Speaker 1:

The Miss India contest stars 29 young hopefuls and how lovely they look, and why not?

Speaker 2:

It's the gala event for India's beautiful people. Attended by thousands, watched by millions, the Miss India beauty pageant is a stunning extravaganza. But were not here for the beauty. We're here for the brains. Alongside the screen queens, pop idols and sports stars who usually judge at such momentous occasions there's an interloper, a young computer entrepreneur.

Sabeer Bhatia:

I'm the geek in the crowd I guess.

Speaker 1:

Named as one of the elite 100 who's had the greatest impact on the computer industry of the world, ladies and gentlemen it is my privilege to present to you Sabeer Bhatia.

Speaker 2:

As a 27 year old Sabeer Bhatia came up with an idea now used my internet surfers everywhere and sold it to the biggest computer company in the world for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sabeer Bhatia:

A couple of years ago there's no way I could have, I would ever have imagined that I'd be over here.

Speaker 2:

Now he's the high-tech pinup boy in a country with its eye on the crown of world leader in the cyber-age. For these people, the internet and all the promise of the cyber-age is worlds if not centuries away. Luxury here is access to a washing machine, not a website.

Barely half of India's billion people are literate, let alone computer literate. And for most just surviving is a daily struggle. While it may have missed the 19th and 29th centuries in cities like this India is leading the world into the 21st.

Narayana Murthy:

We essentially live in two worlds.

Speaker 2:

Narayana Murthy is Bangalore's Mr. Big. Founder of the computer giant Infosys. Every day he travels to work through one India, the squalid struggling reality outside his high-tech compound and arrives at work in another.

Narayana Murthy:

As our people come through in their buses, cars and whatever it is to Infosys they see on the road tremendous poverty, poor infrastructure, pollution, all of that. And they come here. They get transformed into a mindset that is completely Western in terms of quality, timeliness, in terms of satisfying the customer et cetera, et cetera.

And they go back in the evening and they journey through this Indian reality once again. And that is tough. That's not easy.

Speaker 2:

Operating a world-class computer corporation without modern phone lines or reliable electricity would hardly seem the key to business success. Even in cyber-obsessed Bangalore the power supply is so erratic it plunges the city into darkness at least once a day,

Narayana Murthy:

Just to give you an idea for example, if the power goes off for a fraction of a second in this centre it takes us about eight to ten hours to recover all the databases and all the programmes of computers.

Speaker 2:

Narayana Murthy's answer, build an entirely self-sufficient industrial complex, a cyber-city that not only has its own electricity generator but will soon also have squash courts and a gym.

Narayana Murthy:

Now let us look at Northern Telecom, one of our important customers here-

Speaker 2:

And it's proved remarkably successful. Infosys has gone from a $240 startup company 17 years ago to a $1.5 billion software exporter today.

Narayana Murthy:

My desire has been, has always been to create wealth legally and ethically in India. I also wanted to show how we can retain our pride in boys and girls in the country by giving them high-quality jobs, by giving them challenging work assignments et cetera.

Speaker 2:

Once a British Army officer's base Bangalore has always had a reputation for quality education and its helped produce one of the largest English speaking populations in the world.

Sabeer Bhatia:

Hi. What's your name? [Arun Arun Kumar]

Speaker 2:

Sabeer Bhatia is the systems most successful graduate.

Sabeer Bhatia:

You want to become a computer scientist, right?

Speaker 8:

No.

Sabeer Bhatia:

No, no no. Businessman right? What do you say?

Speaker 8:

[inaudible]

Sabeer Bhatia:

Businessman.

Speaker 2:

But when he went school here at Saint Ignatius College there was nothing to indicate he'd become on the world's top computer entrepreneurs. Hotmail is the invention that's put him there. It began with the outstandingly simple idea of email on the worldwide web.

It was an idea with potential and became the free email system that allows people to talk to each other from any computer anywhere. Neil Base also saw the potential. With the awesome resources of Microsoft he could have set up his own system. But Hotmail quickly attracted millions of users and the CEO of the biggest computer company in the world decided Hotmail was hot property. So hot, he paid $400 million for it.

Sabeer Bhatia:

I meet with them once, three or our months but it's not like I can pick up the phone and call them either. I'm not at that level but I still do refer to them as [inaudible].

Speaker 2:

And you still got $400 from them.

Sabeer Bhatia:

And he got a good deal. My personal email address is Sabeer@hotmail.com.

Speaker 2:

But this budding IT tycoon didn't stay in Bangalore to make his millions. Like many of India's best and brightest he left for California's Silicon Valley.

Sabeer Bhatia:

See you. Bye. Mr. Businessman. All right Dad, I think how about a bet? Whoever is closer to the pin-

Speaker 5:

Okay you said-

Sabeer Bhatia:

Closest to the pin wins a bottle of beer.

Speaker 5:

Fine.

Sabeer Bhatia:

All right. I'll go.

Speaker 5:

I'm going to win.

Speaker 2:

Now when the Hotmail high-flyer jets into Bangalore for a game of golf with Dad he's not only a local hero but one of the highest ranked players in an exclusive global club. Hotmail is a brand name around the world and Sabeer Bhatia has more money than he knows what to do with.

Sabeer Bhatia:

That's much better looking shot than what I had.

Speaker 5:

Oh good. It is on the green.

Sabeer Bhatia:

To be honest with you, for the first couple of months I was pinching myself every day. I didn't think that it was for real.

Speaker 5:

When I say something-

Speaker 2:

Nor did his family. His father, an ex-Army officer was incredulous. Making money was not in the family's blood.

Speaker 5:

One thing we were sure is he's going to be something but I didn't anticipate that this phenomenal and that too- [inaudible]

Speaker 2:

It's the miracle of the cyber-age. Ideas alone can make millions, hundreds of millions. Here, another Indian idea is taking off though this one is not yet making millions.

Sanjay Mehta:

This is a place where we receive all our home Indian letters. The letters are received on this computer and printed on this printer.

Speaker 2:

In this tiny Bombay office Sanjay Mater has come up with a very practical way to start bridging the gap between India's high-tech future and its low-tech reality.

Sanjay Mehta:

And after printing hands over a bunch to Miss [Muntalum] this lady here, who is stuffing the letters into these envelopes.

Speaker 2:

So that way you've got both electronic mail and snail mail.

Sanjay Mehta:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

Voted the country's most useful website, this office receives emailed letters from outside the country in a hyper-second then sends them on via the traditional mail service.

Sanjay Mehta:

That is all because the penetration level on internet is not very high in this country so that is why the service is very successful in India and we feel it is very [inaudible] for this situation.

Speaker 2:

Is it almost as though your company straddles both the first world and the third world?

Sanjay Mehta:

Yes. Absolutely. You see one of the other things is that people believe that technology is only meant for the elite class. This is an application which takes technology right to the masses.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't give them the instant communication of a Hotmail communication but combining India's notoriously slow postal service with electronic mail is at least a step towards a new India. This man is determined to take India the rest of the way.

N. Chandrababu:

So India is watching me. Everybody's watching me as an example. If I succeed India will succeed.

Speaker 2:

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu is regarded as the country's most extraordinary politician.

N. Chandrababu:

[inaudible]Happy New Year. Thank you.

Speaker 2:

He presides over one of the poorest states in India but he plans to copy Bangalore's success on a grand scale and transform his pre-industrial state into an international cyber-hub where high tech high flyers won't have to leave or set up separate cities to succeed.

N. Chandrababu:

There are excellent Indian brains. I'm very clear of that. Now all these brains are working outside. They're not [inaudible] everybody in the world but our vision, lack of vision.

Speaker 2:

Naidu's vision involves nothing less than smashing the entire political and bureaucratic culture in India, a culture of stifling inefficiency. And already it's won over Microsoft and another software giant, Oracle. They're investing hundreds of millions of dollars in his state. The trade-off is that Naidu gets things done.

This buildings to house these and other international and national IT companies was commissioned and built in just a year. Around here such a feat is regarded as miraculous.

N. Chandrababu:

Everybody's thinking [inaudible] It won't happen. It cannot be done. Now I am saying don't say, I cannot. Say I can. Then we will do that.

Speaker 2:

But don't let this confidence hide the enormity of the task. Here in Naidu's capital city of Hyderabad the inefficiencies of the old India cannot be ignored. They might have their eye on the future but no one in this traffic snarl is going anywhere fast.

Narayana Murthy:

It's very easy to get frustrated by a few negatives that you see around you but I do see a lot of positive things going on. And I think if in the next three to five years you will see a paradigm shift in the conditions in the country. You will see tremendous changes.

Speaker 2:

But while the high-tech prophets plot India's catapult into the IT stratosphere this Bombay-based hybrid mail system may be as close as many people will ever get even to email. In a country with more high-tech ideas than computers to handle them, most Indians could still be looking a slow shuffle rather than a leap into the cyber-age.