When Indiabulls.com was officially launched in May 2000, the first signs of the dot-com carnage were appearing on the global scene. But Indian dot-coms were still gung-ho. Along with Indiabulls, there were dozens of other financial sites luring the Indian customer to play in stocks and that too on the Internet. But as time went by financial sites offering online trading increasingly got frustrated as the Indian customer just refused to bite the bait. A shake out was imminent and analysts were certain that only the biggies like ICICIDirect, KotakStreet, Sharekhan and 5Paisa would dominate the scene.

Though this prediction has come true, there is also a surprise member in the top five club Indiabulls.com, currently the number two player in the online trading market. Out of the average online daily trading volume of Rs 55 crore, Indiabulls claims to do around Rs 20 crore of business. At a time when the retail investor is simply not attracted in the stock markets the site has managed a Herculean task achieving a top line of Rs15.2 crore and a profit of Rs 6 crore. More importantly, the company has already achieved cash break even in October 2001 itself. For the next fiscal the company is looking at doubling growth and is targeting a top line of Rs 25 crore and net profits in excess of Rs 12 crore.

At a time when retail investor interest in the stock markets is at its lowest, what has made Indiabulls successful? The answer lies in customer service. This is where Indiabulls has made the difference. For instance, the company has dedicated relationship managers for each customer, which gives the human touch to trading and thereby creates a long-term relationship with the customer.

This is aptly summed up by Gagan Banga, chief marketing officer, Indiabulls.com when he says, “This business is all about building personalised products for each customer.” And this could be one of the key reasons why this fledging dot-com now threatens to break the stronghold of established players like ICICIDirect. Another reason could be the fact that in an industry where online broking is seen as 'click and wait' rather than 'click and buy', the site claims that it has the fastest trading engine which could very well reverse this trend

The company realises that a pure-play dot-com can never survive with the current online trading volumes in India. The company has a strong offline presence in 14 cities and plans are afoot to expand the reach to 20 cities by year-end. Combined, the online and offline trading businesses do business worth approximately Rs 100 crore daily.

As the success of Indiabulls.com and other examples in the story has shown, successful companies have just used the Internet as a distribution medium rather than as its lifeline. And therein lies the difference between crashed dreams and the ones still standing on their feet.