Business Centers, like DBS are quite popular in India. The services offered by a first-rate Business Center would include a well-furnished office space, excellent communication facilities (telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet, Video conferencing), copy / print facilities, limited catering facilities and optionally secretarial services. Many Business Centers operate within the premises of some of the star hotels. However, the more successful ones in the Indian context are those that operate independent of the hotels; often in the commercial district of the city / town. A major advantage of the Business Center is its location at the heart of the business activity, thereby providing easy access to customers & clients. Some of the more imaginative centers would provide flexibility in operational hours, flexible provision for expansion / contraction as per business needs and flexible option to use part of the services. Some of them are located in multiple cities & towns offering the added advantage of tying up with a single Business Center operator for multiple locations.

Thanks to unreasonable real estate prices, the mobility of the people, the boom in start-up business and the difficulty of getting telephone connections, many small companies find Business Centers an attractive way to bootstrap their operations. In fact, many multinational companies (including Microsoft India, Intel Asia, Compaq India, SAP India) used this route to quickly establish their presence in the country.

E Business is the talk of the town today. E-business implies electronic support to all business activities (customer prospecting, order processing, procurement, production, logistics and invoicing); as such in today’s Internet era E-business is Everybody’s Business! Naturally E-Business is relevant to SMEs too.

E-Business means many things to many people. It is Internet Marketing to some, Electronic Payment Systems to some other and Web-based Customer Service to yet some more.

There are many who think E-Business means only clicks and no bricks! But, I for one think start-up businesses, particularly in SME sector need an electronic version of Business Centers.

In this article the focus is start-up businesses, may be small or big in any segment of the Industry - those who see a potential in electronically conducting business. I for one feel that E Business Centers would have a major role to play in India – with its large talent pool of those who understand Web technology and a large number of start-up companies that want to “outsource”. They would want to outsource the entire operation and maintenance of Web Business at affordable costs with a business model that would suit their growth and include a scenario of “going on their own” at an appropriate time. This is similar to Business Centers. One starts with a Business Center and at an opportune time grows into his / her own facility. Such a facility is what I refer to as E Business Center.

The economic viability of the Business Center operation stems from the fact, that many of the facilities & services are shared across multiple clients; thereby offering the benefits of economics of scale. Start-up infrastructure provisioning takes time – for interior design, phone / fax / Internet connection, copy center etc. – a start-up company with limited time & resources may not find time for all this. The Business Center would also have the advantage of local knowledge, people, service providers & skilled workers that a start-up company is unlikely to have. Since the facilities are shared the Business Center would be in a position to absorb the fluctuating fortunes that an individual start-up company can ill-afford.

The Internet is rewriting the rules of the game everywhere and Business Centers cannot be left alone! In the Internet Age corporations would start moving away from “brick & mortar” world to “virtual” worlds, the oft-quoted Amazon Bookstore being a classic example.

Yet it is not all clicks and no bricks.

To be in business, one needs a place where customers can go to, a set of services that customers can study and decide to take and a mechanism to negotiate the right price and ultimately pay for the services. Often, but not always, most of these can be achieved as comfortably in “Cyberspace” as in the real world. Often such “cyber-presence” may supplement real world operation. Corporations quickly getting their act together to set up “store-front”, web presence etc. represent this trend. It is estimated that by the year-end practically all BT 500 Companies would be present on the Web, if not already present. But for many companies that are starting their operations, Web presence and establishing “store-front” is perceived as an expensive operation. One needs a host of hardware, software & skill-sets to manage such storefronts. That is where E-Business Centers would make eminent sense.

What would E-Business Center offer?

First and foremost, an electronic presence in the form of e-mail address, Web page, pointers to services, contact information to mobile or stationary workers, price list, catalog etc – a whole range of services can be planned. To start with, it could be a simple Web presence. Thanks to imaginative ways of advertising on the Net you could still reach out to the potential customers. Next, it could be a 24-hour catalog store. Ultimately it could be a full-fledged store offering the entire E-commerce functions. Technology exists today to take a “staged approach” to all these services. What has not happened is a mechanism in which a start-up company could get all these services outsourced completely.

There are sites like HotMail that would give you e-mail address; sites like GeoCities that would host your web-page (often for personal use); there are companies like Rediff or PlanetAsia that would offer high-end Web-hosting services & Web Consulting services, often for the large-scale organized sector. However if you are an NGO, a small fry, a start-up company with little time to spend on a whole range of strategic & technology issues, you do not have a place to go.

E- Business Centers would be a natural place for start-ups, particularly in SME sector. Such centers would provide an “instant start” for your E-Business just as Business Centers provide you a quick-start with your ordinary business.

They would offer all the advantages of a standard Business Center but help the start-up to be present on the Net very fast. With the trend of globalization in every sector of economic activity, it is important for many start-up companies to leverage Internet presence.

It is particularly pleasing to find indiamarkets.com offering such E-Business Centers across the towns in India and provide a much-needed "ramp up” opportunity for start-up companies.

Where do you want to go today, if you are a start-up in India wanting to embrace e-business? It is loud and clear – indiamarkets.com!