online shopping. then. and now.

circa 2000.

the dot-com boom was a gleam in everyone's eyes.

of eye-balls, ideas and sky-high valuations.

no one but no one ever imagined that the dream would go bust. my erstwhile employers at jaldi e-commerce limited spent money like water to try and get to a level where they could conumers to their portal and in turn attract funding that would take their pure-play shopping venture to stratospheric heights.

classic case of a chicken and egg situation.

may be we were before our time.

PC penetration levels were negligible.
broadband was unheard of.
surfers could not complete a single online purchase without mishap.
merchandise quality online was limited and suspect. even if good brands were pushed, they had to be heavily discounted in order to drive purchase traffic to the portal.
selling heavily discounted products online angered the manufacturers who felt that the balance of their channel and business was being upset by us upstarts.
the investments were just not worth the returns.

and we forgot. that the indian consumer views his shopping the way he views entertainment. he wants to spend time. experience it. feel it. touch, feel it.

we ignored basic customer psyche at our own peril. and there was no other revenue stream.
jaldi.com was consigned to dust.

7 odd years later, things are different. futurebazaar.com has made a quiet debut.
offering a selction of carefully chosen merchandise. that requires limited touch-feel. and is pretty much benchmarked stuff.
despite the site navigation problems, lack of product information and the plebian interface, the prices are attractive.
a nokia N72 handset is available for just over rs. 13,000. it does not however specify if this is with a bill / warranty.
the new 1 GB ipod shuffle is for sale for rs. 4,300 which is a good deal.

now to wait and watch mode.
let's see if this works......


and now back to the chaos at work.