Browse, click and go shopping on the net
If you are tired of walking down the crowded city shopping malls to buy Eid gifts, risking mugging and other related paraphernalia of city shopping, here's a good news for you.
You can do your next Eid shopping sitting at home in front of your PC and scrolling down the country's first ever e-commerce site awaiting to be launched today. At www.MunshiGi.com, you will find a wide array of products - ranging right from toys to pets to even a house - waiting to be picked up.
"A person living in a foreign country can now buy gifts for his near and dear ones living in Bangladesh using our web site," said M Shamimuzzaman, Executive Director of Corona Information Technology Limited.
MunshiGi is the name of the shopping supermarket which will be available to the web surfers. Corona IT Ltd is launching the site in collaboration with a private organisation named MunshiGi.
The supermarket has 15 virtual floors, each catering to a cluster of the same category of goods. As you click on, pictures of a wide variety of products will appear along with price tags. You can place orders and make the payments either through credit card, cheque or by personal collection.
"Bangladesh is now entering the real virtual consumer world," said Shamimuzzaman. "This is a paperless and effortless shopping experience. You need not feel embarrassed for not buying anything and just browsing the catalogue."
It took a group of 15 young IT wizards two months of nerve-wrecking works for networking with different product-selling companies and to develop the site.
The products of only those companies will be available who have agreed to sell their goods through the site.
"People buying from a foreign country will have the options to make payments through bank cheques, telegraphic money transfer (TT) or a buyer having an account with any local banks can advise the bank to transfer the money to our accounts, M Shamimuzzaman said.
"We are also going to have the facility of credit cards in collaboration with a foreign organisation who will acknowledge on receipt of the money and the goods will be distributed simultaneously," said Shamimuzzaman.
"The site will also help its members to pay utility bills by charging a certain amount," he said, adding that "a foreigner planning to stay in Bangladesh can also book rooms of Hotel Sheraton by using the site."
Talking to The Daily Star the Executive Director of Corona IT Ltd said there were quite a few impediments on the way of e-commerce in Bangladesh.
"Data communication speed in our country is only 64 kbps which is two mbps in the neighbouring countries which have made tremendous progress over the last few years. We also don't have the online credit card facility here in the country."
Credit card acceptance through Internet needs to be okayed in order to facilitate e-commerce in Bangladesh.
Absence of e-commerce is also forcing Bangladesh to lose a substantial revenue chunk which could be earned thorough providing Internet-related applications.
"Currently more than 400 Indian companies are involved in e-business today," Shamim said. "Last year India earned US$ 4 billion by selling e-commerce software, which is projected to hit US$ 50 billion in 2008 alone."
Currently Corona IT Ltd is also providing e-business solutions to three foreign companies as offshore developers.
The company, with its foreign firms situated in Sharjah, London and New York, claims to be earning a five-digit figure per month.
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