Mjunction Services, an e-commerce company which is a joint venture between Tata Steel and Steel Authority of India (SAIL), has forayed into a business-to-consumer (B2C) initiative.
Named www.straightline.in, with technology support from information technology companies IBM and Cognizant, the e-commerce portal now comes in direct competition with established ones, such as eBay and Amazon.com, among others.
Viresh Oberoi, managing director of Mjunction, said: “We are looking at a 30 per cent market share of e-retailing in India, to begin with. We have outsourced our logistics services to Drive India Enterprise Solution, another Tata Group company.”
The portal would also start classifieds and B2C auctions this year. “We have been into the online space for some time now, selling industrial products and commodities such as steel, coal, iron ore, and stressed assets such as plants and machinery, automobiles and even land and building. Business volume in terms of transaction value of our B2B businesses had soared to Rs 14,393 crore last fiscal, which would help us retain our leadership position as India’s largest e-commerce company. We will build upon our track record with Straightline, our first B2C venture,” Oberoi added.
Consumers from 644 cities covering about 5,000 pin codes can experience online shopping at straightline.in, which will be extended to rural India, covering 10,000 pin codes by the end of financial year 2010. The Indian e-commerce market is valued at Rs 9,210 crore, growing at 30 per cent, while the B2C non-travel market is valued at Rs 2,210 crore, growing at 40 per cent. A recent study on the distribution of the global online population by 2012 noted that India will contribute 6 per cent, or 109 million users, out of the 812 million in all of Asia.
Mjunction clocked transactional value of Rs 14,393 crore in 2008-09 and is targeting a cumulative transaction value of Rs 50,000 crore by FY 2013. The company’s e-retailing venture is expected to soar along with the 30 per cent growth rate which the Indian e-retail market is experiencing.
Pressmart, an online publishing solutions company, has launched a SaaS (software as a service) ePortal solution. “The tool allows the publishers create and manage their news portals. Unlike a licensed product, it is an on-demand service allowing publishers to choose the services they required,” Mr Sanjiv Gupta, Chief Executive Officer of Pressmart, said here in a press release. The services included Web 2.0 interface, cloud hosting, advanced archiving, content caching, social network and subscriptions.
Mjunction an e-commerce company which is a joint venture between Tata Steel and Steel Authority of India (SAIL), has forayed into a business-to-consumer (B2C) initiative. Earlier mjunction was in the news for doing Rs 14,300 crore worth transactions last year by selling only products and services related to steel industry.
Called Straightline this ecommerce portal has been put up with technology support from companies like IBM and Cognizant. It aspires to take on the likes of eBay and Amazon.com, among others in the ecommerce space in India.
Viresh Oberoi, managing director of Mjunction stated that they aimed at acquiring 30% market share of e-retailing in India and have outsourced their logistics to Drive India Enterprise Solution, another Tata Group company.
The features would include classifieds as well as auctions model and would provide products across apparel, books, consumer electronics verticals. We have stated recently as to how diwali will bring a gold rush for ecommerce players. Given that the ecommerce market is still nascent in India and is pegged at Rs 9,210 crore this may still be early days of growth. It makes sense for larger players like SAIL and Tata who have formed this joint venture called MJunction to enter the market early and capture a sizeable chunk of the business in the next 3-5 years.
It would be important for them to brand their B2C portal well in this market. One would wait and see what media spends they do to support this new initiative.
So while Mjunction launced a B2C initiative Pressmart which is an online publishing solutions company has launched a B2B tool for publishers to create and manage their new portals. Pressmart has launched a SaaS based ePortal solution which is an on-demand service allowing publishers to choose the services they require to build their portals.
The solution offers a CMS, Web 2.0 interface, cloud hosting, advanced archiving, content caching, Web & mobile delivery and social networking, classifieds, analytics, ad subscriptions features as well.
Rajiv Dingra
Rajiv is a prolific blogger who has over 1000 blog posts to his credit at WATBlog. The Founder & CEO of WATMedia our parent company and the Chief Blogger at WATBlog, he has been the driving force of the WAT Evolution. Rajiv does some excellent analysis of the digital media industry in India and often brings out deep insights with his inimitable style of interviewing. Just mail rajiv|at|watblog|dot|com and it will reach him..
