Williamson Magor, Aft May Pick Teauction Pie

Tea majors Williamson Magor and AFT Industries are likely to pick up stake in teauction.com ltd. The companies are in the process of negotiations and the deal is likely to be finalised in the next couple of months.

At present, Ayush Bagla, chief executive officer has a controlling stake in the company. However, Bagla refused to comment on the issue.

Recently, teauction.com, the tea specific business-tobusiness (B2B) portal web site, has entered into a strategic alliance with M/S A W Figgis & Co Pvt Ltd, one of the oldest brokers. This will enable the buyers and sellers of the tea industry to avail reduced transaction cost of selling bulk teas.

 

"Together , A W Figgis and Teauction.com can offer clients a host of services from inexpensive funds, to auction sales, private sales and internet based sales at economical cost as well as richer information" said Bagla.

This online tea auction site has done around Rs 1.1 crore of business since the time of its launch. "We endeavour to achieve 40 million kilos of tea in the first year of existance as well as increase A W Figgis' volumes at least two fold in 2000" said Bagla.

Incidentally, the honour for the first tea ever to be sold through the Internet based online auction went to HAPJAN BOP belonging to the Apeejay Group of Industries.

The company presently with an employee strength of 33 plans to employ 100 more shortly. The company is also said to be in talks with three ISPs for a tie-up so that members get internet accounts free.

Presently only 55 per cent of India's tea is sold through auction despite 75 per cent legislation.

Teauction.com enables samples to be reached directly to the buyers within five days from the date of manufature of the tea in the gardens. The broker tastes the tea and puts his own remarks and valauations online which is available to the buyers online.

Alliance with Centurion and HDFC bank enable electronic payments and transfers for transactions carried out on this site.