Indian origin blog boss made $1 million?
By Ria Sharma

Om Malik and Rafat Ali are two Indians who went to the USA and created successful blogging groups.  Om Malik owns GigaOM and Rafat launched paidContent.  Both are highly regarded and their blogs widely read in USA and elsewhere. In 2008, international media reported that Rafat Ali had sold paidContent for $30 million.

The news reports in 2008 said that the UK-based Guardian newspaper group had paid $30 million to buy paidContent.

Understandably, there was much pride and little envy among the Indian tech, media and blogosphere that one of their own had made it.  $30 million was a great price for a blogging group created from scratch.  Many young Indians have modeled themselves on Om and Rafat hoping to emulate their great success.

Now, in 2010 it is becoming clearer what was actually paid for the highly regarded blog group paidContent.  Press Gazette broke the news this week that ‘Accounts filed by Guardian News and Media reveal that the company paid £4m for website PaidContent in 2008 – rather than the £15m ($30m) which has previously been reported. Press Gazette understands that the higher figure, which was widely quoted at the time, was dependent on the highest possible future performance figures for the blog-based media business news site -started by journalist and web entrepreneur Rafat Ali.’

Based on the Press Gazette report, American media reported that Guardian had actually paid $6.5 Million and not $30 Million.

By this morning, there was another report in Businessinsider that PaidContent sold for $12.5 Million. Apparently, there was a $6 million temporary cash escrow/holdback that was separate from the $6.5 million initial payment. Businessinsider Editor in Chief Henry Blodget feels that Rafat Ali’s share of the profits was about $1 million. Much of the profits went to the investors in the company.

(Techgoss had published the following story on Oct 6, 2008)

American blog attacks Indian blog
By Techgirl

American blog TechCrunch is one of the most powerful media organizations in the world.  TechCrunch founder and CEO Michael Arrington is on first name basis with most senior managers of the top tech companies.  In a record of sorts,  last month TechCrunch had a million readers to its RSS feed which is more than the figures of the top 10 blogs in India combined together.

One positive paragraph in this American blog TechCrunch could mean investment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Michael is one of the most powerful men in tech America.

Rafat Ali is an Indian journalist who has hit it big time in USA.  Rafat owned paidContent in USA as well as contentSutra in India and a few other blogs which he recently sold to British newspaper group The Guardian for $30 million.

Both Michael and Rafat are talented, successful people who had the vision and drive to single handedly create successful blogs.

It seems that the professional rivalry between Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Rafat Ali of ContentNext Media (which owns contentSutra and other blogs) has a personal edge to it as well. 

Today, powerful American blog TechCrunch has run an article saying that the popularity and traffic of Indian blog contentSutra (which covers business and digital media in our country) is falling dramatically.  TechCrunch even quoted respected Indian journalist Nikhil Pahwa (the last Editor of contentSutra and the person credited with its past success) as saying that he was not given any equity and was frustrated at the lack of plans to take it to the next level.

The TechCrunch article is recommended reading.  The comments section has some personal views with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington saying:  “I lost respect for Rafat when he started targeting TechCrunch with factually incorrect personal attacks, but I don’t begrudge his success at all. The guy will do whatever it takes to win.”

Ouch.  That would have hurt.  Who says geeks are too boring to show feelings?   This is the tech world equivalent of the Bollywood catfight between Aamir and Shah Rukh Khan.

Since leaving contentSutra, Nikhil has started a hugely successful blog MediaNama.   Indian blogs Pluggd.in, Webyantra, Watblog,  Alootechie, VCCircle  are hugely popular with Indians who want to read about business and all that happens in the digital world in India.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com