Great piece on the founder of ebkr - must read
Flotation riches for eBookers founder
BY CHRIS AYRES
October 28 1999 BUSINESS NEWS
DINESH DHAMIJA, founder of eBookers, the Internet travel shop, is to see his stake in the company valued at about œ100 million when it floats in the US and Europe with a mid-price value of $235 million (œ150 million).
The company yesterday said that it would list 3.4 million American depositary shares, priced at between $13 and $15 each, on the Nasdaq stock market in the US and the Neuer Markt in Germany. The float will raise up to $51 million for eBookers and value the company at up to $250 million. Overall, 20 per cent of eBookers will be publicly quoted, with Mr Dhamija keeping a 67 per cent stake. The company will spend the money on expansion in Europe and hopes to have operations in 13 countries by next year.
The company has proved a far more lucrative venture for Mr Dhamija than Flightbookers, his traditional "bricks and mortar" travel business based on London's Tottenham Court Road. Mr Dhamija, 49, a Cambridge law graduate and the son of Indian diplomats, founded Flightbookers in 1983, and the company currently generates annual sales of about $50 million. Before setting up the business, Mr Dhamija was an executive at Royal Nepal Airways.
Mr Dhamija decided to expand into Internet travel - putting himself in direct competition with Bob Geldof's Deckchair.com and Microsoft's Expedia - in 1996. He raised œ3.4 million of capital from friends, and launched eBookers, which generated sales for the year to June of about $10 million. The flotation of eBookers, organised by JP Morgan, the US investment bank, will turn Mr Dhamija into one of Britain's richest Internet entrepreneurs.
He said: "Over the next three years, we plan to capitalise on our first-mover advantage in Europe and become one of the leading pan-European Internet-based travel companies." He added that research showed that online travel bookings would be worth $6.8 billion by 2003.
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