CafeGadgets.in one of the largest technology and digital lifestyle superstores on the online space, is a unique business-to-consumer (B2C) portal initiative by Crazypricing eTail Private Limited.

Be it a rewritable CD or a 42” Plasma, CafeGadgets.in facilitates you to compare and evaluate hundreds of products spec-by-spec and rupee-by-rupee all at one place. It presents extensive information on products available as well as reviews from users. Assorted products from different brands are housed under various categories for your convenience. Besides this, the homepage has an eclectic selection of deals that you can avail at the click of the mouse. The portal intends to keep adding more products with time such that it has an exhaustive range on offer for you

CafeGadgets.in is the only portal of its kind to offer free doorstep delivery of products in the shortest possible time without any charges whatsoever. As a result, you pay exactly what is listed on the site rather than misleading and escalated costs. Customers can make payments for products bought at CafeGadgets.in through Cheque, Demand Draft or Credit card. All products sold on CafeGadgets.in carry Original Manufacturer’s Warranty

This is what Hitesh Dhingra, the CEO of CafeGadgets.in has to say:

What’s CafeGadget all about?
CafeGadgets.in deals in over 4000 IT & digital lifestyle products from 80+ top brands in the category. Our target customers are between 18-35 yrs, credit card holders. Thus, CafeGadgets stands for a one-stop-shop for all gadget needs & it appeals to the Youth, our end customers.

How & why did you come up this business concept?
I have worked in both IT Product Company and an online advertising agency in my previous assignments. Realizing the pain points as well as the business opportunity in E-Commerce in India, I decided to come up with CafeGadgets to empower E-Commerce for all the leading brands in this category.

Gadgets are the second largest selling product category online after travel but still there was no focused E-Commerce site selling new branded products with original manufacturer’s warranty in India. Also, most of the brand owners in this category are MNCs and they couldn’t get into direct retail. Thus, giving us the opportunity to bridge the gap with our expertise in E-business & product management.

How are your funded?
We recently got funding from a Delhi based IT retail chain – Crazypricing

What is your present revenue figure?
We expect to end FY2008-09 at Rs.14.5 cr

About the team behind the venture?
Hitesh Dhingra, Founder & COO: Hitesh is a commerce graduate & an MBA; he started his career in Singapore with an IT distribution company, where he was responsible to launch the range of desktops and notebooks for the group. In 2005, he joined a startup online advertising agency – Quasar Media, where he co-founded Tyroo, India’s first contextual advertising network (recently funded by Yahoo).

Sachin Singhal, Head – Marketing & IT: Sachin is a gold medalist in MCA from VIT. He is an expert in online marketing & internet technology. Prior to CafeGadgets, he was working with TCS as a Project manager.

Bharat Khani, Head – Operations: Bharat has over 7 years of experience in operations, sales & vendor management.

Who are your target segments?
Our target audience is 43 million internet users in India, NRIs for gifting to India, Corporates & institutional buyers.

Who are your competitors? How are you different from them?
Our major competition is from offline retailer stores. As for E-tailers, we have already converted them to our sales partners by powering their gadgets section.

What is your revenue model?
Transactions, vendor registration & advertising

How has the going been so far? And what are your goals in the next 2 years?
Within a short span of time, we have managed to partner with 80+ brand owners and are exclusive online partners for most of them. Our customer database is over 2 lacs with 30%+ repeated or referral purchases.

In next 2 years, we’d like to capture 10% of the gadgets market online with exclusive tie ups with all our vendors and position CafeGadgets as the largest consolidator for IT & digital lifestyle products in India.

What challenges do you see for your growth?
Low margins in the product category we deal in is the biggest challenge. Our objective would be to increase the volumes to negotiate better margins & increase traffic on CafeGadgets.in in order to earn from other streams like advertising.

How do you plan to promote this? (your marketing strategy)
We have partnered with Youth destinations like colleges, BPOs, community portals etc, apart from our presence on most of the E-commerce websites & SEO/SEM activities.

How would you like to improvise (product or business model)
Without improvisation, we wouldn’t have been in the position we are in today. As a startup, we didn’t have deep pockets to spend on advertising, so we expanded our reach through other E-commerce websites, thus reducing our acquisition cost, which is the major cost for any other E-commerce company