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KNOW THOSE CYBER CAFÉS. Once there were as many as 2000 of them in the city. Today, the number has dwindled to 600. Given the sky high real estate prices and pitfalls galore, they could become a thing of the past. But hang on. With upgradation and innovation, the pot in that café could still keep boiling, reports Sneha Mahale T here couldn’t have been a worse time for personal computers (PCs) to become cheaper for Ram Bhau. The owner of an Internet café in Mulund has been going through a rough patch since 2003. The number of customers surfing in his eight-seat café has dropped by nearly 75 per cent.

Having set up shop in 2000 in the still-to-boom Mulund suburb, Ram Bhau had high expectations from his small business. The place was just right — located near a school — and it was always teeming with students and young adults. “But cheap technology combined with strict laws governing cafés has crippled my business.” Although there are no official figures on the number of cyber cafes in India, a CII-IMRB report pegs the number at 1,80,000. The report mentions that the growth of cyber cafés has declined as well — down to 20 per cent growth, from a 60 per cent growth in 2004-05. Another report states that the number of cafés in Mumbai is down to just about 600 in 2007-2008 from 2000 in 2004-2005.

Think about it Puneet Tiwari, director, Internet Service Providers Association of India, isn’t surprised by the abysmal figures. Many small entrepreneurs are fast losing interest in investing in a cyber café. The reasons vary but the most common ones include:Boom of affordable PCs and Internet/ broadband connec tions in the market. Easy access to Internet/ email at home or the workplace. Strict regulation by the police. Decline in speed and the quality of service.Increase in tariff due to service tax and in some case entertain ment tax and VAT. Tiwari believes that café owners, too, are partly to blame for the cyber café story moving from boom to bust. “They connect too many PCs with a single low-speed connection,” he says.

“The users do not have a good browsing experience and start looking for faster alternatives.” Snehal Kirkise and Shweta Sawant went down this road. Both students were Internet addicts who frequented cyber cafés for college-related project work, surfing or simply chatting with friends.This changed when their local cable operators came up with more practical and affordable alternatives. As part of their triband deal, they were offered free LAN along with Internet connectivity and TV cable, for a reasonable fee.

Snehal went in for the MTNL TriB 200 monthly plan that offered unlimited hours for Rs 200 while Shweta opted for a similar plan for Rs 210 with Incablenet. Today , they both access Internet from the comforts of their home Samar Kapoor, art director, says, “My office computer has a powerful firewall. I feel safe to check my bank balance online or use my credit card to shop online. Can a cyber café with its one PC and multiple users guarantee such safety?” Spreading the net He elaborates that there is no ban on social networking or chatting after office hours. “I get the opportunity to catch up with friends and end up avoiding a visit to a cyber café.”

The I-Cube 2007 report by the IMRB states that the office comp is fast becoming more popular to just catch up with family and friends. Result: a drop in cyber café users.This is a significant change since 2003, when nearly half of the Internet users visited cafés as the main point for net access. Parent trap By large, parents are anti-cafés.

Recent stories of terrorists sending e-mail via cafes as well as the easy access of porn online have made parents sceptical. Tiwari says, “We ask children to register and show a photo ID before using the net. This prevents kids from accessing emails and browsing restricted sites. But still parents wonder what they are up to at the cafes.” They opt to buy a PC. With the prices moving southwards — a Lenovo costs as little as Rs 22,000 — a home PC is no longer an unrealistic dream. The chance to keep an eye on the kids is a bonus.

Big, bad world Naresh Ajwani, president, Sify Technologies, the largest chain of branded cyber cafes in India, believes that the café owner is harassed for no apparent reason. “If a terrorist calls from a PCO, do you blame its owner? But everyone feels that troubling cyber owners is the only way to keep tabs on anti-social activites, many of which, they believe, originate from Internet cafés.” He agrees that security is a priority but feels that the laws are extremely harsh and tend to target the service provider. “There were reports in March this year that terrorists were using the BlackBerry to send e-mails and avoid detection. Nothing was done about that. The clampdown targeted just us.” Ajwani suggests the formation of an independent government agency to tackle issues. He also wants a government-approved training programme for owners.

“But most of all, society at large, needs to be educated about the Internet and its power.” He feels that the figures stating a decline are exaggerated. “There has been a very slow growth but things are not that bad. People are blowing the situation out of proportion.” Future scenario Optimistically, Balendu Shrivastava, group business director, IMRB International, believes, “Cyber café owners will evolve and survive. The present lot needs to come up with new strategies, which will attract customers as well as retain the current ones.

“The future is not the traditional one PC, one-user concept. Cafés need to act as a community-building agency . The days of the single, young male surfing are over” Internet cafes with online gaming like Zapak and Private Eye may be the future. Shrivastava predicts, “Kids can’t compete by themselves. They will come to the café with their friends to have a good time.”

Speaking globally.

The concept and name, cyber café, was invented at the beginning of 1994 by Ivan Pope.

In June 1994, The Binary Café, the first Internet café, opened in Toronto, Ontario.

The first public, commercial American Internet café was conceived and opened by Jeff Anderson in August 1994, at Infomart in Dallas, Texas and was called The High Tech Café.

A variation of Internet café called PC bang (similar to LAN gaming centre) became extremely popular in South Korea when StarCraft came out in 1997.

In some areas of Los Angeles, cafés are controlled because they attract street gangs.

Meanwhile, at home.

July 2008: The terror e-mail sent to media representatives minutes before the Ahmedabad serial blasts was sent from a residential flat in the Sanpada area in Navi Mumbai.

August 2007: Mumbai teenager Adnan Patrawala was murdered by friends he met on the social networking site, Orkut.

March 2007: Objectionable MMS clips shot on mobile camera phones of girls in were available for down load on several sites.

October 2006: The Mumbai cyber crime cell arrested Sachid anand Shenoy for hacking into e-mail accounts of TATA Internet Service.

September 2006: a 24-year-old computer nerd threatened to hack into Unit Trust of India’s web site if he was not paid a ransom of Rs 15 lakh he was arrested.