According to A Jayaseelan, executive director, bisnetindia, the model is almost ready and the service will go online once Reserve Bank guidelines are in place.

Members can currently post their homepages at the website, bisnetindia.com, and get their products showcased under a separate section relating to products. Anyone accessing the site (from anywhere in the world) can post specific product enquires and get a list of members who deal with the product, along with other relevant product details. Alternately, an enquiry or search can also be made for a specific company.

The advantage in posting a homepage on bisnetindia as opposed to a homepage anywhere on the net is Ficci's association with a fairly largenetwork of industry chambers in other countries. For an annual fee of Rs 25,000, bisnetindia members can post up to 15 pages (megabytes not specified) of information about their company and products at the site, according to the Ficci brochure. The membership also entitles them to access comprehensive databases with updates and statistics on agribusiness, energy, SAARC countries and the Indian Ocean rim countries.

The huge market for these services in smaller towns, which do not have internet nodes, has got Ficci mulling on a plan to appoint franchises. "There a lot of people in small towns like Sangli, Nashik and Ludhiana, for instance, who want data like weekly updates on horticulture prices. There is a 900 million market here," said Sumit Saran of bisnetindia. Ficci plans to keep a mirror image of their server in these towns, so even member without an internet connection can dial into this server and access information.

Ficci is also offering patron membership (Rs 5,00,000) for customised projects,with access to its databases and free website creation and maintenance services for up to 2 MB of space. Up to three group companies can also avail these services. Premium class membership is available for Rs 1,00,000 for a period of 5 years.

In the second stage, bisnetindia plans to introduce online order transaction processing with facility for an agent brokered deal. As opposed simple online transactions where the credit number is keyed into the computer to get a delivery, this envisages maintaining confidentiality between the buyer and the agent and the agent and the seller. The blueprint for this model is, however, yet be to drawn and the idea is still in the very initial stages, said Saran.