Web Bazaar: Getting small businesses online

Online, May 13, 2010 (Newswire.com) - The Small businesses still lack the understanding and importance of having a great website. Bangalore based startup 'Web Bazaar' is trying to address this gap by offering multiple web site related services under one umbrella. Shweta Shetty, Vice president of Web Bazaar shares more insights with MyBangalore.

What is Web Bazaar service all about? How did the idea of Web supermarket concept emerge?

Web Bazaar service is about getting small businesses online. India has 40 Million (conservative estimates) internet users and hardly 1 million websites. It's an irony that aggregators are mushrooming when there is so little to aggregate. How do you build a scalable mobile location based business search when the business is not even online! Only putting an address and phone number in a web directory (which is print yellow pages clone) is almost a mockery of the web which allows linking, bookmarking, branding and informational opportunities not possible in the print media. The time is ripe for the next 3-5 Million businesses to get online.

Web Bazaar reminds one of the similar sounding retail chain but its not a supermarket online The idea was to convey extreme value for money to its customer.

What services you are offering under Web Bazaar?

Web Bazaar currently offers an integrated package for small businesses to get online including a hosted content management platform allowing them to make updates in a jiffy, hosting, domain name, design and web marketing packages. We are shortly launching e-commerce and email or SMS campaign packages also.

The web design and development market is extremely fragmented, given the lower entry barrier. How are you addressing such a cut-throat competitive market?

The current market is dominated by free lancers, poor service and backed by poor technology. Web Bazaar service is creating the right mix of service and technology offering suiting the demanding Indian small business. The platform is a easy to use purpose-built content management system and Web Bazaar offers a full service offering where the delivery team creates a design suiting the businesses need and identity. This prudent mix of technology and service is helping us create a differentiator.

Free lancers are always pressed for time and get bogged down with technology and support issues. This affects their own ability to scale and get more customers. Web Bazaar looks at free lancers as partners who can leverage us as their back-end while they continue to give higher end value added design services leaving the scaling and support to us. This creates a win-win for the whole ecosystem.

What technologies you have developed in the background? How easy it is easy to setup a website?

Web Bazaar has its own purpose built content management system (CMS) which enables getting large number of customers online in an easy, affordable fashion. Currently we don't want customers to set up their own web site since Web Bazaar's full service model means that we will do it for you. Indians love assistance and the plethora of self service 'make-your-own-website' services are not really addressing the needs in the market. Even then the creation and maintenance of a site is extremely simple and we may open it up to our tech savvy clients some time.

Who are your target customers?

A person with a visiting card without a web address is our customer. Online business presence is a basic need in today's connected world. We have customers from a wide range of sectors like Manufacturing, Travel, HR, Social and Self-Employed.

Can you please provide me details about your team? How are you funded?

Web Bazaar is being incubated by its sister company Neev Technologies which is an expert with Web and Content Management Solutions and a product development partner with many startups.

For more details check out: http://www.webbazaar.com

The above interview was given to www.mybangalore.com