India’s Infibeam Democratizes eCommerce with Buildabazaar.com

By Tech Wire Asia | 28 March, 2012

While everyone and their mother-in-law is debating about whether eCommerce in India is a bubble or not, Infibeam has silently launched BuildaBazaar.com. It’s a portal to build your own eCommerce sites to fuel a million more bubbles. Let’s forget the critics for now and think about the idea. I got one word : brilliant.

eCommerce is nothing but selling stuff online. With the growing Internet population selling anything from cakes to condoms online, is the only logical thing to do. If launching million eCom stores is inevitable, then why not make it easy? Besides, none of the eCommerce sites — including the big ones — have any innovation going on for them. They have the same design. They use the same set of keywords. They accept cash on delivery and more often than not, they sell the same stuff for a rupee less.

Infibeam’s Buildabazaar.com is a brilliant idea whose time has come. It’s motto is simple too.

BuildaBazaar.com + Online Marketing + Payment Gateway + Logistics = Your dream store

If you look at the motto, it’s very simple. Infibeam is offering the website infrastructure, marketing, payment gateway and the logistics.

The service doesn’t come cheap, though. Packages start at Rs. 1000 (US$ 19.73) per month, which means you have to beat that in your sales. It’s easy to attach an “it’s not cheap” moniker just as I did now. But, we have to look at the services it is offering. You as a entrepreneur will just have to bring your goods to the site. Everything else will be taken care of by Infibeam. You can potentially launch a Flipkart or Infibeam for that matter.

Google has launched a similar service for Indian SME’s where it provides the domain and hosting for free, and also offers to set-up the website. Infibeam’s Bazaar has gone several steps ahead and removed a lot of overhead.

If you want to sell cakes, buffaloes, fish or shawls from your store room, then you are running out of excuses.

I know this is too much but Is there Cash on Delivery? I was told Indian eCommerce consumers just love that option.