**OT** Free prizes at Phokat2000.com
(Friday, March 17, 2000)
Our Corporate Bureau in New Delhi
Delhi-based On Trak Technologies yesterday launched phokat2000.com , a portal designed to allow users to win prizes and avail of promotional offers by advertisers.
The company proposes to get about $2 million as venture capital for software development and to meet marketing expenses for the Indian operations as well as the planned expansion into Europe.
"We are in talks with various venture capitalists including banks both from India and abroad," said Sumant Dhamija, chief executive officer of the company. On Trak is also in negotiations with a pan-European e-commerce company for its expansion in Europe.
The pan-European company will bring in funds and also help On Track Technologies with marketing in Europe. The strategic alliance will be finalised by autumn this year.
Dhamija said, "Our presence abroad can take any form, maybe a subsidiary or a joint venture or a plain marketing tie-up." The company hopes to finalise its business plans by March-end, he added.
The company also plans to set up offices in UK, Germany and Sweden to cover six countries in a year. These countries have been chosen because of their high Internet penetration.
The company also plans to come up with two or three related portals very soon, he said. The website Phokat2000.com is hosted by Superbnet, a US-based firm..
The site has been online since the third week of February and receives close to 7,000 hits a day. It is expecting close to 100,000 hits within a month. People between the ages of 18 and 35 are the site?s target audience.
In south India the site is called bhagyam.com "Income tax payers do not have to worry because we will deduct the tax on the prize money and send a TDS certificate along with the cheque," he said.
At present, the site has eight advertisers including Pizza Hut, Daewoo, IBM and a travel company called ebookers.com. It expects the number of advertisers to go up to 150 very soon.
The advertisers are charged a flat rate as of now, but from April 1 the advertisers will have to pay an advertisement rate of Rs 10 per click.
To enter Phokat2000.com, a user has to register on the site and then choose six numbers from six columns each with 10 numbers, to compete for prizes. The user?s entry is accepted after she clicks on two banner advertisements one after the other. Finally, the winner is decided on the basis of a draw of lots.
The prize money, at the moment, is Rs 25,000 per fortnight, but will gradually increase along with the number of prizes, Dhamija said. The site allows a user to play up to four times a day.
-BS |
