BT dot.com/e-ntrepreneurs

The problem. A growing stock of duffel bags that you thought would be the fashion-statement of the working woman in summer 2000.

Solution one. Contact buyers you know, and cold-call those you don't. Work the telephones and the fax machines for a few weeks to get some customers to the table. And strike a deal.

Solution two. Spend lots, advertise in newspapers, and wait for the responses to pour (or, at least, trickle) in. Short-list those you think promising, and go to Step 1 of Solution 1.

Solution three. Log on to www.indiamarkets.com, list your offering on the surplus-inventory section, and liquidate your stock in less than a week.

At least 750 Small and Medium Enterprises (Sammys for short) now do. That is the number of organisations that have listed their offerings under the surplus-inventory section since the launch of Indiamarkets on December 1, 1999. Says Srikanth Hebbar, 54, the CEO of a small transformer parts-manufacturing company in Hubli (Karnataka): ''I got 4 new buyers for transformer parts from North India in the first month after I registered on indiamarkets. com. Earlier, I used to sell my products only in the South.''

Indeed, the site, promoted by the Bangalore-based India Market Online (IMO) Communications is visited by thousands of buyers from across the country (daily hits: 105,000), seeking customers, vendors, and trading partners. Boasts Rohan Ajila, 32, CEO, IMO: ''We will transform the way in which small and medium enterprises work.'' Want to dispose of an old diesel generator set or an arc welding machine? Just list it under the Used-Machinery section of Indiamarkets. Have some idle capacity? Post the details on Indiamarkets and help someone else cope with a sudden spike in demand.

FACT FILE

Name of the company: India Markets Online Communication
Name of the portal: www.indiamarkets.com
Focus of the portal: To facilitate buying and selling of industrial products for small and medium entrepreneurs
Promoter: Rohan Ajila
Promoter's background: MBA in finance from Houston & Texas University (US). Worked abroad and in India for about 9 years
Track record: Launched in December, 1999
Funded by: Warburg, Pincus & Co., Singapore

Welcome to India's first virtual B2B infomediary. The range of services on offer: supplier listings, auctions for surplus inventories, rosters of used machinery, and details of idle capacities. The depth? Over 145 product categories ranging from auto components to computers, and pesticides to precious stones. Indiamarkets also boasts a search utility that can help users search the site across product categories and geographies. For instance, if a small home appliances-manufacturer located in Bharuch (Gujarat) needs to buy electric motors of a certain horsepower, and would prefer to buy from suppliers located either in Gujarat, or the neighbouring states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan, the utility can help it identify the choice-set of suppliers that satisfy these criteria. And by simply clicking on the Website's Make-An-Enquiry facility, the prospective buyer can shoot off e-mails to companies in the choice-set.

The only catch (if it can be called that)? All buyers and sellers have to register themselves (free) with Indiamarkets. But although product-listing is the backbone of the B2B portal, it isn't the only factor that contributes to the Website's stickiness. www. indiamarkets.com is also home to reports on 70 industries, details of the industrial policies, and the infrastructural strengths of the Indian states and union territories, and news reports related to the product categories featured on the site. Adequate content to attract admiring looks even from its rivals. Avers L. Subramanyam, 35, CEO, Industrial Product Finder Online, Indiamarket's strongest competitor: ''It (Indiamarkets) is a good portal and seems to be designed with the needs of the users in mind.''

Why does it make sense to target Sammys? Most Sammys have neither the marketing- and sourcing-muscle, nor the market information that is required to source and sell at the national level. And with 2,000,000 Sammys in India, even a hit rate of 10 per cent will see the number of listings on Indiamarkets zoom to 200,000. Ajila's game-plan is to push for numbers. The more the number of Sammys and the number of products listed on the site, the more users it will attract. To get these numbers, Indiamarkets' 80-strong sales team has set out to try and find Sammys in cities like Coimbatore, Guwahati, Ludhiana, Jodhpur, and Jalgaon. And the company has launched an advertising-blitz in newspapers, trade-magazines, hoardings, and trade-fairs. Between now and April, 2001, Ajila proposes to invest close to Rs 45 crore in building its brand as well as a sales and service network.

The results? Daily site-visits by over 2,400 companies, and 100 product inquiries every day. The Website's base of registered users numbers a cool 22,000. And Ajila expects it to touch 100,000 by the end of the year. The next step? Using SMS to connect to cellphones (ally: BPL Mobile), and pagers (ally: Max Page).

Indiamarkets' march hasn't gone unnoticed. In January, 2000, Warburg, Pincus & Co., Singapore, a private equity fund, invested an estimated $8 million (Rs 35 crore) in Indiamarkets. Ajila's background-he is an MBA from the University of Houston (US), worked with CRISIL, and then joined the family business, Hadyn Glass, before starting IMO-may have had some role to play in securing the Warburg investment. But that, and the fact that Ajila himself is reluctant to talk about it, does not mean Indiamarkets does not have a revenue-plan.

The revenue-model of B2B sites like Indiamarkets is built around commission, brokerage, and advertising. And with the Net's on-line real-time character making it possible for companies to share information with suppliers, customers, and other business partners, B2B sites are on a good wicket.

But Indiamarkets will find that it has to share its cake with other sites. The Chennai-based Industrial Products Finder, which has, since 1973, published an eponymous monthly trade magazine listing typical B2B products (readership: 3.5 lakh) went on-line with its portal www.industrial productsfind.com in January, 2000. The site boasts a listing of 18,000 products and a known brand-name. But if B2B commerce reaches the magnitude it is expected to reach in India, there could, as Subramanyam of IPF Online is quick to concede, well be room for 2 portals. Will one of them be www.indiamarkets.com?