Saturday, March 23, 2013

Sabeer Bhatia bets big on Jaxtr

Sabeer Bhatia, founder of one of the first free e-mail services Hotmail, is focusing most on Jaxtr, a mobile operator for international roaming customers, out of a clutch of about five investments he has made. At 10 million customers the mobile company would generate $100 million operating profit every year, he said in an interaction with ET.

The years 2013-15 should be blockbuster for him as most of his investments are likely to mature in this period, he said. His investments include Arzoo, a ticketing and travel booking system in the works for the past eight years, four-year-old real estate portal AMP Tech, a presentation app Deck and a hotel management software.
This year Jaxtr expects to hit one million subscribers from just a few tens of thousands right now. "All the companies are beginning to do well now. Take AMP Tech, for example, until last year there was hardly any revenue, but this year it has jumped," he said.

But Jaxtr is the closest to heart. That is the one Bhatia exercises executive powers in. "In the others I am more like the board chairman and oversee things from a high level. I get in only when required."

Bhatia has investments to the tune of $100 million of which nearly $60 million has been on Jaxtr over the last seven years, he said. Along the course the company has developed a full global telecom network leasing minutes from local telecom operators with its own billing system on top of it.

The unique selling point of the company: It's cheaper. Jaxtr promises lower roaming costs than any other similar product in the market; half that of any other competing product in the Indian market. "India is not our only market. If you look at markets like the US or UK this service can do away with nearly 95% of the mobile roaming cost," said Bhatia.

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