Oh yeah! The two business behemoth have entered ecommerce space with the launch of straightline.in, website powered by IBM and Cognizant.
mjunction, the joint venture between Tata & SAIL runs the largest eMarketplace for Steel and has transacted worth over Rs.45,193 Crores since launch, i.e. 2001 and runs several other sites like metaljunction.in, buyjunction.in, coaljunction.in, autojunction.in, financejunction.in , valuejunction.in, and mjunctionedge.
straightline.in is currently focused on apparels, electronics, toys, books, phones and plans to enter the B2C auction space later this year.![logo_straightline[1]](http://www.pluggd.in/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/logo_straightline1.gif "logo_straightline[1]"){kind=logo}
mjunction has ambitious plans for straightline – the company is targeting 30% market share (currently covers 644 cities) and plans to expand to rural India by 2010.
The company works with sellers across the country and has partnered with Drive India Enterprise Solution, a Tata group company for logistics.
Do give straightline a ride and share your opinion? Is there a differentiator?
Also see: eBay India Census Guide – Mumbai leads the E-Commerce Race
Their ecommerce background will help (as will the weight of real world transactions – thats huge!) but there’s a gazillion miles to go before they understand the consumer mindset and needs, and the site reflects this gap.
Its great to see heavyweights enter the eCommerce space, though.
They have like 130 movies in their DVDs. Shdnt they have thousands of titles at least? Isnt there some basic spade work they need to complete before including Hindi movies as a category? ….Based on this one sample point, even gazillion miles seems to be an understatement.
I think thats because the website has just been launched.. I myself buy stuff online and I remember a similar thing with several other new ecommerce websites.. Moreover, these things tend to change overnight, today you might see only a 100 odd, but in a few days it might be a few thousand. I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt for now, cuz the site is still in beta and more than anything else its a Tata brand and I am sure that they will take care of it..Here’s wishing Straightline guys all the best!
Tata’s were palnning to sell the NANO thru metaljunction.com , so the saleing cost can come down.
With Regards