The Hindu Business Line : Grounded in `realty'

Ever since he couldremember, Pratik Dutta of Barddhaman in West Bengal wanted to make it big in life. The 24-year-old had always felt that the route towards this end was entrepreneurship. The graduate in information technology completed several certified professional IT courses before floating his own software and Web development firm, Solutions Online, in 2005. That was the time when Kolkata was beginning to attract the right kind of investment in its own IT sector. Also, that was the time when many non-resident Bengalis - some of them engaged in the Silicon Valley - decided to head back home, either to set up their own IT start-ups or to offer their professional services to big firms on engagement basis.

"All for the quality of life that Kolkata has to offer" as one lately-back-from-the-US professional-turned-entrepreneur put it.

"That was when it struck me that the next boom in Kolkata would veer round real estate because all these IT firms, as also those who were engaged therein, would require a roof above their heads," says Dutta, CEO of Solutions Online, who soon floated a portal that serves as a one-stop-shop directory of professionals, aides, technical experts and organisations that provide solutions to all matters pertaining to property and real estate.

The site, www.propertymart.co.in, focusses on real estate in retail format. The portal has three major channels: PropertyPedia, the knowledge channel that offers information related to property in West Bengal. It focuses on land laws and by-laws, construction, interiors and landscaping, Vaastu, Feng Shui, concepts, loans, taxes, etc.

PropertyExchange functions as a single-window platform for buying and selling, turnkey consultancy and NRI services. The third channel, PropertyBase, is a virtual directory of all those who offer property-related services, such as architects, builders, lifestyle shops, interior decorators and Feng Shui & Vaastu consultants, among others.

According to Dutta, www.propertymart.co.in is perhaps the only Web site of its kind that is focused entirely on eastern India in general and West Bengal in particular. Today, the site registers more than 2,500 hits a day and has generated requests from across the country and West Asia. Master planners have also begun to advertise on the site, which now proposes to offer offline services as well on a pan-India basis.

The initial enquiries that the site generated has prompted Dutta to expand his company's footprint to Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi. Plans to set up offices in the West Coast of the US and Canada - where a sizeable portion of the company's prospective client base is located - are also on the anvil.

The revenue model, too, is in place. The Web site will charge a 2.5 per cent commission from both the buyer and seller for facilitating transactions even as the charge for turnkey consultancy contracts has been pegged at 12 per cent. "Our Web site will also attract investors to invest in infrastructure development in this part of the country," says Dutta, adding that project marketing would be the logical progression in the company's business activity.

ambar_ singhroy@rediffmail.com

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