Onista

In the Year 2007, one fine evening I and Sanjib were at starbucks. We were chatting about stuff and conversation turned to the general process of buying and selling products online.
Both of us had our share of issues with the entire online buying and selling process and our issues at top of list were the inefficiency and the need for searching and hunting for the right deal. We spent a lot of time that evening talking about how we disliked the process and yet we used it every now and then.

Over the next couple of days there was an unstoppable exchange of emails on how we can solve these problems for ourselves and for everybody else who may be in the same boat.

We started contacting our friends and folks on forums/marketplaces who were actively involved in online buying and selling of products. We spent the next three to four weeks talking to people to understand their issues. We were looking for the pain points that they passionately talk about.

We not only found that many of them share the same pain points that we were frustrated with but also gave us new set of pain points like, upfront cost of selling, lack of support for different payment systems, competition among buyers, Non-Negotiable prices, lack of collaborative shopping experience, collusion between power sellers, and Limited access to potential buyers. So we started our journey towards solving some of these pain points. We knew that we needed to think outside of auctions and classifieds.

Then we came up with the plan and to get more validation on our plan we showed it to our friend Ram who was pursuing his MBA at SCU at the time. Ram set us up with his contacts at SCU and we received encouraging feedback from everyone we talked to at SCU entrepreneur group. With overwhelming positive feedback, Ram also decided to join the forces and that turned out to be awesome for us. Ram added extremely great value to the team and the product.

Fast-forward today,
We are releasing the Alpha version of our dreams, ideas and execution called Onista. We are extremely excited to release it in open alpha with tons of hard-work behind it.

Onista is an auction-less social marketplace where people can buy and sell products. Onista is an amalgam of eBay, PriceLine, LendingTree, Alibaba.com, and LinkedIn. Onista allows instant price negotiation and enables buying products without searching.

Here is quick summary of Onista Features,

1. Auction-less format
2. Instant Real-time price negotiation resulting in Instant Gratification for consumer
3. Buyers can buy products without searching and hunting for products using Request for Quotes and Price Quotes model like Alibaba.com
4. Free listings for sellers
5. Sellers get open access to qualified sales leads and targeted product placements
6. Support for multiple payment systems (Paypal, Amazon etc..)
7. A Social Network to build trading communities and mitigate the propensity for fraud

Please visit http://www.onista.com and enjoy the Onista Experience.
To understand more about Onista, please do not forget to watch our Demo Video by clicking icon Demo Video on right-bottom corner of Onista index page. Alternatively you can also watch this video at http://www.vimeo.com/1594866

What we are really looking for now is your feedback as user so we can improve our product and also help to spread the word.

We can use your help in three ways,

1. Provide us feedback about how we should improve Onista. Any feedback is welcome.
   To give you an idea on what kind of feedback you can think about, (but again, any feedback will be appreciated)
   • What is your first impression of the home page and also other pages?
   • What was confusing and what was not in entire site
   • What is complicated to understand, and how we can do it better?
   • Would you use this site to buy or sell products? if no, why? what can we improve so it appeals to you? If yes, would you invite your friends to join?
   • We understand that we have lot more functionality for alpha version. Does it help or it confuses you more?
2. We also need your much appreciated help in spreading the word. If you find Onista useful, PLEASE let your friends know. Also please become member and invite your friends from http://www.onista.com/invite.php
3. Please list some products for sale. Our initial goal is to get many products listed because unless there are products to sell, the site would not be very useful. If you need any help in listing products, Onista team can also help

If you have any more questions, please refer to our help section at http://www.onista.com/help.php

And please feel free to contact us at,

support@onista.com

Please help us spread the word about Onista,

Regards,

Onista Team,