CNET India: Failure to Ignite

Right from the word go, CNET India was a non-starter and was the end of my dotcom dreams 

In an earlier post, I had written about how my friend Sridhar and I left CHIP together and joined CNET, which was setting up operations in India, in the first quarter of the year 2000. While CHIP had been a huge learning experience for me – that is where I learned the basics of journalism and learned to put together long-form stories for a magazine – it was time to move on. I was young and restless, saw the dotcom boom happening all around me, heard about the outrageous salaries being paid to journalists everywhere and felt the need to be part of this exciting new online thing. Sridhar felt the same way and since we’d both been hired by CNET India, we couldn’t be happier.

When we – Sridhar and I – put in our papers at CHIP, the first thing we had to do was vacate the apartment that Jasubhai Digital Media (JDM) had given to Sridhar, which I was sharing with him. While the CNET India office was situated in Tardeo, not too far from the Heera Panna shopping complex, near the Haji Ali dargah, we decided to look for apartments in New Bombay, since rents in Central Bombay would have been unaffordable for us. So, we decided to continue staying in New Bombay and commute to Tardeo by local train – a distance of around 40km. We met a few brokers and saw a few properties in Nerul, Sanpada and CBD Belapur, in New Bombay. But there was one building that both of us loved. A broker took us to Raval Tower and as soon as we went inside one of the apartments, on the 8^th floor of the building, we were greeted by a stunning, panoramic view of the Panvel Creek. Uninterrupted views of the massive creek, with a few large boats docked on one side and the Belapur hovercraft stand nearby, with two hovercrafts parked there. It was stunningly beautiful and we agreed to take up two flats there on rent, right away. The rent was, if I remember correctly, around Rs 8,000 per month. Each apartment had two bedrooms and Sridhar and I could have actually shared one apartment, but his wife and son, who were in Bangalore at the time, were due to arrive in Bombay soon. In any case, we rented two apartments in Raval Tower and had a small celebratory dinner that night in a small Malvani restaurant in the vicinity – Surmai fry, chicken curry, rice and some chilled beer. Sridhar wasn’t much of a drinker and drank in strict moderation. But I, for one, did not hold back and had a splitting headache the next day.

Soon, it was time to start going to the CNET office. This necessitated taking a dheemi local train from the Belapur station at around 7.30 a.m., getting off at the Cotton Green station and then taking a cab from there to Tardeo, thus reaching office at 9.00 a.m. The journey could be quite tiresome at times and the local trains – in the morning, yes, but even more so in the evening – were terribly crowded. But coming back to our peaceful apartments with their beautiful views of the Panvel Creek made it worth our while – we never even thought of looking for accommodation closer to office. On the work front, however, things were not too good. For some reason, which I have never been able to figure out, CNET India was a pretty dead place, a non-starter. Ours was a small editorial team, there was no structure in place, no editorial systems and processes and no editorial calendar. Sridhar was supposedly heading this small team, but he came from mainstream newspaper journalism and online was all new to him. With Gourav’s overall direction, he had done an admirable job of managing Network Computing at JDM. However, he did not really have a tech background and had no experience of running a business-to-consumer (B2C) tech publication of any sort.

Apart from me, there were two other people in the CNET India editorial team – Ivor and Sandeep – both of whom had already spent a few years working in tech journalism. They were set in their own ways, had their own ideas of what CNET India should be all about, and weren’t willing to listen to Sridhar. Also, there was no editorial direction of any sort from Anil, who was Sridhar’s boss and the overall editorial head at CNET India. There were a few, sporadic meetings every now and then but nothing ever really came from that – there was no teamwork, no cohesive plan, no willingness to work in one unified direction and no attempt, from anyone, to put into place a formal editorial calendar and work to a schedule. We were all drifting, and nobody seemed to care. Our salaries were paid on time and, in that sense at least, Sridhar and I finally had some room to breathe freely; the financial constraints at CHIP had been stifling to say the least. But in terms of work, we weren’t really doing anything at CNET and soon that became a cause for worry. For how long could this continue, we thought to ourselves. We’d come into office, sit around the whole day, participate in a meeting or two, go out for lunch, have a cup of coffee in the afternoon, indulge in some idle chat… and go home in the evening.

Asiacontent.com, the Hong Kong-based company that had got CNET to India, was also doing MTVIndia.com, the website for MTV India, which was hugely popular in those days. The MTVIndia.com team used to share the office with us and I made some good friends there. There was one particular girl in their team – let's just call her Ms A – who was bright and vivacious and I enjoyed talking to her. One day, I asked her if she'd like to go out in the evening for a beer or two, and she agreed right away. So, on a Friday evening Ms A and I got into a cab and went to Colaba, to Leopold Cafe, where we settled down for a few beers. She could really put the beers away – while I was ready to give up after three or four pints, she had quite a few more, and the alcohol seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. She had earlier worked with a lifestyle portal, where she used to handle the Bollywood and entertainment beat. On that evening, she regaled me with her stories of meeting and talking to various film stars on different occasions, most notably Sushmita Sen, of whom I was a big fan in those days. I had very little to talk about, as she wasn't much into cars, motorcycles, computers or technology. Much later in the evening, I dropped her off near Churchgate station, while I carried on to VT. The next day, in office, she barely acknowledged me. We never really spoke much after that evening. I suppose I had been, in some way, a big disappointment.  

After spending about three months doing more or less nothing at CNET, Sridhar and I came to the same conclusion – that we’d have to leave CNET and look for work elsewhere. Some might think that, hey, this should have been a dream job – good pay, nice and fancy office, and hardly any work! But, no, that’s not how it works. Sitting in office the whole day with no work, no future direction, no purpose – that’s actually pure punishment. Gradually, you begin to lose your mind, you get restless. One also feels ashamed of taking a salary and not doing any work whatsoever. It just doesn’t feel right. And so, Sridhar and I put in our papers. There was not much reaction from the bosses – it seemed they couldn’t care less. And while couldn’t have known at the time, CNET India itself would shut down shortly after we decided to leave. That was because in the US, CNET struck a deal to buy out ZDNet and since ZDNet was already operating in India in collaboration with Jasubhai Digital Media, the parent company did not feel the need to keep two tech portals in India. Hence, while ZDNet India continued to run, CNET India was eventually shut down.

Sridhar’s family had arrived in Bombay a month or two before we put in our papers at CNET and now, they faced an uncertain future. However, Sridhar was quickly able to find a job in another dotcom company that was based in Bangalore. Soon, it was time for us to part ways, though our paths would cross again a few years down the line. For now, Sridhar and his family would move to Bangalore, while I would need to figure out what I’d be doing next. Some tentative ideas were already forming in my head and soon, I would be striking out in a new direction.

The story continues here