We currently have more than a thousand pages of information and entertainment. We will be adding contests, promotions, launches and much more when we go in for our hard launch on 15 August." And daruPO.com is not something flippant: it is positioned as a B2C portal with three distinct revenue streams. For, over and above the regular dose of bar reviews, jokes, recipes, cocktails and experiences, which the Web-community is expected to generate, daruPO.com hopes to make money from:-

(a) live brand launches, promotions and contests; (b) by putting up sites for small and big liquor companies; and (c) putting up pages for individual wine shops at a nominal charge. Says Swami, "Very few of them have any Net presence right now. Our eventual plan is to have every outlet in the country on our site. Today there is only one Indian wine shop on the Net. We intend to leverage this network to allow online ordering. We are not getting into the distribution business ourselves; we will merely relay the order to the nearest outlet. Of course, this will be done only in states where it is allowed by law. We also expect some amount of money to come in from advertising.

However, we are not looking at this as a major revenue stream." DaruPO.com is pinning its hopes on the fact that both content and community will enthuse quite a many to click on. An add on, that it is really hard to resist a freebie. But why should companies have contests on daruPO.com rather than, say, a contests2win or hungama.com? "The advantage of contest2win.com is that the number of hits is high. But, the advertising code that is falling into place (it already exists abroad) is that you cannot promote liquor in the same space as children's products. Secondly, you have to give adequate warning on your opening page that people below legal drinking age should not enter the site.

So the contests site will inevitably have to choose between Toy Story and Bacardi rum," explains Swami, who is also candid enough to admit that the number of hits may not compare well with other popular contest sites. "No... we don't think they ever will. But we are very clear that we don't want everybody and anybody coming to daruPO.com. We have a warning on our opening page. And we will seriously look at the idea of having an adult check once the system gets established in India. We want a focussed clientele. At the end of the day, we are more interested in highballs than eyeballs," says Swami.

A self-confessed Net-freak, Swami is confident that DaruPO.com is a bankable proposition. He is not looking for venture capital just yet, and points out that the biggest expense of most dot.coms is marketing. "We will not be advertising in the regular way: can you imagine what the reaction ould be if we put up `daruPO' in a huge hoarding on Marine Drive. What we will be looking at is strategic alliance with liquor manufacturers, not just one, but several.

This will help add them to the daruPO community also, which I think is very necessary," observes Swami while adding: "... the era of a direct correlation between eyeballs and valuations is over. What is more important is your revenue model. We expect to start making money from the first year itself." And don't you think that valuation figures - Swami will not talk about that right now - are not going to be impressive. But then, there are more sober imbibers in India than investors. And they spend more on drinks per annum than the average person invests.

So if indiainfoline.com can have such a high valuation, why not daruPO.com? So what's ahead? "Once daruPO is fully up and running, we will look at more speciallised sites such as rumPO, ginPO, beerPO. We could tie up with companies for sites such as oldmonkPO. Finally, of course, it will be an IPO", says Swami. And cheers to daruPO.com!