Imagine building and owning a website. Now imagine that after putting in a year of effort and making the concept and site popular, one fine day you find that it no longer exists. This is exactly what happened to Purnima Varadrajan, CEO and Founder of iPOTT, a Bangalore based software search company. It was a normal morning when she switched on her laptop and waited for the company website to load. But instead of being greeted by the homepage of the website, she was shocked to see the message on the screen which read, “The website no longer exists.” The days that followed were not normal…


Started end 2005, iPOTT is a Web based information center for all software developed across the world. Software vendors list their products on this website, which enables easy and quick information access, free trial downloads, and online software purchase. Hence, the aforementioned situation wasn’t just another minor problem.

The domain IS Provider was missing and the domain was locked with him. This actually meant that iPOTT.com was no longer available. The situation affected staff morale, site credibility, and customer relations. Everyone Purnima knew, including her friends, told her that there wasn’t much to do about the situation. She approached NASSCOM and the cyber crime authorities in India and the U.S. who all could only tell her the same disappointing thing, “Nothing can be done.”

But Purnima was undeterred. She decided to take up the matter with ICANN, the organization that oversees a number of Internet-related tasks on behalf of the U.S. government. The consequence was really enchanting for her: she got back the domain of her website.

Life, like success, does not come on a silver platter. Having to shoulder family responsibilities at a very young age, her career started in the school she studied. She completed most of her education via correspondence and earned her post graduation and MBA with formal certifications in TQM and ISO. Having exposure to SIX SIGMA quality standards, today she also is a qualified Oracle Financials professional.