An Open Letter to Avinish Bajaj (Reposted)

[quicksilvervoho]

Sometime back in 2001, I registered in Baazee on impulse and forgot all about it. Later in 2003, I realized the tremendous potential of online trading and the yeoman service that Baazee was doing and decided to spend quality time listing my products on Baazee. In the process I became a Super Seller and developed a strong rapport with your colleagues in both Chennai and Mumbai. As Samar would authenticate, it was my pleasure to go on stage during your last meet in Aruna Inn, Chennai and talk about the potential, the biz options and integrity of Baazee. I felt proud that an Indian Auction site was going great guns and gaining some terrific momentum.

It came as a jolt when you announced the amalgamation (should I say, Sale to?) with eBay, which I consider as a much disorganized, cluttered site. I’d always felt that we Indians were doing a much better job in terms of Technology usage, coding, layouts etc. And just as Baazee was getting into that mind-set, you decided to de-Indianise the site. Why? There were some tremendous changes planned on Baazee that was looked forward by the members that could have taken B into the next level and even given eBay or Wal-Mart a run for their money. And just about everyone, Seller, Buyer, Employees were very disappointed (check the CafГ© postings) about the move that lost Baazee its identity.

Just about everyone wondered on the need to sell a very successful site that would have probably fetched more than what it fetched the *Hotmai* guys, if only you had waited for another couple of years? In the process, you would understand that a lot of resentment gained against Baazee as you can see from the CafГ©.

But all this resentment vanished when it came to providing you the support during the MMS issue. I guess just about everyone stood firmly behind you in your hour of crisis. The Editors of publications, the Letters-to-the-Editor writers, the IT sector, name it… and you had them speaking aloud on the treatment meted out to you. The Baazee community was behind you every moment of your bad time. But, today, Baazee’s attitude does not honour these sentiments. One can understand that the Delhi cops were not fully educated or advised on cyber laws and probably acted in haste when they took you into custody, but today it’s Baazee which seems to be acting uninformed and arbitrary. You seem to be doing crisis management rather than auction portal management. Just about everything on Baazee is focused on listings’ content that you look so cowed down in the eyes of the discerning public. It seems that your operations currently are aimed at pleasing the lawmakers rather than approaching the issue in a professional manner.

Baazee seem to be removing at will some of the listings without defining any parameters in the 1st place. Pls understand it takes nettime and effort to create a CSV sheet, connect and upload, only to find that fraudwatch (ugh! What a name!) has not allowed it. Why not have a directive on listings that would pop-up instead of Popular products, which hardly serves any purpose in any case? Today, a harmless Music CD (Fusion, not even Heavy Metal 🙂 ) of mine was removed without any rhyme or reason. Why? It was Titled “KarmaSutra” and probably some over-enthu fraudwatch exec read it as Kamasurta and reacted “Ooh.. this guy is trying to upload sex (asterisks? Is it a Bad word? Dont you guys on Baazee-eBay do it?) on Baazee. Delete it” Like I said earlier, Baazee seems to be intent on action before thought. But what takes the cake is that I’m able to list the same item on e-bay 🙂 .

And that’s the problem. This hurried effort to comply with all policies and directives of eBay. Rather than tell eBay that Indian Auction portals and Indians in general work very differently from the rest of the European / US online communities.

One gets the impression that you wanted to sell Baazee and be done with it. I’m not sure if you had a long term thought process when you started Baazee, but selling it in such a hurry rather than developing further seems to give the impression that you had only short-term plans. I’m sure folks like Mr.Ramalinga Raju or Mr. Narayanamurthy would have been tempted to sell off Satyam or Infosys in its early success stages and made a meager 100 Mil, but I guess they were thinking long-term. I too was thinking long-term on my association with Baazee, and so did a lot of Sellers, but alas, you thought otherwise. If you had just the patience and vision, each of us could have earned 45 Mil in a couple of years from now.

Pray, tell me, how has the association with eBay helped Baazee? Except for a few cosmetic changes in the layout and rating scenario, there is no improvement in terms of Site speed, Technology or services. Areas such as database management, Piasa Pay continue to be cause for concern. How has it helped the Sellers / Buyers who trusted you so much to give their Blood, Sweat and Tears to give Baazee an International status? It is this exposure and support by the Baazee community that led you to price Baazee in Millions to eBay. Just an enthu CEO with a great, dedicated bunch of employees would have made no impact, if not for the encouraging participation from the Baazee community. It is sad that Baazee’s obsession with eBay is overshadowing this contribution. A level of frustration is also evident in your colleagues and the way they are reacting. What more, you seem to have a lost a dedicated bunch of Indian employees in your efforts to please your ebay partners. Just not fair at all. I know personally how much of Blood, Sweat and Tears that Sethu, Sam or Saravanan of your Chennai office put in to make Baazee a popular force.Yet, these guys have been given the boot b'cos your ebay partners brought in some stupid rules and regulations.

Soon, you will have restrictions on words like Unisex (asterisks? Yeah this is the paraonia) T-shirts and may pull down my T-shirt listings. My Kid-21 games CDs may be removed b’cos the Desc has the word “Speed’, which is associated with amphetamines. You may probably remove my Bedspreads b’cos people may buy it to make Love on them.

It is very clear that Baazee will never be the same again, much like the pre-Tsunami Chennai Marina that we loved with all our hearts. Except that the latter was not man-made. The Premier Indian Auction site becomes just another mall on the net, not the Active, Qualitative, Community site that it was. For you never took the community into account when you made your decisions. I did not attend the Seminar in Chennai this beacuse there was nothing good to talk about Baazee and I didn't want to bullshit to the attendees anymore.

I guess asking you to buy back Baazee from eBay would be frivolous, but the feeling lingers that Baazee as an Indian Portal would have been better off than its today.

I dunno how long I’ll continue with Baazee, but surely will b’cos I’ve been involved deeply and as an online Store Owner myself (I’d never sell “my baby” whatever the temptation), I understand that Unsubscribing would only affect the concept of “Online Shopping” as a whole. But one thing, I’m going to spend very less time here till some clarity and focus is seen on Baazee.

Regards

[baazeecafe]

Dear QuicksilverVoHo,

You are absolutely right; it is the community of buyers and sellers who have made Baazee what it is today. We would like to thank you, and our entire community, for being with us and supporting us all these years. And we are sure that it is all of you who will help us grow in the future.

Having said that, I am sure you will understand that there are times when change becomes necessary. We felt that it was in the best interests of our ever-expanding community that we partner with the world's online marketplace, eBay. eBay has nearly 10 years of experience of running a marketplace across various countries, and we feel that we can leverage on their expertise and introduce some of their features and practices on to Baazee, in the process making the site even more safe and fun for our users.

You are absolutely right when you say that most of the changes made right now are 'cosmetic'. We are aware that the significant changes will be related to the areas that you mentioned - technology, site speed and services. We would like to assure you that we are working on these, and would roll out these changes over the course of the next few months. I am sure you will appreciate that making these changes are far more complex than the 'cosmetic' ones made earlier, and we would like to take more time to ensure that we minimize any likely disruptions to our users as we make these changes.

Thanking you once again for your feedback,

Warm Regards,
The Baazee Team

[quicksilvervoho]

At last some1 from Baazee reponds.
Well, like I said , I'm going to be around. Whether it is to see Baazee grow or wither away is left to be seen.
And this time, its not in the hands of the Baazee Community, but Baazee management.
Best 'o Luck

[the_mall_in1]

Absolutely, Baazee has just removed all the systems that were different from eBay (even though they were very useful) without getting all the good systems practiced on eBay. This has created major problems for all sellers.


Maybe its the people at eBay who are forcing Baazee to change all the systems to make Baazee an exact copy of eBay! But doing it in such a irresponsible, pathetic and unplanned way is not all good for a site of eBay's stature. They seem to be in no mood to hear anything from their Indian Management/Employees, especially after the MMS issue, and just order them to strictly follow whatever they say. X-( So bad an unthoughtful of them!


I can just hope that this chaos ends at the earliest and we can have all the so called "Best Practices" of eBay on Baazee ASAP. :_| Infact, I personally feel many of Baazee's practices were BETTER than ebay's "best" practices. :^O Take for example the Privilage buyers club, Hot selling, 1 paisa stock clearance, etc. which helped the buyers a lot and everyone loved them (hope they stay!). Then, there was auto-relist faciltiy which saved sellers a lot of time, priority EL for selling low value items with some ELs, multiple quantity listings with secondary category facility, lower featured listing charges which not only gave more sales to sellers but also more EL fees and commission to baazee, and many other such features.


The sellers are unhappy can be proven with a look at the cafe threads, and the loss for baazee can easily be proven by small example... just hava a look at the Featured items page on baazee, 15 days ago there were over 800 item with featured listing, today there are less than 200!!! So a loss of approx Rs.50000 per week for baazee!!! 😮 Ans that is even after accounting for the increase in the Featured EL fees (Old: 800 x 100 = 80000. New: 200 x 150 = 30000. Net Loss = 50000)


So can eBay answer where is Baazee heading now? How long can eBay's Indian Operations bear such losses created due to mistakes(so called decisions!) made by some people sitting in the US who donot, and just refuse to understand their Indian counterparts and the Indian market? ?:| :_|


I just sincerely hope that the people at eBay get back their heads stable on their shoulders, and see to it that baazee really turns into a great site that it was on the path of becoming(before they came in and took it off path). And yes... not to forget... solve all the woes of so many sellers complaining about hundreds of things that are going wrong on Baazee, and inturn be happier as they can get the highest returns on their investments in Baazee.


Good Luck eBay.