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Hammer goes down on India's first auction site

Anamika Rath

Mumbai, Sept 21: Online Shoppe India Pvt Ltd is launching India's first auction site modelled on the lines of ebay.com, the world's most popular auction site. The company launched online-shoppe.com, an e-commerce enabled shopping mall on the Internet a month ago.

The auction site can be accessed on www.online-shoppe.com for brand-based Internet auctions. According to Online Shoppe's director Shashank Shah: ``We are looking at brand new products to be auctioned through this novel and exciting medium of sales, to ensure customer satisfaction.''

Auctions on the net are a rage abroad, especially in the USA, which has a huge community of bidders on the Internet. In the US the online bidding community is growing by the day and sites like ebay.com have a registered community of 5.9 million people who log on to their site to bid for products listed by other sellers.

What ebay.com has created is a virtual marketplace where a seller can list his products-alongwith pictures-and the ebay.com registered user basecan bid for them. Result: In the six months ending June 1999, ebay.com generated a revenue of $92.93 million. However, online-shoppe.com at the moment will not allow sellers to list their own products so as to maintain a check on the quality of the products and to ensure that they are brand new. Says Shah ``The concept of online shopping itself is so new. Without trust, people are not comfortable buying things. So as a policy we have taken only branded products where quality is guaranteed.''

The site thus has products listed which are only brand new and come with a guarantee/warranty offered directly by the manufacturing companies. ``We feel that the market can only absorb the brand auction concept at this point of time, unlike the conventional auction where the buyer and seller are unaware of each other. In our brand auction, all the products are put up by our company (identity of seller is known to all the bidders), thereby we are in a position to offer brand new products. This ensures that the customercannot be cheated as he is dealing with a reputed retailer of products,'' adds Shah.

To control price, the company has a policy whereby it limits the highest bid of a product to its maximum retail price if required. This ensures that the price ceiling condition of products which have an MRP is adhered to. At the same time, the company has also decided to make a starting bid price which would be 55-60 per cent lower than MRP. Duration of auctions range from one to 14 days. Says Shah: ``The duration and entry price would depend on the manufacturer.''

The Website enables the consumer not only to bid but also to keep track of the status of her bid. If anyone bids higher than her bid, she automatically receives an email stating that she has been outbid, and has the option of entering a new bid.

Customers can also keep track of all the past auctions they have bid for, with the status for each auction. The site is housing about 30 brands at present, ranging from Titan, Armani, Reebok, Nike, and Peter England.It is expecting about 40,000 registered users in the next three months. Per auction, it is expecting 30-40 bidders.

Bidding at online-shoppe.com?