Victor Menzes, the former chief honcho of Citigroup, is turning a venture capitalist and is co-funding Sabeer Bhatia's new venture BlogEverywhere.
BlogEverywhere is a simple way to log one's thoughts and comments on any web page without leaving it. It enables one to have a conversation with other readers of that page.
Sabeer Bhatia confirmed that Menzes is funding his venture, but declined to specify details of investment. He further added that he is looking at other venture funds to invest in his ventures. "Once we have the required traction, we are also willing to look at strategic partners," Bhatia said.
In addition to this blogging firm, Bhatia is also set to revive arzoo.com. The portal, which he founded after selling off Hotmail to Microsoft for $395 million, had floundered.
Bhatia is now giving life to the 'significant brand recall of arzoo'.
He is re-launching 'arzoo' as a travel portal in three months.
Reasoning out on why he is re-launching this venture, he said: "A lot of my friends were telling me that arzoo has a good brand recall still and that I have to revive it. The earlier avatar of it being an education initiative didn't take off. I am re-launching it as a travel portal with exciting features pretty soon."
He added that through this portal one will be able to book tickets through a mobile phone even without a GPRS feature built in.
"There is a tremendous opportunity in this sector and this portal will show how you can simplify travel booking," Bhatia said.
Besides this, another of his ventures, InstaColl, launched a year ago, is also chugging along though it has not grown as anticipated.
"These product ventures take time before one can show tangible results. Secure information sharing is a large space in which this venture is playing and we are launching another product in the document rights management space pretty soon," Bhatia noted.
Bhatia is also trying out voice over IP. "Using VoIP, we are launching a product through which calls over the net will be more cost effective," he noted.
