The site, www.steelrx.com, claims to become a hub for all B2B transactions on steel at least in India and plans to start trading by the end of this year. The site has been designed with inputs from the steel industry, through a commissioned survey by the Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB)."At the end of the day we want to be a service provider and generate our revenue out of services and cut down commission costs," Steelrx Corporation, CEO, Anurag Saraf told The Financial Express.

The site is currently not associated with any corporates and aims at creating a medium for removing inefficiencies in the steel market. It will concentrate on providing a strong offline support net work.

Steelrx plans to generate a major part of the revenue out of value-added services like insurance and logistics support. The site also claims to offer third party services including on-line quality inspection and credit ratings.The user experience on the sight will not thus be limited to finding trade partners and one can complete the entire deal on line.

The sight also has a very modest commission structure. In a transaction of up to Rs 10 lakh a 1 per cent commission will be charged, for up to one crore it will be 0.75 per cent and deals above Rs 1 crore will attract a commission of 0.5 per cent.

The site will also provide other features like auctions and reverse auctions. Demand aggregation will be one of the unique services created for the small and medium players in the the steel industry such as traders, re-rollers, fabricators, automobile companies etc.

Steelrx also plans to engage Ernst and Young for a vendor and technology evaluation study next month. The company also plans to raise approximately $ 10 million through VC funding in the future and claims to have received offers from reputed venture capitalists.

The company, in order to maintain its "neutral status" also plans to offer minority equity stakes to steel companies. The company is in talks with other companies to provide logistics support and other services like insurance, credit ratings and payment gateways.