One
of his projects, kisanbazar.com,
offers scope for product inquiries, trading and auctions for
agricultural produce while poultrydeals.
com goes to the extent of hosting hourly market updates.
“As
of now, the farming community may continue to look at the
Internet with a degree of suspicion, but corporate players
in sugar, poultry, dairy, seeds and fertilisers are slowly
becoming Net-based in a big way. Over the next few years,
e-commerce will have a major say in agriculture,” predicts
Ashish.
It
is not for the first time that Ashish has gone where no one
has been before on the Net. Even before Ashtech was formally
launched, Ashish developed the indiaproperties.
com portal and quickly moved on static sites to dynamic
ones such as globalflowerdelivery.
com, before setting up 'Internet
Swami' to entice clients with offers of free websites.
“It
is not enough to simply develop an ecommerce portal. To begin
with, e-commerce for someone who is in the flower or gifts
business can be a success story only if there is an organised
back-end support. The site has to be so user-friendly and
convenience-oriented that it would entice clients to use their
credit cards for transactions. With e-banking facilities and
RBI policies in place, e-commerce is no longer clouded by
doubt and insecurity.”
The
dynamic one-man show launched in 2000 has now progressed to
a six-member team of software pros, a marketing office in
Baramati which taps the sugar sector. “We are growing
at 90 per cent each year,” reveals Ashish. And it does
not stop here. Absolutely loyal to Microsoft technologies,
Ashish is now working on SQL servers and Dotnet which is a
language-independent technology. “The important thing
is to keep an eye on the future and never blink,” he
states. Ashish Annachatre... making giant strides on the Net. |
