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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

November - 2009 - issue > Top 25 Most Promising E-Commerce Companies

Quikr: The 'Quickest' Way to Buy & Sell Online

Benny Thomas
Monday, November 2, 2009
Benny Thomas
If you are planning to sell your old car or laptop, buying a mobile phone or furniture, searching for an apartment to rent or buy, or looking for a new job, there is a tendency to frequently browse through classified ads. Imagine having a community of members sharing the same interests as you and asking their suggestions while buying or selling online. Quikr, which was primarily set up as an e-commerce website - where people used to buy and sell - has today evolved into a more local community based platform for its users.

After being established as a subsidiary of e-commerce giant eBay in December 2005, the company was re-branded as Quikr.com in 2008. "We want to be the quickest and simplest classified ads portal in a market, where there are not many options,” said Pranay Chulet, CEO of Quikr. Chulet feels that India doesn’t have an effective platform for people to “buy, sell, rent or find” things that they need in their day-to-day life, and Quikr is the company that is filling this big gap.

Prior to joining Quikr, Chulet had founded Zobyx, a company focused on creating unique online content in the entertainment and education sectors. He did his B.Tech in IIT Delhi, before graduating with a gold medal from IIM Calcutta. Later he moved to New York, where he spent 11 years across strategy consulting and the new media sector.

Being a community based platform, the company wants to roll out services that can touch every aspect of a person’s life addressing needs that are not easily met offline. Today, by using Quikr people can apply for jobs, get career counseling as well as trade things with each other. They can also take up initiatives like car pooling and philanthropy and find service providers in any area from hobby classes to driver recruiting services. The company doesn’t charge for posting classified ads, it earns its revenue from the paid advertisements and lead generation. With its presence in 40 Indian cities, the site aims to address the regular day-to-day needs of the local community in these cities by connecting people in a simple and convenient way.

Though, there are other classified ads sites that offer a platform to buy and sell, the Mumbai-based company attributes its success to the simplicity of services it offers. “Simplicity is the most underestimated aspect amongst sites that help people buy or sell anything,” says Jiby Thomas, Co-founder & Vice President , Marketing. According to him, most of the sites in the country are not well designed keeping in mind the user needs and have content that may not be relevant to the users too. In addition, there are other factors like their method of posting and finding ads which may be complicated.


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