In India, most of the service providers on the internet who have made it big are the ones who have focussed on quality content development. One can get away by compromising on quality in the short run, but for earning a reliable name in the market and attracting big clients, content upgradation is a must.

Most content providers are now working towards offering total solutions while some are planning to provide out-of-the-box solutions. Says Anindo Ghosh of Delhi-based MediaWeb India: "The days of simply providing internet hosting services and putting up a web page is coming to an end. Serious players in this business have to look at providing complete solutions right frommapping the client's internet business strategy to designing the web site and maintaining it."

MediaWeb India, adds Ghosh, is positioning itself as a single-window service provider ranging from network design to meeting internet/intranet-related needs of a company. "Accordingly, our client list is small but exclusive. But we try to make sure that we are able to meet all their needs."

Sumeet Singh, director, Net Visions, started his company at the young age of 20 and appointed a few college graduates to work for him. In a short span of three years, he can now boast of clients like Action Shoes, Usha Shriram, Archies Greetings and Gifts Ltd, National Council of Educational Research and Training etc.

Singh attributes his success to his team's ability to find out what exactly a client wants and giving him just that. Most of the time a client doesn't have any idea about the net, says Singh. It takes at least 4-5 meetings with him to find out about the actual requirements. "Before starting to design the pagewe give the client an exact lay-out of what the page is going to look like and we keep on making changes till he is totally satisfied with the look of the page."

Singh says that it is very important that a page should give a feeling of interactivity and for that it is necessary that it should not be static. "There should be some animation, flashes etc. to attract the surfer."

Singh says that many of the web page designers don't provide this service because they do not know how to do it and not because it is a costly venture. "The cost of developing an animated web page is marginally more than that of a static one. The fact is that most of the page designers don't know their job well and have come in only to make a few fast bucks."

Entrepreneurs who seriously want to enter the business should launch a good site first, says Singh. Singh had done just that and his site IndiaExpress.com has won several awards including Microsoft Best Indian Web Site contest, the goldsite award by Net Guide and Best of AsiaPacific award. "We launch our clients on our sites and give them a very prominent place there."

Developing new websites has been the foundation for the success of Netcore which has to its credit India's largest Website, India World. Their other web sites which include Samachar, a personalised news channel; Khoj, an Indian search site; Khel, a site on world cricket etc. have also become very popular.

Netcore provides a variety of services like web site hosting and design, advertising on Indiaworld Network and providing E-mail and internet access to companies. K R Mani, marketing manager, Netcore, says that the companies main aim is to stress on customer focus. "The surest way to succeed is to provide value-added services." Upgrading sites is very important to remain ahead in business, feels Mani. "A person will continue to visit a site only if he has something different to see after intervals."

Singh agrees with Mani. "We update the sites created by us on a quarterly basis. Our clients are also realisingthe importance of updating and do not hesitate to spend money on it."

Grasping the importance of content development, DelhiNet Web Services has dedicated an entire team of technicians to design web sites staying abreast of the latest technology available internationally and paying attention to the local needs of the clients. Says Gurpreet Singh, chief-marketing, "To design good quality web pages, one cannot design on a national level as the needs of clients differ from one place to the other."

Singh's team takes care of the designing in Delhi while in other places the resellers take on the responsibility. "The resellers do most of the designing themselves but sometimes they give us the designing idea for their local clients and we work on it."

DelhiNet also offers web hosting and domain name registration services. Says Singh, "We are the fastest growing web hosting service in India and our customers have access to DS-3 and OC-3 connections." The company has also recently joined hands with NetworkSolutions' to provide its customers with fast and easy domain name registration in the .com, .net and .org global top level domains.

What makes targeting a select client base easier is that since companies are becoming more demanding and pro-active in terms of design, feature and functionality, it is easy to target a select client base, says Sanjay Shetty of Mumbai-based DBS Internet Services which did the National Stock Exchange site. "In fact, it is becoming easier to deal with them as companies now demand business value." Corporates are increasingly looking at re-working their communication paradigm. The NSE, for instance, reportedly spent Rs 15 crore to set up its web site which updates its ticker every two minutes and allows on-line trading of stocks. Citibank spruced up its site recently to facilitate trading through credit card. The Kirloskar group has earmarked a big amount to have web sites for all its companies.

Nevertheless, Manish Modi of Delhi-based NetAcross believes that there are niches inthe market yet to be explored. "The Indian market is skewed towards services but as the market evolves it will head towards packaged solutions market," says Modi whose company offers out-of-the-box intranet solutions. "These ready-to-use solutions are faster to implement and easy to customise," says Rajesh Jain of Mumbai-based IndiaWorld Communications.

Jain's company has developed Netserv, a "internet-in-a-box" solution which meets the web access needs of a company over a local area network. Though the market has responded favourably to their products, it is still early days for packaged solutions, say both Modi and Jain. Modi is in the process of coming out with an updated version of his product.

However, one thing most players agree on is that the business has still some way to go to develop world-class solutions aimed at the global market. Modi acknowledges modestly: "From a crawl we have just learnt how to walk. It will take us some time to run." He could well be speaking about the present state ofweb solution business in India. But Modi is quick to add: "Give us a year or two, we will come up with world-class solutions."