May 09, 2001 01:09 PM
8217 Views
I have spent several years on the Internet and have been involved with several Internet companies at various stages of their lives. I am a technology buff and understand various aspects and issues involved in e-commerce, hardware and software. Recently I have been consulting for companies, helping them with their marketing and business development strategies.
I am presenting my credentials, so as to present you, gentle reader with information that will help you in deciding what is good and what is not. This is my first review on an Internet company, so I seek apologies if I don't sound as credible as MS members Amrita or Asyis.
Having said that, I would now like to present my views on Baazee.com
Baazee is/was supposed to be the Ebay of India. I don't know much about the founders, but they have been all over in the newspapers, radio, TV and seminars. As Amrita said, they have managed to get VC funding of several million dollars.
The Concept:
Like most Mouthshut members, I too feel that the concept of auctions is not ''hot'' and will never be ''hot'' in India. I have never, never used auction in my life and once posted an item on Baazee.com just to validate some of their claims. Unfortunately, my listed product did not receive A single bid...after that I never went on to baazee.com except to check out their interface design.
Interface Design:
Baazee.com has been one of the few ''big'' sites on the Internet that could never finalize a layout design. Every few months they keep changing the designs. Initially when they launched it, the site was extreeeeeeeeeeeemly slow. Often pages would never load. Of late..since last few months, ever since the ''POWERED BY CTECH.COM'' logo appeared, the site became fast. I loved the new speed...and as I was trying to get familiar with the design, they introduced a new index page. I am tired of catching up with their designs. And trust me the new one is not attractive at all.
Accessibility:
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Baazee.com seems to be down for several hours EACH day.
Once I was in London on an assignment and I read Rajesh's review on Baazee.com I wanted to check baazee instantly...guess what? The site would not load at all. I picked up the phone and called baazee.com in India. I told the receptionist that your site is down. She was like hold on...I told her I am calling from abroad...anyway she put me on hold (I was'nt paying for this call...my client was!) Finally some guy came on the phone. He wanted to know who I was. I was like I am a Baazee.com user and I want to confirm if the site is down...you never know...I was thinking maybe the site and the company has been shutdown so he said yeah there is a problem with VSNL. I was like oh ok...just wanted to confirm. He also added that all Indian sites are down. I immediately typed rediff.com and it was working fine. I typed mouthshut.com
and boom the page loaded. So the problem was only with Baazee.com and the next day I came back to India (two weeks ago) and still at certain times I just type baazee.com and the pages won't load. As I am writing this review from Bombay, India...I am not able to load baazee.com on my computer. It says WEBSITE not found However, Yahoo India. mouthshut, rediff are all working fine.
I hope this serves as a wake up call. Rajesh, amrita and asyis have rightly said that baazee only focusses on hype and marketing...they should focus on technology!!!
Success stories
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I don't know if the bids are fake or not...but it is true...I spend 16 hours with guys and gals who eat live and breathe on the computer..all of them have tried baazee...not a single one likes it...not a single one has ever won any bids or has managed to sell his/her product. I honestly have no clue how baazee.com will survive.
Overall, I would say, there is no value provided by baazee.com and with its frequent downtime, I am not sure of the management's commitment to the website and the company. Please avoid if you can:-)
