Kana Gopal | | By siliconindia news bureau
Friday, 06 November 2009
A Hewlett-Packard (HP) engineer, RK Venkatesan, has started 'Veggie Bazaar', a web portal to order and buy vegetables, and deliver them to home on a 24 hour notice.
Started in Chennai earlier in July this year, the portal has till now registered 3,000 users and made 7,000 deliveries at an average of Rs. 200 per order. "We plan to take this to other cities soon. We target a turnover of Rs. 1.5 crore for this year, 40 percent from enterprises and 60 percent from home customers," said Venkatesan.
He has invested Rs. 45 lakh in the business through internal accumulations from the family. Venkatesan refers to hotels and restaurants, IT companies and schools for enterprises with which the company is in talks for possible tie-ups. "These institutions have to work out their payment model. We plan to introduce a system of serving salads every lunch for employees of IT parks and students of schools," he said.
The Bazaar does not have a retail presence, but has established 'pick up' points in two IT parks in the city, and aims to extend to six more IT parks within this financial year. The customers can pick up their orders from these points.
Regarding the delivery model, it has a workforce of 30, and is in the process of deploying a hub and spoke system with trucks and two wheelers, similar to the pizza delivery model.
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