The first, Telixo.com, came about after Bhatia's handheld ran out of power and he scrambled to find the details of a meeting he had scheduled in India. Forced to wake up his assistant in the middle of the night in California, he wanted to find a simple way to access his entire schedule and contacts via the mobile phone.
He settled upon text messaging as the solution. Users of the service can upload or sync their contacts, notes and calendars to Telixo and request information via SMS. For instance, sending a text message ".cal 12 13 04" to Telixo will receive a reply with all meetings scheduled for that day.
Another Bhatia company now in beta is Hotseasons.com, a travel site that focuses on hotel ratings. The idea sprouted from his personal frustration with travel research.
"I found that in doing hotel research online, all the hotels sounded the same," he said. "You arrive, and the room they give you is really [bad, ] but they call it a 'suite' because it has a kitchen table."
These aren't Bhatia's first follow-ups to Hotmail, which he sold to Microsoft Corp. for $400 million. His Arzoo.com succumbed to the dot-com bust, but as CEO of Navin Communications Inc., he's turned the India-based company into one of the country's leading voicemail providers. In 2000, he also invested in anti-spam firm IronPort Systems Inc., which recently closed a Series D funding round of $45 million.
"I'm having fun with this," he said. "This is a new way of entrepreneurship—doing a bunch of these at one time."
Via Hotmail Founder Has Lots More in Store
