Alok began his career by joining his family business, Hindustan Hosiery Industries. He set up the export arm of the business and helped it grow from an annual income of Rs 400,000 to approximately 80,000,000. But this was not Alok wanted to do the rest of his life. The internet was fairly new in India and the telecom infrastructure pathetic. But Alok had a dream and a vision he wanted to follow. In 1998 Alok left Hindustan Hosiery to start his own dotcom venture – Contests2win.com or c2w as it is commonly known today. Contests2win.com was India’s first contest site. The website was started on a budget of Rs.5000 and has gone on to become the largest contesting website in India.

C2w had been profitable right from the start executing interactive advertising campaigns for India’s biggest corporates. By his own admission c2w didn’t have a business model when they started. Companies as big as Hindustan Lever didn’t have internet access in those days, let alone the common man. But that didn’t stop c2w from making inroads in the market. They gave away free campaigns for advertising and mostly used the word of mouth approach for marketing. Of course, it helped if the mouth the words came from were MTV VJs.

Alok didn’t just stop at that. He further expanded into China and formed mobile2win.com in China, which is now the largest mobile advertising company in the region.

Contests2win was and will be India’s first dotcom success story, long before the likes of naukri.com, makemytrip and yatra came to the market. Here’s wishing him a tonne of success for his future endeavors.

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