Monday, February 19, 2001		Article

Platform for Indian & US traders
By Peeyush Agnihotri

INDIAMART.COM, an online business-to-business (B2B) market place portal, is in the process of launching a co-branded Web site that will bring the Indian exporters and US importers on a single platform.

US importers, who are the members of Yourimporters.com, would be able to trade directly with those Indian exporters who are members of Indiamart portal after the co-branded transaction platform goes on the Web.

Indiamart’s tie-up with the US- based Yourimporter.com brings together manufacturers, suppliers and exporters from India and the community of importers in the USA. The alliance aims at developing a common online hub that makes international trading in the B2B segment highly effective and cost-efficient. The hub will not only offer easy-to-search online catalogues from Indian manufacturers and suppliers to serve importers in the USA, but also a "request for quote" functionality that will automatically generate business for Indian businesses with a dynamic auction capability.

Yourimporter has an online presence in building e-commerce marketplaces for industries that are highly dependent on imported products. While the exporters will benefit by increasing revenue and decreasing marketing and sales expenses, providing services like "access to credit," third party warehousing, increasing customer base and enabling a global reach for their product, the importers will get reduced costs and increasing revenue besides being provided with a transparent and painless importing process that will shorten the import lifecycle.

The new B2B transaction platform will offer facilities like B2B auctioning, electronic trade offers, request for quote and proposal, along with business support services like business finance, logistics and insurance to facilitate online trade. This will bring online the "action" that was so far being initiated online, but was being finalised offline.

The platform will also offer buyer verification and sampling services online to participating members through a tie-up with global verification giant SGS (Société Générale de Surveillance, Geneva). "Indiamart.com is also talking to ICICI and Citibank for provision of online payment gateway services for B2B transactions through the portal," sources say. This co-branded site will be launched soon after auction.indiamart.com, another soon-to-be-launched Indiamart product, makes a mark on the Web.Talks for similar strategic tie-ups with indiafrance.com that will enhance B2B trade between Indian businesses and their French counterparts are already on.