Rosebazar: Online auction engine with a floral theme

Asian Age - Bangalore, June 26

Karuturi.Com Ltd, a Bangalore-based floriculture and software engineering company has launched an online auction engine to conduct real time auctions on the Internet.

“The bazar auction will enable companies to conduct online auction on the web even at low bandwidth,” Mr Ramakrishna Karuturi, Managing Director, Karuturi.Com told The Asian Age here.

The Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation, which is setting up its online auction center, will be provided with the bazar auction engine by the company. “ We have invested more than Rs 2 crores in the development of the product, and will be spending upto Rs 10 crores for refinement of the engine,” Mr Ramakrishna said.

The company which has installed this engine in its e-commerce portal Rosebazar.Com is conducting trial online auctions through the portal.

The Rs 2.10 crores floriculture company, Karuturi has started discussions with several leading Indian portals including Rediff, Inidainfo, Satyam among others to host as a value added service.

“The advantage of rosebazar.com is that we are in the floriculture business and we understand this highly perishable industry,” he claimed. The company has tied up with people in the floriculture business around the world to offer flowers at the local costs.

According to Mr Ramakrishna, the floriculture portals which are present now, offer the service of delivering flowers at different cities in the world, but at a cost disadvantage as they charge a fixed price irrespective of the country where it gets delivered.

“Our USP is that for each country we have fixed the price of flowers according to the local rates and that is realistic,” he said.

The portal has tied up with world wide logistics partner AFL, FedEx and United Parcel Service for effective delivery of the product at most cities of the world. “The tie-up along with an existing logistics management module enables us to delver flowers to the buyers doorstep within 24 hours of the purchase,” he said.

The portal has to its credit a virtual superstore for needs of the floriculture industry including glass houses, fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation systems. It also has listing of consultancy services on technology, marketing and business.

Karuturi launches site for auction of roses

 Indian Express - Bangalore, June 27

Karuturi.Com Ltd announced the launch of rosebazar.com along with the world’s fastest real-time auction engine on the Internet – Bazar – to bring the flower business community closer by minimizing the number of value-less intermediates as much as possible. The main feature of rosebazar.com is the on-line real-time auction of flowers.

Speaking to reporters here on Tuesday, K S Ramakrishna, CEO, Karuturi.Com Ltd, said: “ We made our entry into It about eight months ago and developed one of the fastest real-time auction engines on the internet. The auction engine will cater to the needs of our flora portal www.rosebazar.com and can be used as a platform for other auctions.”

The online auction will eliminate tedious procedures and result in fresher flowers and cost savings as the flowers auctioned will be shipped directly by the grower to the buyer, he said.

Apart from the auction, the portal also features related information on flowers and the floriculture industry, trade and technicalities of the trade. It also includes regular features like forex rates, current market prices for flowers, important stock market information and current trade and technical events.

Answering a question, Ramakrishna said that Karuturi.Com has a segment-wise logistic tie-up with companies like AFL and FedEx outside the country and SRMT, VRL and Jaipur Gorlden in the country to deliver the flowers to the buyers. He said the maximum time that was required to deliver the flowers to the buyer would be 24 hours.

He said the buyers and sellers could have interactive online business participation on the portal.

A unique retail shop is available on rosebazar.com where users can buy bouquets, plants, flowers etc in small quantities, he informed.

Rosebazar.com to integrate with physical auctions

The Hindu Business Line - Bangalore, June 27

Rosebazar.com the real time online flower auction site from the Bangalore-based Karuturi.Com Ltd, plans to collaborate with physical auctions worldwide.

“We are in talks with two auction houses for integrating rosebazar.com with their systems.” said the Chief Executive Officer, Mr K.S. Ramakrishna.

The tow auction houses were currently evaluating the company’s auction engine, developed in-house. The online auction would bring down the costs and reduce time spent on transport, he said.

Currently, most growers spend around 35 percent of their costs on transport. The online route will leave out the necessity of going through Aalsmeer and the associated commissions.

Mr. Ramakrishna expects gross sales to be $100 millions at the end of the first year of operations. Revenues will come from commission on sale of flowers (five per cent), and logistics and sale of inputs.

The company has tied up with various transport operators including UPS for Europe-bound traffic and FedEx for Japan-bound traffic.

According to Mr Ramakrishna, around 3,00,000 stems have been sold over the portal in 20 days of doing business. The retail market, which had kept away from physical auctions because of high transaction costs can also participate in the online auctions where there are no entry barriers. To help this segment, the lots can be as small as 100 stems.

Karuturi.Com, which changed its name from Karuturi Agritech late last year, has broadened its area of activity to include information technology. The auction engine driving the portal was the first technology to emerge from the new corporate entity. This is also expected to be offered as a product and sold separately to similar sites auctioning perishables.

Portal for floriculture

Deccan Herald - Bangalore, June 27

Karuturi.Com Ltd, on Tuesday, announced the launch of its portal for global floriculture business rosebazar.com, which also provides for real-time auction engine on the Internet.

Briefing reporters, Managing Director, Ramakrishna Karuturi, said the portal was one of the few of its kind in the world and is aimed at bringing business community closer minimizing the number of intermediates as much as possible.

The online auction is expected to reduce marketing costs by 80 percent and customer price by about 25 percent creating for win-win situation for both the grower and end-user, he added.

Portal for auction of flowers

The Hindu - Bangalore, June 27

The city-based Karuturi.Com Ltd., on Tuesday announced the launch of rosebazar.com. The portal has been targeted at the $50-billion global floriculture industry.

The main feature of rosebazar.com according to the company officials is the online real-time auction of flowers.

Rosebazar goes online with one of the fastest auction engines

Financial Express - Bangalore

Bangalore-based Karuturi.Com announce on Tuesday the launch of rosebazar.com, a portal for the global floriculture business with one of the world’s fastest real-time auction engine. It said its real time auction system for roses, other flowers and commodities, could be accessed by users through the Internet. “We have developed one of the world’s fastest real-time auction engines on the Internet that performs at 1/22 of a second and named it bazar or the marketplace,” K S Ramakrishna, chief of the firm told the reporters.

“It is at present catering to the needs of flora portal www.rosbazar.com and can be used as a platform for other auctions,” he said. The auction system provides bid acknowledgement, updates and results in real time and growers would provide digital pictures of the products being put up for auction.

“We have already sold a quarter of a million rose stems. The digital pictures will enable the buyer to see the real product,” Ramakrishna said.

He said the perishable nature of the product and “huge arbitrage” costs had led to the company developing the portal. “There will be lesser layers of intermediation leading to value-addition and a win-win situation to the customer,” he said.

“Imagine a situation wherein flowers are exported from India to Dutch auctions where they are brought by a Japanese buyer and shipped to Japan. The process is expensive and the product loses its freshness.

The online auction will reduce the marketing costs by 80 percent and the customer price by 25 percent.”

India’s domestic market for flowers is worth about 3.5 billion Rupees ($80 million) and the global flower trade is estimated at $ 12 billion. “India’s flower trade is highly fragmented and disorganized and even if e-commerce can capture one per cent of the global market, it will mean $120 million.

Twenty-two flower growers have registered with Karuturi.Com Ltd, which plans to set up a US-based subsidiary in Florida-the gateway to flower business in the United States. “In 12 months time we expect gross sales of $ 100 million,” Ramakrishna said.

Karuturi.Com unfurls aortal on floriculture

Business Standard - Bangalore, June 27

Bangalore-based Karuturi.Com on Tuesday launched Rosebazar.com, an aortal (sector specific website) for the $50-billion global floriculture industry. Powered by Bazaar, among the faster real-time auction engine on the Internet, the website is looking at gross sales of around Rest 440 core in the first 12 months of operation.

Rosebazar.com aims at bringing the business community closer by minimizing the number of intermediaries.

“We made our entry into InfoTech just about eight months ago and already have one of the fastest real-time auction engines on the Net that performs at 1/22 of a second with 1000 bytes per second communication,” chief Executive Officer K S Ramakrishna told reporters at a press conference here yesterday.

Bazaar, named after the Indian equivalent of marketplace, can be used as a platform for other auction sites too, Ramakrishna said.

The online auction will reduce marketing costs by 80 percent and customer price by 25 percent creating a win-win situation for the grower and end user, Ramakrishna said.

“This gives a lot of scope for Internet auction on rosebazar.com to capture a bigger share of the floriculture industry and throws up tremendous opportunities for integration of existing physical auctions and the Internet auction model.

This will, thus, web enable existing auctions with a force multiplier effect,” Ramakrishna said.

The auction system is based on a multi-tier synchronous client-server architecture providing all information such as bid acknowledgement, auction screen, updates and results in real time.

Some of the salient features of the auction include interface for remote upload of data, administration and accounting, provision for sellers to remotely upload product details to the server and provision for bidders to see the product and place proxy bids before the auction starts.

The aortal will also have an online world trade directory for floriculture and related educational information.

A retail shop on the site will allow users to buy bouquets, plants, and flowers in small quantities and choose the destination and pricing in local currency.

With online auctions like rosebazar.com the face of floriculture industry is set to change with minimal time delays, fresher flowers and significant cost savings as the flowers auctioned will be shipped directly by the grower to the buyer.