Nilacharal

Business world has announced chennaibazaar, an online gift shop, as one of the six survivors amongst the dotcoms in India. Behind this huge success, there is a small surprise. The founders of the company, Ritesh Katariya and Rajesh Nahar are just 24 years and started this venture as freshers. Ritesh and Rajesh met at their MBA classes and quickly recognized their common interest. Their families were really concerned for their lack of Experience, when they knew that their 'kids' wanted to venture into web.

Chennaibazaar was officially launched in Dec 1998, initially offering e-commerce services to Chennaites. This was the first shopping mall to be launched from Tamil Nadu. The name Chennaibazaar – was coined to keeping in mind that its services and operations would be confined only in Chennai.

Chennaibazaar started with listing more than 2000 departmental products, which a Chennaite could select and could get them delivered at his doorstep anywhere in Chennai absolutely free of cost. This was a Cash on Delivery model.

In the start of June 1999, Chennaibazaar was completely restructured and this was targeting only Chennai based NRIs, who could send gifts like cake, flowers and sweets to their friends and relatives in Chennai. This concept was widely accepted and this was a major hit with a tremendous growth rate in terms of number of customers. Chennaibazaar.com from then started to be known as the green site.

Gradually, Chennaibazaar extended this service all over India and now Chennaibazaar is widely popular among NRIs from all over the world. Though the domain says Chennai but it serves to all Indians.

A little chat with the young dotcom gurus:

Nila : Tell us about yourself.
Rajesh : B.Sc. Computer Technology at PSG College of Technology Coimbatore (1994-97)
MBA with specialization in Marketing at ITM, Chennai(1997-2000)
Happily married with Sarala Nahar, having 1 year old son Abhishek Raj Nahar
Ritesh : Bachelore of Commerce from Madras University
MBA with specialization in Marketing at ITM, Chennai(1997-2000)
Internet as a passion and chat was a old time favourite

Nila : Fine.Where did you get the financial support from to start off.
Ritesh: Our own investment. Slowly and steadily as and when we could bring in investments we were doing this. We have built this on our own.

Nila : What is the turnover now?
Rajesh : We have touched Rs. 6.5 Million as on 31st March 2001

Nila : What do you think your destination in business is?
Rajesh : In terms of presence in business - Global
In terms of Volumes - billions dollors
In terms of visibility - Every where. To start with, we are launching our UK operations this year. Then US and Canada in the next year.We'll expand to other parts of the world progressively.

Nila : Have you ever had difficulty coping up with the business?
Ritesh : Yes, basically we lacked in experience in the beginning which is very necessary. But as things progessed we were much better.

Nila : What is the secret behind your success?
Rajesh : the best team and time. We have right blend of people who are specialising in their own field and and doing their best in that.

Nila: how did you build your team?
Rajesh: Our company started first with we two employees and every new person joined us as the requirement was felt We chose our people carefully because we have financial constraint Ritesh is the president of Rotract,club of Zenith. So he introduced lots of people from his club and acquintances.That helped us.

Nila:what is yr advice for budding dotcomers?
Ritesh: Without a solid revenue model, don't venture into net business and don't look for external funding initially.

We wish them for their dream of billion dollars and global presence to come true!