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Dot-Coms and the Making of an Overseas Territory >> 139

particularly from companies interested in targeting American NRIs. Fur-
ther, obtaining Bollywood content was relatively easy and did not cost these
small-scale enterprises much. As Thakur explained, “A lot of content is pretty
much free because the incremental costs for producers or distributors are
very low. All they have to do is send us a CD with images and text, and some-
times a distributor like Eros will send us a DVD with clips. For them, this
was good publicity. Had it been expensive, they might have thought twice.”
For the latest Bollywood news, these websites relied primarily on syndicated
news services such as IANS (India Abroad News Service).
To distinguish themselves in the clutter of Bollywood sites online,
Thakur and his team at wahindia.com even produced a weekly countdown
and a Bollywood news show. Every Saturday, a four-person team compris-
ing Thakur, a cameraperson, a host, and an editor would create a twenty- to
thirty-minute segment using the materials they obtained from distributors
like Eros Entertainment and often, DVDs borrowed from the local Indian
grocery store. “We did attract audiences from around the world, but we also
realized that what we were doing was not sustainable in the long run,” said
Thakur. Despite concerted efforts at creating “stickiness,” a term that refers
to how well a website is able to retain a loyal user base, and building a “com-
munity” by inviting user-generated content, wahindia.com and other similar
websites could not compete with sites like indiafm.com, indiatimes.com, or
rediff.com. In the fall of 2006, wahindia.com went offline and was reinvented
as a social networking website that would serve as a platform for talented
young NRIs to develop a portfolio and establish connections with a range of
industry professionals in Bollywood. By November 2006, having obtained
an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding, Sunil Thakur had set up
an office in Malad, an area of Bombay close to western and northern suburbs
such as Bandra, Pali Hill, Andheri, Juhu, Versova, Santa Cruz, and Goregaon
where most film studios and television corporations are located and where
most stars and other industry professionals live. Giving me an update in
April 2007, Thakur remarked, “It has made such a difference to meet indus-
try people face-to-face, to have PROs say they would like to work with you. I
tell you, location matters.”
The notion that location matters even in the context of dot-com com-
panies and “placeless” networks of images and information, what Castells
terms a “space of flows,” raises important questions about geography that
scholars analyzing media convergence have not addressed in systematic
fashion. So far, scholars have tended to focus attention on the migration of
content across media forms, without paying adequate attention to the spatial
logics that shape the flow of content between “new media” companies and