Here's another innovative use of the Internet. Now, with the click of the mouse, you can place an advertisement in any prominent newspaper across India.
Lucknow techie Roopesh Agarwal, in his early thirties, came up with advertisementindia.com after having already spent several years in the advertising industry.
He's also toying with another innovative idea—catering to NRIs wishing to place an advert in an Indian newspaper! The goal is to make it all very, very hassle free.
Roopesh had been receiving suggestions from his clients as well as distant friends about this particular problem and hence, after a lot of homework and research, he finally launched his website in May 2005.
To his surprise, he got a fairly good response and has so far published more than a dozen advertisements from clients from countries like Kenya, Mauritius, UK, US, Malaya sia and Canada. He says, there are more than 90 proposals on the cards from other overseas clients, however, the response of the distant Indian clients from Nasik, Pondicherry, Nagaland and Pune is surely worth mentioning.
Most of the clients look for advertisements like matrimonial, property, vacancy and obituary. For people settled abroad, it is quite time saving, as they get their advertisement placed in India before they arrive and half their the work is done. A UK-based university wished to advertise for admissions to their various programmes at multiple locations in the country and this site catered them well. Similarly, an NRI based in Mauritius wished to look for a match for his marriageable son within his own caste. Roopesh and his team helped them by getting their advertisement placed in newspapers in the areas where the people of his caste were densely located.
To cater to these privileged clients, Roopesh is being assisted by his father SS Agarwal, who constantly keeps track of the online business and guides Roopesh.
"Many additional features had been added to the site to help the client to provide them bedroom service without charging a single penny extra and the designing and media planning of the advertisement is also free of cost," adds Roopesh.
The site is operational round-the-clock and of late he has also added a helpline phone number.
The site has single window e-booking process, where the client can get an idea and budget for his advertisement. Within a day, the advertiser is revered back by the team of advertisementindia.com as a matter of efficient online service.
The clients can make payment through net via credit card, debit card, net banking or even deposit cheque in a Multinational bank account.
Interestingly, most of the people who wish to advertise in newspaper are able to write matter for their advertisement, as they are not well aware of the language being used. To help such customers, this site has a specific column advertising tips where the person interested can get a hang of the language being used. More than 100 abbreviations are also mentioned for their convenience.
Roopesh is now busy lining up things the other way round and his talks with foreign newspapers in US and UK are on for Indian advertisers, once it clicks, he will be able to cater to Indian clients who wish to get their advertisements published abroad.
Business is growing albeit, Roopesh's father is more concerned about his son ever since he found Roopesh chatting to an online client from the US at 2 am!
But surely, a site to check out.