Shopping at the click of a mouse!

Jagran\City Plus

B D Narayankar

March 6, Aundh (Pune): Most women count shopping as a pleasurable experience. But parking problem and long queues come with it, which makes the mood of the shopper blue. But hats-off to Amit Dixit from Aundh, who has thought of making shopping as easy as pushing a button. His maiden venture http://www.laxmiroad.in/ aims to end shopping woes of Aundh and Baner residents spending precious hours in the busy Laxmi road shopping area.

Hema Rodye, a housewife at Rohan Nilay Society, buys provisions by placing her order on http://www.laxmiroad.in/ and within minutes she receives all the stuff. "This shopping portal saves my precious time in finding parking space and waiting in long queues for hours together at paying counters," she says.

After the successful launch of http://www.laxmiroad/ .in, Amit is also launching http://www.punestreets.in/ to cater to the shopping requirements of Aundh residents.
The idea of launching a shopping portal came to Amit's mind when he went to Laxmi and DB roads for shopping and got irritated as he could not get parking space for a long time. "That was when I decided to get the markets online," he says.

http://www.laxmiroad.in/ was started in September last year. Amit says, "Initially we met many shop owners on Laxmi road and asked them to go online to expand their business. While earlier generation of owners was quite skeptical about the proposal, the younger lot welcomed the idea."

Not just the customers, but even the shop owners are pleased to have gone online.
More than 20 shops, which include popular names like Venus Traders, Verma Book Center, Kheliya, Karachi Sweet Mart, Shri Krishna Pearls, are registered at the portal and they offer most of their products to online customers. Jayant Kale, proprietor of 'Kale Sugandhi', which sells artifacts says, "Most of our online customers are from areas like Baner and Aundh. They place orders demanding every kind of item like scented sticks, durva, ashtgandha and sometimes even Guruji is asked for."

More than 600 people are registered with the site, but Amit agrees that the response is at a nascent stage. "Awareness about online shopping is the need of the hour. Right now, we insist that the customer pay in cash once he receives the order, but as awareness improves we would come up with net payment system," he says.

The system for delivery of goods is simple. After a customer submits a request to Dixit via the portal, he sends an e-mail to the courier company. A representative of the courier company visits the shop, collects items and delivers them at the requested destination.