While Kaboodle is good at Social Discovery, it leaves consumers “High and Dry”. Why? Because users have to leave the safety of Kaboodle and go to other websites with no-reputation in-order to complete a purchase. Storrz Social Marketplace recently launched in India tries to completes this cycle by putting “Shopping” back into “Social Shopping”.

At Storrz users need not leave the marketplace. They make the purchase right on the site and are protected by Storrz. Consumers discover, share and also shop online while merchants setup branded stores for free and interact directly with users. Storrz takes a cut of every sale that happens which is its revenue model. This model helps users not only discover and share but helps them complete the purchase with confidence.

Consumers buy products to address specific needs. These needs are contextually driven and are influenced by the social and demographic ecosystem. For instance during a “Baby Shower” friends and family of the to be mother look for gifts to get her. However the aisles of supermarket are not arranged based on the consumers need but more on the product related classifications. So while parenting books and toys may be good gifts for the occasion they will never be found together. This results in a lost opportunity to offer the consumer others products that are relevant in the context. Further, unlike physical commerce people pay now and hope the product to be delivered later in e-commerce. So consumers will not shop unless they trust the paltform. Thus social discovery sites address only a part of the problem. Storrz tries to addresses this need and helps consumers discover, share and shop online with the Storrz Social Marketplace.

Storrz mission is to help consumers shop better online by tapping into the way people think resulting in higher gratification for the consumer and greater trade for merchants.

The primary source of revenue is commissions generated on every sale which range between 10-25% of the sale price. Knowledge generated by the user’s interaction, profiles and preferences are monetized by user-specific targeted advertisements as secondary mode of revenue.

Storrz will be launching worldwide soon. The current beta is available for Indian merchants and consumers in India and across the world who like to send stuff to India. The E-Commerce market in India was $1.4BillionUSD in 2007. This market is growing rapidly as India is set to be among the 3 largest internet economies in the world with over 100Millions internet users with 70% of them using high speed broadband connections by 2010.

The company is founded by Chandan Maruthi and is based out of in Bangalore, India. The Storrz team has 6 people in technology, sales and operations. Storrz already has over 65+ merchants selling 6500+ products across 130 categories. Over 2000+ consumers have made purchases of avg $15 per order, with high orders of a value of $500 per order. We also happen to be India’s only marketplace to offer groceries online.