Lootstreet.com

Why buy at a Fixed Price or fight with other buyer in an Auction, when you can directly Haggle and Bargain with the seller as in real life!

About LootStreet.com

Lootstreet.com (www.lootstreet.com) is a next-generation online marketplace which is specially adapted to the Indian/Asian scenario. Lootstreet portal hosts both new and used goods – it follows a unique model of price determination of a sale with a simple underlying ideology - “Every Price is Negotiable”. Most importantly, this will finally give every Indian the right to buy a product at the price he/she thinks is fair. E-commerce, as we have known it in the past, will shortly be re-defined.

The Pain Point being addressed

The lack of a ‘real marketplace’ in the virtual world - that which is specifically suited to the shopping mentality and the purchasing pattern of the ‘involved buyer’ (more specifically Indian/Asian buyer)

Our vision

Our vision of the virtual world and its features is one that gives every user the democratic right to act - in this case ‘shop’ while having a say in the price of the purchased product. A first of its kind – LootStreet.com has successfully customized the online shopping process to suit the preferences and mentality of the Indian buyer by combining the price-flexibilities of real-life shopping and convenience of online shopping.

Founders

The company is headed by two 2008 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who gave up lucrative job offers at some of the world’s best investment banks to build a team of 8 in a short span of time, spearheading them to conduct a full-fledged research on the buying patterns of Indians and launching the promised product within 60 days of their Post graduate convocation ceremony. In February 2008, Kaushik Mukherjee and Arun Balakrishnan, two PGP students of the 2008 batch of IIM Ahmedabad founded AKVENTURE Info Pvt. Ltd. (link:http://www.lootstreet.com/whoarewe/whoarewe.php). LootStreet.com is their first homegrown project.

Uniqueness of Offering and Target Segment

The current online shopping portals either follow the Fixed Priced System or the Auction System, which is more of a Western model (which evolved from the real-life auction houses such as Sotheby’s) that has been force-fitted for the Indian online shopper. In reality, the Indian shopper is a more involved buyer and the average Indian has never even witnessed an auction process in his life. What is unique about LootStreet.com is that is customizes online shopping to presenting every buyer with the exact options that real life shopping has to offer.

How do we accomplish this?

(1) Through innovative yet simple-to-understand process of bargaining
(2) By offering the facility of collective bargaining, where bulk discounts are worked out based on the number of people who are interested in buying a particular item. With a target market of every internet enabled Indians and non-Indians alike, LootStreet is the closest one would get to a real life market!

Growth Story

LootStreet.com received media attention during the March 2008 (IIMA’s placement press conference), owing to the curiosity that surrounds every entrepreneurs decision to take the plunge. With mounting expectations (repeated articles and interviews about an underdevelopment product), competition from other online marketplaces (www.lootmaar.com was launched within 2 weeks of the publicity period), the team managed to build a database of 2000+ visitors to our homepage before launch and partner with 6 of India’s biggest online sellers to offer a comprehensive catalogue of 4000+ products at the time of launch.