FutureBazaar.com - Blast from the Past

For those of you who dread the idea of visiting your local Big Bazaar outlet to buy your daily necessities, well FutureBazaar.com can't really help you much. Although, I am sure the idea was to provide consumer goods on a feasible platform for the tech-savvy to save the time and energy, one would really question if the catalogue is viable enough for online sales?
The highlight on FutureBazaar is on electronics rather than general goods. And one would really not want to buy an expensive good off the internet just like that. After all, we Indians are known to really squeeze the juice out of every product before we can actually make a decision.
So is Pantaloons expecting to sell a lot of washing machines or Ipods by the means of an online platform like that? They could do well with a good apparel range, perhaps, but sticking to the Rs. 89 only t-shirt formula is not going to help - considering the market has already made the shift to quality over affordability.
Talking of functionality, the website offers basic functions - making it fairly easy to navigate and get what you need to get done. The design doesn't appeal to my senses crying loudly for some splash of co-ordinated colors or maybe even an overhaul altogether.
While this might be a revolution for online retailing for Indian consumers with a complete change of catalogue and design, futurebazaar.com is really not from the future. It is from the ancient past, when people wanted cheap stuff regardless of quality, and didn't have access to other online avenues.