March 11, 2000
Business Standard

IMO Communications Seeks Global Linkages

IMO Communications, promoter of India's first comprehensive business to business infomediary - indiamarkets.com - is finalising global tie ups with leading B2B sites and will pump in $10 million (50 crore) this year to consolidate its position as the country's leading B2B destination.

As a first step, indiamarkets will set up 70  exclusive Internet cafes over the next nine months, primarily for the training and orientation of users to the Web and the indiamarkets site. "Our typical customer comes from places like Jalandhar and Ludhiana, apart from the big cities.  So it is imperative that we keep it simple and help them get comfortable with the idea,"  IMO managing director Rohan Ajila said.

Technical and credit rating of companies is another service that's coming up on the site to enable better buyer decisions.  Ajila said indiamarkets would leverage on converging technologies to deliver a range of value added services like messaging on pagers and mobile phones, and focus on the next generation Wireless Application Protocol that will drive future business.  At present indiamarkets has tie-ups with Max Paging and bplnet.com.

Something close to a tender system has also kicked off on the site where buyers are continually posted about specific suppliers / surplus up for sale, rates and relevant details.  Alerts to both buyers and sellers is another service from the site.  "So far, we've been supplier centric, but now its time to even out that skew," Ajila said.

Indiamarkets is also looking at virtual trade fairs as a big opportunity.  The company recently had the ASI Millennium fair held at the Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore running live on the site.  Plast India was another show that was done on the site simultaneously.  With a 11,000 strong registered user community within three months of its launch, indiamarkets is waiting for the critical mass of 1,00,000 users before starting fee based services.  "The payment gateway is not an issue.  We will have that in place as soon as we know we have the volumes to start on a fee- based system," Ajila said.

The company will soon align with market leaders in focus segments like transport and hardware on a revenue sharing basis.

International private equity fund, E.M Warburg Pincus,  whose Indian investments include rediff.com, Bharti Televentures, HDFC, Nicholas Piramal and UTV, is IMO's investment partner for indiamarkets.com.