Personality of the East: Mr Dinesh Agarwal

Shopping Guide,

Do you know that IndiaMART.com a business portal operating from Madhu Vihar is one of the largest portals in India with 1.5 Million page views. Do you also know that three lakh people hit its sites daily and that 60% of hits are from abroad out of which 90% are from the U.S alone.

This portal was created by Mr. Dinesh Aggarwal in 1996 with the objective to promote Indian business across the world through internet. He wanted to be an ISP provider but since only VSNL had monopoly over ISPs in India and private ISPs were not entertained, he decided to offer website solutions. The first step was to create a free listing directory like yellow pages,. And offer free listing & query forwarding on a space of 5-10M on American server. Today he has 10 dedicated servers and seven portals i.e. Travel, Handicrafts, Automobiles, Finance & Investment, Healthcare, News & Apparel. Dinesh Aggarwal, a B.Tech from HBTI Kanpur, started his career with CMC. He joined HCL America in 1991 as a network consultant, came back to India in 1995 and started this portal. He operates from Madhu Vihar, Patparganj. Soon his travel portal will offer on-line hotel booking. Presently about 70% hotels and 80% travel agent in the country are registered with them.

Mr. Agarwal is planning an ON-LINE SHOPPING MALL. There was a test run last Diwali when on-line orders were booked for Haldiram then delivered gift packs to people in India for whom the gifts were meant . The success of this project has encouraged IndiaMART.Com to form a retail shopping network, which is shifting from a Business – Business attitude to Business – Consumer. His company Intermesh which is a web solution provider is also an official developer of MTNL BHARAT ON-LINE. The stages of conceptualisation, content development, page design and their list of clients include Jindal Steel, National Panasonic. Intermesh has branches in Bombay & Bangalore & franchisees all over India. The industry will see a lot of changes in the near future. There will be convergence of telephone, TV and internet to form an information super highway.