IndiaMART.com
unveils India's largest online B2B auction platform on
completing five profitable years
April
1, 2001: Indiamart.com- India's largest and oldest B2B
marketplace has launched its online B2B auction platform on
completion of five successful years of survival and growth. The
platform will cater to the buying needs of over five lakh global
B2B buyers that visit Indiamart.com every month, by listing
items for online auction by Indian suppliers. In addition, it
will also serve to the members of its strategic partner-
yourimporter.com, a conglomerate of importers in the US.
The new auction platform offers suppliers to register online
and list their inventory for auction on an annual subscription
basis. Based on English Auction, the seller decides on the
Reserve Price, the Minimum Bid Price, Bid Increment amount etc.
for an item. Interested global buyers on the other hand, can bid
on the items listed for auction free of cost after going through
the product information online. Participating sellers and buyers
can easily track their auctions online, and once an auction is
timed out, the seller is introduced to the winner of the auction
to complete the transaction.
"IndiaMART's objective is to make Indian businesses
flourish at a global platform through Internet. We have been
successfully doing it since 1996 through various B2B solutions
and services like online directory offering free-listing and
business query forwarding facility, building and promoting
online catalogs for businesses, and building content &
database-rich industry vortals, etc. We now wish to further
benefit our member businesses from an online catalog based
trade-lead system to B2B auctions that offer a more direct
method of online trading and negotiations", says Mr
Dinesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Indiamart Intermesh Ltd. on
the launch of the auction platform.
Indiamart.com, established in 1996, attracts international
buyers looking for exporters, suppliers and manufacturers from
India for their business needs. The online marketplace generates
more than one lakh B2B trade queries every month through
which its member SME businesses are estimated to have conducted
a business worth Rs 600 crores in the last financial
year alone. Already fetching 5.6 million pageviews,
representing one of the highest figures in the world in the B2B
segment, Indiamart.com offers its visitors online B2B directory
with over 60,000 businesses listed under more than 450
product/service categories. Visitors to Indiamart.com can
browse through over 1000 business catalogues and can
interact online with member businesses. The marketplace also
offers a lot of useful B2B information on key Indian industries,
interactive community tools and business support services to
facilitate B2B trade between its visitors and member businesses.
Through
auction, it will now offer a more direct and interactive trading
and negotiation platform to fuel online trade across countries
as well as locally. "Our new online platform offering
B2B catalogues, auctions, trade offers and other online business
support services will bring online the 'action' that was so far
being initiated at indiamart.com, but being finalised offline in
the form of a transaction. Through online B2B auctions, whereby
sellers will get the highest price for their inventory and
buyers will be able to interact with multiple sellers at the
same time for their business requirements. Such e-marketplaces
make B2B sourcing process highly efficient, especially for
industrial and international buyers. Indiamart intends to
leverage this potential in favour of the large SME segment in
India engaged in exports by bringing to them global business
opportunities." adds Mr. Agarwal.
The platform will also avail support services including
logistics, insurance buyer verification and sampling services
online to participating members through a tie-up with global
verification giant SGS (Société Générale
de Surveillance, Geneva) to help build trust in online
trade. Indiamart is already talking to ICICI and Citibank for
provision of online payment gateway services for B2B
transactions through the portal.
The auction engine that drives the system online has been
developed in-house by Indiamart. The The new B2B transaction
platform further aims at offering facilities like B2B reverse
auctioning, ETOs (Electronic Trade Offers), RFQ/RFP (Request for
Quote/Request for Proposal) along with business support services
like business finance, logistics, insurance etc. to facilitate
online trade. IIL is also developing a customised RFQ based B2B
exchange dealing in stainless steel for Jindal Strips Ltd. that
facilitates buyers and suppliers to interact with the
organisation online.
A conservative estimate by the company reveals B2B transactions
worth Rs 1,200 crores through the portal in the current year,
resulting from estimated 3000 online auction deals. In addition,
Indiamart is confident of achieving atleast 2,500 online
catalogues of member businesses on the portal by the end of the
year, making Indiamart.com the largest Indian B2B portal, not
far behind those largest in the world.
Unaffected by the dotcom hype during 1999 or the bubble burst
in the year 2000, the humble corporate has been silently growing
at the rate of 110% p.a. on an average. Indiamart is one of the
very few dot coms that have not only broken even but have been
consistantly making profits. IndiaMART was started in 1996 with
a small personal investment by Mr Dinesh Agarwal, a software
engineer belonging to a trading business family, who had
returned to India after having worked with AT&T and Novell
in the US, to start his own venture. The company, today known as
IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd., engages over 160 professionals and
operates through its head-office in Delhi and branch offices in
Mumbai, Chennai and Lucknow, supported by a nationwide network
of 24 marketing & service franchisees.
Ref. URLs:
http://www.indiantravelportal.com
http://intermesh.net
For further information,
Click here
