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Mediabyte |
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Pitara Kids' B2C project goes online
Publication: eFE
Date: April 20, 2001
Pitara Kids Network Ltd has announced the launch of its B2C e-commerce project www.pitarashop.com, which will be linked to its children portal pitara.com.
Pitarashop is designed to be a shopping mall for children. Having forged alliances with around 45 vendor partners and two national logistic providers, the virtual shop will offer products in four catagories: toys, books, software and babycare products. To facilitate secure online payment, Pitara has tied up with ICICI.
"The e-commerce initiative has taken sometime because we had to develop technology afresh, "Says Mr. Ajay Jaiman, CEO, Pitara. "We plan to break even in Q4 of the fiscal 2001-02, largely on account of non-advertising revenue initiatives."
Pitara is also contemplating to apply for the second round of funding. Mr. Jaiman, however, said that the situation was "not desperate."
Pitara is also planning to commercially launch children software, Krowser (which prevents minors from accessing adult material via net), in India in June. It is in the process of finalising alliances with PC marketers; and also, appointing distributors for the product, which is expected to be priced between Rs. 900 and Rs.1,000 at the retail.
"We believe there is no product like this in the world," said Mr. Jaiman. "We are also planning to market it in the US."
Pitara is said to have large user base of 160,000 regular user. The company believes that even at a conversion rate of around 3-4 percent, the revenue generated would be healthy.
Beginning with domestic vendors, Pitara has plans to source products from foreign countries as well. "We need to put in place a feedback mechanism, whereby Pitara community can share with us their experiences about their purchases," said Mr. Jaiman. He added that the launch of Pitarashop follows from the assessment that the existing retail space for children has little or no domain knowledge.
"To ensure customers a hassle-free experience, we'e developed unique tools like a Reading Ability Guide and Play Stage Guide, which will help parents to select appropriate books and toys for their children. The shop also offers various advanced search tools to help parents find toys or books by age, type, brand name or price range, "said Mr.Jaiman.
Currently, Pitara's network of sites - pitara.com, parentspitara.com, Krowser.com, indiabykids.com and now, pitarashop.com - is said to generate over 27 million hits or 1.8 million page views and 162,000 unique visitors a month.
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