By Prashant MaheshWhich B2B portals will be successful? Answers B K Sethi, CEO of the Mumbai-based Electricmela.com, India’s first portal catering to the electrical goods industry: "B2B e-commerce will work in an industry which is fragmented and where profitability per transaction is low." The Indian electrical goods industry fits the bill perfectly. Not surprising that Emco Transformers went ahead and promoted Verticalbiz.com which launched its electrical goods industry portal Electricmela.com three months ago.

What are the factors that have goaded the launch of Electricmela.com? One, the Indian electrical goods industry is the second largest in Asia. Its size is an estimated Rs 45,000 crore.

Two, the industry, which is more than 40 years old, boasts of an impressive base of more than two lakh industrial customers spread across the country. Three, the industry is highly fragmented with players scattered across the country. No wonder that Electricmela.com is gung-ho about the prospects.

One-stop info
This is how Electricmela.com proposes to be a one-stop information dispenser for the Indian electrical goods industry. There is this manufacturer who has a head office with a string of regional offices and branch offices catering to the needs of its dealers spread across the country. Thanks to Electricmela.com, regional and branch offices are set to play lesser roles.

For, dealers can now log on to Electricmela.com to know which company has what stock, how much of that is readily available and when the company can deliver the products. Such information is vital considering that the Indian electrical goods industry turns out thousands of products at any given point of time.

Electricmela.com has honed its strategy further in a bid to taste quick success. The site currently offers within its portal space for shops -- these shops are called Mshops. These Mshops can be hosted and presented by various Indian electrical goods manufacturers and dealers. What do these Mshops offer? These Mshops offer all information about suppliers and vendors and act as one-point information sources for anyone who wants to know which electrical goods manufacturer is offering what.

Plans galore
What does Electricmela.com gain out of this exercise? For hosting Mshops, Electricmela.com charges each of its members a subscription fee. This subscription fee is a part of the portal’s revenue model.

Electricmela.com has more exciting plans on the anvil. It plans to offer a powerful search engine which would enable a prospect to get whatever information he wants in just three clicks.

Not just that. Electricmela.com plans to tie up with electrical goods manufacturing companies too. The objective of such tie-ups is to digitise manufacturers’ catalogues and host them on the site. Plans are also afoot to hold online exhibitions of electrical products. The target: to hold 20 to 30 exhibitions a year.

There is another idea that Electricmela.com is toying with: auctions. Says Sethi: "Electrical goods manufacturers who have upgraded their machines are left with surplus old machinery.

These manufacturers would like to dispose this surplus."It is to help such electrical goods manufacturers that Electricmela.com is planning an auction facility on its site. Any manufacturer who wants to sell can log on and auction his machinery on the Net. Electricmela.com will get a commission on deals concluded.

How large could this business be? Here is an estimate from Sethi: at least business worth Rs 200 crore should shift to the Internet. That does not mean total elimination of dealers in electrical goods. Says Sethi: "What would happen is dealers would play a limited role. There is no way that they would be eliminated."

There is logic in what Sethi is saying. Dealers are links between the manufacturers and customers -- they provide credit to the latter. Thus, dealers will continue to stay on.

At the end of it, online trading in electrical goods should bring costs down by as much as eight per cent, both for the manufacturers and dealers. This could eventually translate into savings of as much as 15 per cent for the customers.