Seems like we have come a full circle. We are back in the barter economy. There are several business-to-business (B2B) barter sites cropping up --BarterTrust.com, Shopnow.com, BigVine.com (formerly DoubleBill.com funded by Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins) and Barter.com. The idea is that you exchange your excess inventory for whatever else you desire. Here's how BarterTrust.com works. A company becomes a member. The site checks out the company. Once you become a member, you can put up your excess inventory and get credit for the book value of your inventory. Other members can see the inventory and buy. The price can either be fixed, negotiable or, in future, auctioned. The company selling the inventory gets credit in barter-trust dollars. This is kept in a secure place on the site and can be used to purchase other goods on the Net.How does the site make money? It charges the seller and the buyer a percentage of the deal. If a buyer overdraws credit, it will be charged interest on it. "Barter preserves cash, raises productivity, works in good and bad economic cycles, opens complementary distribution channels and introduces new trading partners. About $16 billion worth of barter trade is conducted annually by an estimated 250,000 US companies," says the website. 
The idea seems so hot that BigVine.com has got about $50 million in four rounds of funding from major venture capitalists like Kleiner Perkins and also American Express, whose small business clients automatically become members of BigVine. 

Find babysitters
Footforward.com is the second women's site to be launched this month after icleo.com. "We are service-oriented," says Santoshi Nadkarni, who till recently was a researcher with McKinsey & Co. "The site lists things like where one can find a baby-sitter and where to get bills paid. It is also building a directory of businesses which are being run from home. This could be someone running a craft shop, designing clothes or running a school pick-up service for children. 
In addition, the site will have six channels like one on healthcare, beauty and career. "Our content will all be need-based. We find that many career-women need advice on infertility, and we have provided information on it. We will also provide links to other websites on these topics," points out Santoshi. At present, the web- site is Mumbai-focused but the founders claims that they are targeting other cities in the country. The website will be e-commerce-enabled through Rediff, which has picked up a 26% stake in the company. It will retail special things like cane bassinets, for instance.  

Heartbeat Music
Dhadkan.com is a music portal launched by Santosh Taparia, yet another desi who has returned after a brief stint in the US with Bankers Trust Alex Brown, an investment bank in San Francisco. Taparia, who has bankrolled the site himself, claims to have uploaded about 1,200 audio clips but we could not play any because we link through a slow connection (we dial through an EPABX). For each song, the site offers an audio clip and a place where you can post your review and even rate the song. The ratings become part of a countdown. There are even lyrics for all kinds of songs. The site claims to have everything on Indian music: Indipop, film music, ghazals. But it has a long way to go, there is no regional language music yet. The site will soon be e-commerce-enabled through www.indiaplaza.com. Will they distribute singles directly through the site? Taparia says that this is at least six months away as the Indian music labels aren't yet ready to accept the concept.  

Interactive brand promotion
As part of brand promotion, BT (British Telecom) has created a club for IT professionals called Global Information Exchange (www.info- exchange.bt.com). The idea is, of course, to make this website as sticky as possible. So, there is Reuters technology news. In addition, there are resources, a e-commerce report, technology journals which has trends, book reviews by other professionals with a link to Amazon, an opinion poll and even a forum. 
This will be  backed by offline promotion. For instance, last week, BT had organised an event across the country. In Delhi,  they had invited professor Soumitra Dutta, who teaches e-biz at INSEAD in France, to deliver a lecture. They also hooked up five ISDN lines from the Oberoi Hotel in Delhi back to the BT labs. Video came down on four of these lines and the fifth was used for audio. If you could sit through the frequent disconnections, you could videoconference with experts talking on how customer relationship management would be done in the future.  There was even  a live video demonstration of technology.