for meetings occassionally. We've managed to convince the bureaucrats that the best policy is not to have policy. They agree on the need for benign neglect. We've even told them: don't invoke any nonsense about national security because nobody will believe it."

He is, however, concerned that government companies and institutions are trying to dominate the Internet space. "India's DoT is an octopus. It is a telecoms backbone provider; it wants to be a dial-up provider, a telephone provider, everything. You can't be all things to all people; you certainly can't be a policy watchdog as well as a player because then nobody can monitor you."

Another government company, MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd), which has a monopoly on fixed-line services in Bombay and Delhi, should also be split up and privatised, he says." "It wants to have a monopoly on providing the `pipes' that all ISPs need, as well as being an ISP itself. If that happens, people will not invest in the ISP sector. We have to make sure all these characters are privatised in an aggressive fashion, not as and when they feel like it."

Among other handicaps, Mr Balakrishnan feels India's Internet expansion-at least in e-commerce could be limited by an antiquated payment system: there are barely three million credit card users and no nationally linked credit appraisal system - although debit cards (akin to Nets here) have just been introduced.

Nevertheless, he is convinced that India's strengths in the Internet economy are overwhelming. The first of these is superb software and design capabilities. "That is fundamental. Indian engineers work to international standards in quality, and their productivity is higher. It means that if we are ever in a battle with an international service provider, we won't have to run around looking for technolgies or skills they're all right here."

Equally talented are its writers and graphic designers. Another big plus is capital. There are at least 50 venture capital and private equity funds, each with about US$50 million to invest in India's Internet sector (before the recent global crash in dotcom and tech stocks).

Rediff has itself benefitted from this gold rush, picking up undisclosed millions in investments from Draper International, Intel Corp, Warburg Pincus, Pacific Century Cyber Works, GE Capital and Citibank's private equity arm.

Rediff has yet to turn a profit. While many experts suggest that B2B sites are likely to be the big money-spinners, Mr Balakrishnan intends to maintain his portal's B2C focus. "B2B is the flavour of the year. That's because in the US, the battle for B2C is considered to be over - it has been won by the likes of Yahoo!, Lycos and Amazon.com. But outside the US, the B2C battle is far from over; it is being engaged be it in Europe, China or India."

He hopes to emerge a winner in the battle for Indian users - wherever they may live. "I want to build Rediff into an Indian brand that will be known throughout the world," he says.