Meckler won't invest much

Technology media veteran Alan Meckler's blog is worth a read at least for the amusement provided by his capacity to blow his own trumpet harder than almost anybody other than Donald Trump. He's been talking for a few days about his round-the-world trip which takes in Australia, Japan and India in our part of the world. His wide-eyed surprise that his (obviously non-3G) Blackberry doesn't work in Japan is a good sign of somebody who hasn't been paying attention.

Today, he is interviewed by contentsutra.com on his plans for India. He seems to be most fired up by the fact that he's hired away arch rival Getty Image's top salesman in India to power up his Jupiter Images activity there.

On the media side, we were intrigued by a few comments (the highlights are mine):

Our media properties get a combined 1.1 million unique visitors, around 3.3 million page views from India. So we’re tying up with an ad rep firm - we have spoken to some, and will make our decision in a few weeks. We have plans for Internet.com, and if all goes well, we will launch india.internet.com by summer. The beauty of India is that we don’t need to do local language here, so we don’t need to invest much.

Most people I know who've tried to open up India that way have ended up disappointed.

On rapid expansion in Asia, he is obviously still smarting from the pain of the dotcom 1.0 crash when he says:

n 1999, I opened up offices in Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Sydney and Japan. We also opened offices in England, Belgiun, Canada, among others, with around 3-4 people in each office. And then the bottom came off the Internet business and we had to shut down most offices. We just kept Sydney and Japan. I want to be very careful this time.