Retro: Gullible's Travels?

Then: When two of Silicon Valley's bestknown venture capitalists (VCs) - KPCB's John Doerr and Sherpalo Ventures' Ram Shriram - made their first investments in India recently, one of the two Internet companies they picked was Cleartrip.com. The $3-million (Rs 13.5-crore) investment hasn't yet been formally announced because Cleartrip.com is a work-in-progress. But Doerr and Shriram were hardly the only VCs betting big money on a travel portal. In the space of 10 months, three other travel portals have attracted venture capital. All the wide-eyed VCs are parroting a number produced and hyped obviously by the travel industry. WestBridge expects the Indian travel industry to touch $32 billion or Rs 144,000 crore by 2008 and Norwest puts it even higher at $50 billion or Rs 225,000 crore by 2009. The current size of e-Commerce in India is estimated at Rs 1,500 crore, of which two-thirds is from online travel. For the travel portals to grow, the Internet penetration in India will have to increase significantly. Currently, there are about 40 million Internet users in the country. Sure, by 2010, the number is expected to jump to 110 million, but that may not be large enough for a crowded online market. Says a prominent VC who is currently considering five such investment proposals: "I think there will be only two players who will survive in the long run."

Now: The Indian online travel portal market has witnessed frenetic activity in the past four years. Recently, MakeMyTrip successfully listed on Nasdaq while Yatra.com has similar plans.