After selling to Microsoft in 1997, Sabeer continued as the president of Hotmail. By now the number of employees was 144 and it had a beautiful new office. His contract with Microsoft prevented him from starting something new and this held him back for a while, but soon he left Microsoft and started his end-to-end e-commerce company, Arzoo.

Again, he believed in running a lean establishment. He limited the staff strength to 30 of the brightest minds he could find. But this was the wrong time for a start-up and, eventually, he closed it down. He keeps his projects lean and has the guts to pull out when going on is impossible. As he says, failure is a badge of success.

Currently, Sabeer is involved in three IT companies and it is one of these, TeliVoice, that had brought him to Chandigarh, the city he was born in, one which has one of his closest friends, but still a place that he has visited only a few times.

The following are excerpts from an exclusive interview:

I don't think that we have a history of entrepreneurship. As people start taking risks, thinking about providing solutions, not just to themselves, but to their communities, you will find more of entrepreneurship. We have to develop that culture.

I just started. I knew that it would be big, but I had no idea that it would be so big. I was surprised that we became successful so quickly. In two years, from start to finish.

It was! It was!

I was so involved with the whole project that I literally would go to work at seven in the morning and come back only when I was tired. And I would do that seven days a week. And it wasn't hard work, it wasn't painful. I loved it. It was like I would feel fresh even after two or three hours of sleep, because it was my baby, my project. When people say hard work-I reply it was hard work that was effortless.

Hey! For the amount of cash that I got, no complaints! Would have many such babies, no problem! I was 29 years old when I sold Hotmail. For somebody who is 29 years old to have created something that is worth so much money and sold it at such a young age…there are very few in the world who can say that.

Yeah! You do evolve into it because at first you are struck by this. You don't know what to do, but in time you get used to it.

I do it in my own way. I teach at CalTech, Stanford and Harvard. I talk about entrepreneurship, I judge entreprenual contests, and I speak to highschool students. I do give back by way of education to people.

I think that it is the opportunities available. If you were to take the cross-section, a lot more Indians in the US have succeeded than in India. You have role models like Dr Narinder Kapany and so many others. You must have the ability to take risks.

People ask me so often: "Are you a one-hit wonder?" I don't see failure as a negative. It is a tremendous learning experience. That's what happens in the US. Failure is not a negative, it is a badge of honour because you have tried, you have worked hard and you will not make the same mistakes again, hopefully. So people keep trying. Without failing you cannot have success. When people ask me 'What if this fails?' I say, 'So what, I will do my next one and the one after that, because there is no shame in failing because it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all.'

There is a lot of cleaning up that is happening in IT in the United States because a lot of people who should not have been in IT got into IT. This was because they thought that it was a way to go to America and make a great living, but they really did not have the basics—they did not go through the education of the IITs or BITS, Pilani. They did not have a strong educational base. You did a short course and called yourself a programmer.

A lot of cleaning is happening. IT will always continue to have people who are genuinely good. At the end of this year, once we have gone through this period of an economic lull, IT spending will continue to grow and more and more people will continue to use computers. Everything will be more and more automated. IT still has a very bright future.

Go into IT if you are genuinely interested in it, if you genuinely like to program, if you genuinely like mathematics and engineering and science. If you don't have the aptitude, don't try to do something that is not your core competence. In India I see a lot of programmers who are programmers because it is a way out of poverty. And those people are not going to do well; the system is going to throw them out.

All those are independent. Java and C++ are just means. It's just like a mechanism. The core competency is logic, it is the understanding of computing, not as much as the vehicle. It is like if you want to get from point A to point B you can use a train, take a road or a plane. Java, C++ are all different mechanisms. Ultimately, you have to understand what it is that you have to do to get from here to there. You know how computers work, understand logic, and that is more important than a specific language.

Many of my best programmers say 'I don't even look at the language.' Because they can write the same thing in 10 different languages as long as they can achieve the end result. Understanding the core principles of programming is more important than the language used to describe them.

I love the outdoors. I love golf and playing tennis, hiking, trekking. I work with children's charities in the US and have joined with two others to rebuild my high school (St Joseph's) in Bangalore.

I lead a very disciplined life. I do have the fancy things, but I do not have 10 servants because I can't relate to that, way of living. I spend a lot of money on cars and good stuff, but I make my own food—sometimes, because I eat out most of the time. I am single, I don't have to think about money—I can do what I want, party, take out my friends for dinner…

The lifestyle is very disciplined. I wake up at 6.30 or 7 in the morning. I workout every day or I go for a run, and I think that discipline is what has kept me going for a long time.

I work with companies—I am involved in three companies and I spend a few days with each of them, find out what they are doing, strategise, solve problems, hire the right people, develop ideas, marketing knowledge…for example the whole TeliVoice thing happened because the company had some money left, it wasn't doing very well, so it was how can we can use something that we have developed to make something else which is useful.

I actively got involved in December last year. Before that I was the co-chairman, a CEO was running the company, which was not doing anything.

We had the ground staff here already and to deploy this concept anywhere else would have been a lot more expensive. We had a network in India already in place and SMS had really taken off in India. The upsell between SMS and Voice Mail is an easy one. Lastly, because we do have language problems in India as not all of the people are familiar with English. If we launch something in an English-speaking country, like the UK, the added benefit of voice is not really that great.

If we are successful—we are not really successful as yet—will try in other areas.

We have designed this chip which is like soft silicon. It is reconfigurable and can mimic the functionality of multiple Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs). The advantage of using a cradle chip is that if you use processor memory and a Cradle Chip, you can design an entire digital system around it and all of it is software programmable/designable, as opposed to designing ASICs around a core processor. It is a significant leap forward in design mechanism and I am very fascinated by it.

Only after four years of research and working on it have they got working models that they have started sampling to their customers.

I was involved with Arzoo from the start. I wanted to ride the Internet wave one more time. But conditions were not right for it.

At the moment it is in cold storage and I would revive it only if the market conditions are right. So far they don't seem to be improving.

The latest version of the concept is fine. This is to procure knowledge through the Internet and to make use of the vast distribution network of the Internet so that if anybody has an issue or a question, they can get it resolved from the Internet. The concept is good but the mechanics could not make it work.

It was not just understanding the technology. I think that the key factors are the ability to communicate and market. Besides the core—you have to have a strong education, you have to be disciplined— it's the ability to communicate. A lot of people are not successful because even though they have great ideas, they are not able to communicate them to others. Very clear, precise thinking and logic are necessary to succeed in any walk of life.

There are some areas where India is doing the right thing, absolutely. Like services companies, call centres, developing back office work of the US, Canada, the UK and Europe—it is a fantastic idea.

We are a risk-adverse society. Having grown up with not plenty, you do only what gets you immediate returns. All these areas get immediate returns. We are taking the time-tested path. We are slower on the innovation part; till today we are making Ambassador cars! I mean that's 1950s technology! Haven't we changed the whole technology? We have to get innovation in every aspect of Indian life.