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Irresistible force

Nitish S Rele

There appears to be no stopping imandi.com now. The e-commerce reverse marketplace that matches consumers with a growing network of about national and local merchants has made huge strides this year and looks ahead to even a better time.

Imandi.com consumers detail their needs for everything from household services to plate tickets or collectibles, and affiliated merchants compete to deliver products and services tailored to their specifications.

Using imandi.com is a cakewalk -- well, almost. First, you log onto www.imandi.com and register. You then post what you need -- plane tickets, sports memorabilia, office space or remodeling services -- and select which retailers you would like to have compete for your business. Affiliated retailers with customer ratings and preferences will respond with bids. You review the bids, anonymously, and select a retailer.

Back in December, imandi.com barely had 108,000 merchants with 50,000 registered consumers. Those numbers have risen drastically. The web site now boasts 200,000 merchants with 1.8 million registered consumers.

In March, it was ranked at the top of the list for reverse auction web sites, beating out seven other competitors.

Also, imandi.com was ranked 338th, up from 433rd in February among all the sites on the Internet. The numbers were released earlier in April by PC Data Online, an Internet research firm that specializes in web commerce measurement.

This is probably only the beginning. Imandi.com is looking to tie up with several other web sites like Microsoft's bCentral and CNET's comparison shopping service MySimon.com. Plans also are in the works to partner with Epinions, an online opinions/rating site.

"We are growing at a fast pace and the future looks very bright," says Raghav Kher, an old Microsoftie who founded imandi.com with Eric Johnson in 1998.

Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, imandi.com now employs 70 people and has about 400 product and service categories to offer. Backing it is an investment group led by Menlo Ventures (backers of Hotmail, InfoSeek, UUNet and Eve.com) and Bertelsmann Ventures (the independent venture capital fund of one of the world's largest media companies, Bertelsmann AG). Imandi.com raised nearly $ 15 million through these venture capitalists.

Among other recent partnerships is the agreement with America Online's Digital City Inc, the nation's leading local online network. Imandi.com will be providing local search capabilities for services based on its reverse marketplace concept to Digital City users.

Digital City users can access local service providers anywhere in the city. On the other hand, imandi.com will develop a co-branded site that will allow users to define their needs for a broad range of services and receive tailored quotes from imandi.com's network of merchants.

The $ 20 million advertising campaign launched by imandi.com is now in full gear. Picked for the job was Miami's Crispin Porter + Bogusky and ads have already started appearing on national cable channels such as CNN, Lifetime and Discovery.

"Our traffic continues to grow, we've launched additional categories, received some great press," said Kher. "In short, everything is ramping up really nicely."

EARLIER FEATURE:
Kher smashes the fixed prices barrier

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