Excerpts:
You have a presence in over ten countries, can you tell us a little about how this business has been structured?
Three of us from Tricom started JobsDB.com in 1998 and our first online presence was established in Singapore in April 1999. We have received funding from international funds as well as people in the trade and corporate investors in Singapore. Moreover, we also have individual and corporate investors in most of the countries where we are present. In Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea we have entered the market with local investors, most of whom I cannot name, but in the Philippines the partners are the Mariwasa Group and in Indonesia, the partner is a recruitment agency Auditsi.

What sort of revenue model have you been pursuing so far?
We have entered into mutual marketing and revenue sharing agreements with some of the biggest players in each of the markets where we are present. Typically, we follow the model of powering some of the biggest sites with our content. In Singapore we power Singnet which is the site of Singapore Telecom, we also power Lycos Asia, Hong Kong Telecom, Sina.com, Yahoo (in Hong Kong and Taiwan). We have sixty such partners throughout the Asia-Pacific. These are not hyperlinks but content which is supplied by us for these sites. In India we have an arrangement with Indiainfoline, Mantraonline and Chennaionline. We see 450,000 unique visitors per month. We are aiming to break-even by the end of this year.

Internet companies the world over have been finding it difficult to raise capital to fuel any expansion plans, how have you fared under the circumstances?
Indirectly the financial crisis has been good for us since newer entrants have not been able to establish themselves given the lack of capital availability. Advertising costs are down and the attention of the marketplace is only on the survivors. I expect the lull to last for about two years and only those who can muster the capital or generate revenues will be able to survive.

What are your own plans for raising more capital?
We expect to break-even by the end of this year and have no particular need for capital right now. As far as going public is concerned, this is certainly not the time. Besides, for me as the single largest shareholder, going public does not make much of a difference but it does offer a certain flexibility for investors. But we have to be careful before taking a decision on an IPO because there are lessons to be learnt from what has happened to companies which went public last year. Many of them are finding it difficult to raise capital privately since the value of their traded stock is dipping, as a result, the valuations they command are lower than before.

What are the ingredients that go into running a successful Pan-Asian online business?
I would say there are three components in order to be successful in the kind of space that we occupy. The first is of course Capital, the second one is operational experience and the third is the technology component. The first requires no explanation but as far as operational experience goes, we have believed in hiring specialist skills in each country in order to make the business 100 per cent local. The teams focussing on customer service and marketing have to be local but you can cut costs across the board since you have central overheads which are shared by all the countries. As far as the third component - Technology - is concerned, you may have brilliant ideas but unless they are commercialised they are of no use. You have to know how to commercialise your technology. In this context we don't believe in acquisition led growth since databases don't match. Search methods, platforms, software vary from company to company resulting in a mismatch. So while acquisitions may mean rapid growth, we are wary ofthese issues which are important in our line of business.

Would you be able to share with us some of the trends you have been witnessing in terms of worldwide movement of candidates?
Interestingly we have been ranked just this week as the third most visited job site on the Web by an American agency. I think there is an explanation for this. There is a huge movement of people of Asian origin back to their country of birth from the US. They are recognising the opportunities in this part of the world and want to move back. This is one distinct trend that we observe. In the case of movement within the Asia-Pacific region, we find that Singapore is a net employer while China is attracting a lot of investments and these investors are keen to recruit people from Hong Kong and Taiwan to man these operations. In India, IT companies moving up the value chain are inviting software people working on cutting edge technologies to join them. In Indonesia, there is a huge shortage of jobs and we get a lot of candidates wanting to find jobs out of the country.