E-Commerce + Social Networking = Koolkart

Inspired by the booming online shopping space, two management graduates are out to add a personal touch to this e-commerce experience through ‘Koolkart'. A combination of social networking and e-commerce, their start-up is not founded on a new concept but can hope to enjoy the fruits of first mover advantage in India.

These enterprising graduates from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad are Suneil Chawla and Anupam Agarwal. They claim that ever since its soft launch, the site compares over 14 million products from over 200 boutiques and retailers. According to them, the site attracts traffic of 4,000 users each day growing through word-of-mouth publicity and social network recommendations.

The site is presently offering a shopping discovery engine that combines a shopping aggregator service, which is similar to Amazon's Junglee in several ways, along with the unique proposition of integrating friends' recommendations. On registering with Koolkart, a user can look forward to finding products based on his or her personal preferences and can also discover what his/her friends are liking or purchasing.

Chawla says that shopping is an activity often experienced with friends and it is what Koolkart offers online. It helps to find out what is on one's wish list, making gifting someone so much easier. Agarwal adds that while at several other e-commerce sites, there are vendors looking to clear out their stocks, but this engine is completely based on preferences and recommendations. Read more

Plan to enter the mobile space is also on the cards, but the next step for Koolkart is to become a payment gateway rather than just a discovery engine. Its six-member team in a small office in Chennai is working to launch the gateway soon. Then, small time retailers can also hope to get catalogued with renowned names.

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