A Tale Of Three Sites!

BT's take on sites in the news. This time round, BT's Rakhi Mazumdar and Roop Karnani surf through the murky worlds of fashion, construction, and films.

willssport.com By Rakhi Mazumdar

The Net is hardly a drag for tobacco to hotels major ITC, which enters the business of on-line fashion consultancy with willssport.com. While a number of fashion sites have come up on designer clothes, willssport.com is perhaps the first venture in the regular branded apparel business. ITC's Chairman Y.C. "Yogi" Deveshwar, 52, says: "With the launch of willssport.com, we hope to introduce the concept of service in fashion in the country."

ITC's portal is being designed by PwC, and has been in the works for some time now. Effectively then, this is the company's first foray into the Net. And it blends the branding and marketing capabilities of ITC with the service orientation the company is preparing itself for. Targeted at the discerning yuppie crowd--conscious about style and dressing in casual wear--the site offers fashion tips to men and women as well as an accessories guide.

From fibre to fashion, willssport.com plans to deliver service along the entire fashion value chain.

On the service part, fashion 'Guru' will answer your fashion-related queries or doubts. The Wardrobe Wizard offers the fashion consultancy service, where one can find out what enhances one's looks and personality! A surfer has to provide personal details about height, weight, skin colour, and a number of hours spent at work and so on to receive tips on which kind of casual wear and colour suits him or her best.

The e-Commerce part is currently unavailable but should commence soon. On offer is a complete wardrobe for men and women in three distinct looks Leisure (relaxed wear), Classic (officewear), and Party (no explanation needed). Willssport aims to blend an international mindset and Indian sizes. For example, it offers in-between waist sizes. And trend spotting from the international fashion capitals of Paris and Milan from in-house designers.

While registered users would be automatically entitled to the fashion consultancy service, one can register with--or without--fashion consultancy service to receive updates of new product releases, and personal invitation to all Wills Sport events.

At best, the site could be described as catalogue shopping in Indian sizes, something that other competitors could easily catch up with. And some of them like Lee, for instance, already have a presence in real stores. When the e-Commerce part is enabled, ITC will, thus, have to gear up its delivery mechanism significantly. Willssport is supported by a bricks strategy, too. In the next three years, ITC is planning to establish 100 retail outlets in major metropolises all over the country. These will a mix of company-owned and franchisee outlets. Presently, however, with one real store, it could prove be an uphill task.

Thus, the only point of differentiation could be in the quality of designers ITC manages to rope in and retain.

The site is a well-designed one. Will have to wait and see whether it is well managed too. Finally, can't say it's well-conceived--check out Gap.com and you will know what I mean. Compared against well-known international brand sites, willssports.com is at best a me-too site. Something ITC needs to keep in mind before going global with it.

indiaconstruction.com by Roop Karnani

Hundred days, Rs 75 crore. Since its launch on April 16, 2000, indiaconstruction.com--a vertical B2B portal for the construction industry--has notched up transactions worth Rs 80 crore, making it perhaps the first B2B site in India to have actually transacted business in excess of Rs 75 crore.

Indiaconstruction.com, which is based in Pune, now has branch offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai. Says Rohit Gera, 31, CEO of Indiaconstruction.com: "According to our business plan, there was no transaction charge in the first two months, because we wanted buyers and suppliers to see the value and convenience in dealing through our Website. Several buyers now have written to us, telling us how much they saved by transacting through our site. We have just signed an agreement on June 23, 2000, with HDFC for setting up a payment gateway, which should be operational in about six weeks. Then the buyer will have the option to pay on-line through our site." He saved the best bit for last: "We plan to levy a transaction charge of between 0.25 and 0.45 per cent."

Meanwhile, the site already has 12,000 registered suppliers of construction material. Since subscription was free in the first six weeks after launch, the collection of subscriptions started only a month ago. Indiaconstruction.com says that it has already collected Rs 4.5 lakh in subscription money. Now comes the hard bit--ensuring that members actually transact on the site.

take2take.com by Roop Karnani

India's first B2B film portal--take2take.com--is shortly going to be launched by netpreneur, Sunil Doshi, 29, CEO of Alliance Media and Entertainment. Take2take.com is a portal for on-line film festivals, as well as being an official movie Website for new film releases. Sunil Doshi has been associated with films and festivals for the past 10 years, and has organised the International Film Festival for Children and Young People at Udaipur in 1993, and at Hyderabad in 1995. He also served as a member of the International Jury at Annecy (France), Chicago (USA), Isfahan (Iran), Laon (France), and so on.

Explains Sunil Doshi: "In the major film festivals of the world, like Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals, there is buying and selling of films, there are telecasting rights which are sought by television networks, and there are DVD rights. Good scriptwriters would also like to be in touch with the major studios or producers. Basically, it is a trade fair of the film industry--where people can interact, display, and actually screen some of their works, whether it is a film or a script or a co-production. We plan to bring this into cyberspace now through our portal."

The idea is to seek talented new film-makers, and to enable them to access large audiences and industry leaders, by providing an on-line exhibition platform for their creative work. The first on-line film festival will be announced sometime in mid-August. 2000, and entries will be invited through ads in the print and electronic media. The jury comprises of eminent film-makers of the likes of Santosh Sivan (maker of 'Terrorist', an award-winning film), Amitav Ghosh (author of books like 'The Glass Palace', 'In An Antique Land', and 'Calcutta Chromosome'), Aparna Sen (well-known director and actress), and Nandana Dev Sen (Amartya Sen's daughter, who is an actress and now into production of television shows).

Take2take.com will use the RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, and Apple's Quicktime for streaming videos. Sunil Doshi is banking on the fact that there are 30 million cable and satellite homes in India. Once the broadband and optical fibre network is in place, which should happen in the next 18 to 24 months, the Net will be available to users through cable TV. At this stage, it is estimated that there is a great market for on-line films.

Says Doshi: "Since I have visited a number of international film festivals and organised two major ones in India, I am in touch with broadcasting stations, film buyers and sellers, TV networks, and others. We will get into strategic alliances with all these people and sell them the content." The content generated from the on-line film festival will be re-purposed, packaged, and syndicated to many portals with broadband delivery distribution. "We are currently talking to bitscreen and sightsound.com," revealed Doshi. The other sources of revenues for take2take.com will be a flat fee from the production houses to construct and host their Websites, and offer services to be their distribution channel for air-time on TV stations, traditional advertising on the Web per impression basis. Take2take will also arrange on-line sponsorship and will have co-branding relationship with the advertiser on a film-by-film basis--for example, James Bond and Smirnoff Vodka, Dreamworks and Pepsi, Sony and Godzilla.

"The critical mass that I am looking for is about 100 odd films. We would also like to conduct trading activity on the digital marketplace and syndicate content to other portals," says Doshi.

Take2take.com will conduct an on-line film festival in categories which include short films--fiction, documentaries, and animation, besides music videos and experimental films.

This will be the cyberspace dedicated to showcasing short films in various categories and will award the best work from select world-wide entries. All entries will be available for previews on-line and will allow the film-makers to have a cyber platform to interact with the film community. Initial selection for competition will be handled by a dedicated team of film professionals. The international jury will select the nominees and the final awardees. Awards will be given for Best film, Best Director, Best Special Effects, Best Script, Best Editing, and Best Photography.

Doshi sums up: "We are also planning to make a TV broadcaster in India as our partner, and we are currently talking to Star TV. Our partnerships with major studios and television stations world-wide will open new vistas for the newest cinematic minds." A first-mover advantage in Bollywood might make for an interesting take.

Issue Contents Write to us Subscriptions Syndication