When I thought about Rediff in 1994, the idea was to create an online information services company along the lines of the pioneers of that time, CompuServe, and Prodigy. But I was uncomfortable with the poor quality of the user interface possible by the technology available at that time which was essentially green text on a black background with no ability to change fonts or background, let alone graphics. All that changed when the University of Illinois came up with the Mosaic browser. Suddenly the easy-to-use user interface that I (and many others in the world) was waiting for had happened. That browser together with the hyperlinking system that the CERN people came up with resulted in the creation of the Web as we know it today. Then it became clear in my mind what kind of service I would start.

This vision has not changed much over these years: We would be a consumer service (not aimed at enterprises), it would be a mass consumer service (as opposed to one aimed at elite or expert users) and it would expand the information, entertainment, communication and e-commerce fields. The details of the technology used have changed and even the names used to describe what we do have changed: For example, words like `portal' are latter-day inventions.

I was sure that what we were doing was a new media and thus would be dependent on advertising and subscriptions probably in a 50:50 ratio. Beyond that every other detail would only gradually reveal itself - what form the advertising would take, how we would get paid for it, who would sell it and so on. I must add that all this is still going through an evolution. But all media executions tend to finally gravitate to an ad-cum-subscription model.

Embarking on a frontier-area business requires that the entrepreneur must at all times be open to change, be willing to admit that one is wrong, listen to people ( particularly the most recent entrants in your company), have absolute faith in your own vision.

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