Roopit's Voice

Just another day went past for most people in Bangalore. Slightly chill. Rains on and off. Traffic Jams. Lots of Noise on the road. A two hour power cut.

Today,  A test match victory, thanks to Laxman, and 4 Golds for India in CWG happened too.

Was special at our office here though. We have managed to connect 5000 Buyers with Sellers in a little over four months since inception. We hope you were one of them.

Today was even more special, actually. We have also connected 100 buyers with sellers on a single day for the first time.

This double whammy was possible because of the faith & trust you & thousand others (who are not online & are probably not reading this) put in us. On this special day, we resolve to make Classifieds in Bangalore, really “realtime” and really “location based”.

Please celebrate with us. Listen to the “Love me do (Beatles released their first record today in 1962)”,  get yourself a piece of chocolate, Tell one friend of yours about Roopit, Eat healthy &  Sleep well. We promise, the next chocolate is on us.

Thank you for 5000 & 100.

In Bangalore? Looking to buy something? Now is a great time to throw your browser away for classifieds.

Classifieds? SMS Roopit.

Lets do this together:

1) Pick up your phone.
2) Now type something you want,

example: “iphone 4” or “2 BHK rent“.

3) Send it as an SMS to +91-9916-ROOPIT (That is “9916766748“).

4) Wait for about a minute and then Head over here for a discussion.

Roopit – Classifieds on SMS. Like it?

pic courtesy

Hey,

I am hey@roopit.com speaking. I want to be your GTalk IM buddy. Infact, You can add me as your buddy on any Jabber supported client. Can I be your friend?

Once you add me, I will be waiting to hear from you about anything that you want to sell or give away for free. Type in a sale notice like this:

house-rent@koramangala Perfect Vaastu, 2200 sqft, duplex bangalow. Commercial use. 1 garage + 2 car parks. near BDA complex. Rent: Rs 45,000 – nego. Call 9916766748

With this, I will understand that you have a “house” for “rent” at locality “Koramangala“. I will use this for categorizing your sale notice in the right place. Further, I understand that the rest of the text in your IM ( Perfect Vaastu, 2200……..Rs 45,000 – nego) is the description of your item on rent. Put in any valid 10 digit mobile number in your IM and I will understand it to be your mobile phone where nice people looking for a house on rent must call.

Here is another example:

laptop@shivaji-nagar 2 Years old Macbook in tiptop condition… 2.4 GHz, 160 GB HD, 2 GB RAM – Covered under Apple Care Protection Plan for 3 Years. Call 9916766748

With this, I understand that you have a “laptop” for “sale” (because there is no “rent”) at “Shivaji Nagar” (You have put a hyphen between Shivaji and nagar to let me know that it is name of your locality).

Also, I will try to adjust your description to fit the 140 character limit, but if I cant, please allow me to truncate or modify it.

Once I figure all of this out, your sale notice will go live and will be available for people who are on the internet or who call Roopit on the phone at 9916766748. Here is how it will appear on the www.roopit.com: (Note that your mobile number is not displayed on the website and hence will continue to remain safe and secure).

Note that you will still need to verify your phone before you can start managing this notice. Furthermore, unverified notices get pushed out of the system really quickly.

I hope this is not confusing, but even if it is, start messaging me. Because, whenever I don’t understand what you are saying I will pass it along to real people who work at Roopit.com and they will help you out.

Also, I am just beginning to do this stuff myself, so, if I behave a little weirdly, please excuse me. I will get better with time. If something goes wrong, call the Roopit people at 9916766748.

On Gtalk – Type hey@roopit.com as your buddy to add.
On Pidgin – Select hey@roopit.com as the buddy’s username on your GTalk Account.
On Gmail – Start typing in hey@roopit.com and choose “invite to chat”

Thanks,
hey@roopit.com
Your Reseller Bot on GTalk

As sellers of stuff at home, we are continually forced to make the decision on how much to sell something for. Consider this Television. It is a real treasure from the olden days. The owner told us that a second hand dealer offered 500 Rs! for it. The owner knew (and we knew it too) that it is worth much more than 500. But how much?

Consider this drum kit that got sold out recently. How much is that actually worth? We don’t know. The seller did’nt know. But some experts do. Because they have dealt with buying & selling used products all through their life, they have a rough idea. So, we decided to bring in a few of them to help you.

Now, you can call up a Roopit expert to  get a rough idea on how much to sell your product for. We have introduced this service in a few product categories: Cars, Bikes, Cycles, Fridge, Washine Machine, Television. The information you need is available on the sell page of these categories, like this:

We hope you like the service. If you do, we would love to expand it to all categories.

Happy Selling.

Roopit is a meeting point for individuals like you and me to buy and sell things between the two of us.

Retail Shops and e-commerce stores are bent upon selling you a new item. Say a refrigerator, a book, an ipod. And they do a very good job at it. But often, most of us are upgrading when we are buying something new. It is likely that you already have a Television in working condition when you are buying a new Flat screen LED TV. There is nothing wrong with your existing TV. You simply want to upgrade to a newer technology for better quality & experience.

Now, These retail and e-commerce shops typically don’t tell you what to do with your old TV. Actually, Most of them don’t care. Some may have an exchange offer, but, for a rock bottom price. You know that your TV is worth much more but you will have to settle for their price. Other retailers might give you the contact of a second-hand broker/dealer and the story is not very different with them either. For example, I gave my fridge in working condition to a dealer for 1500 Rs.. I didn’t know what else to do.

So, these second hand dealers will usually break your TV down and re-furbish and sell it’s parts. Have you ever seen a decent electronics shop selling second hand TV anywhere? This is also the reason why they wont pay your TV for what it is worth. Because, they are not going to use it. They are going to break it down.

At Roopit, we believe there is someone out there who will be very happy to buy your TV, take it home, and actually watch something on it. And because he is going to use it, it is worth as much for him as it is for you. Roopit’s mission is to connect you with him in the fastest and safest way possible.

It seems, 99% of the things we bought six months ago are no longer in real use today ^[1]. So, all of us have a lot of things to give away all the time. We hope you use Roopit to sell your TV, to rent your house or to give away a book free to someone and to put that entire 99% of the things you don’t want, to good re-use.

Using Roopit is ridiculously simple. Read more here: http://blog.roopit.com/using-roopit

[1] : storyofstuff.com

We have a long list of people (and things) who were responsible for helping Roopit see the light of the day. It is only fitting that we mention each and every one them. Furthermore, one word describing our feeling.

• status.net – Indebted.
• Open source. Particularly, Ubuntu & the LAMP stack – Freedom
• prettyPhoto – Pretty.
• Camtasia -  Wonderful.
• Google Analytics, Getsatisfaction, Twitter, Facebook – Between You and Us.
• Eclipse – Survival.
• Jquery – Style.
• Geonames – Data
• Wordpress – Communication.

And now to the people.

• Gaurav Bushan – crafty
• Vaidehi – artist
• Noor from Vodafone Store. – “Out of the way” Helpful
• Pathanjali, Pap, Collins & Farex – Generous
• Folks at Flipkart. – Advisory.
• Tapas – Sport.
• Sameer Sisodia – Devil(’s advocate).
• Sharan from Mobme – Prompt.
• Ashish Solanki – Attention to detail.
• Swaroop C H – Makes sense.

And finally to the four people on whose shoulders Roopit rests.

• Rajeswari T S – Heart
• Anand Ganesan – Thought.
• Moxada Singh – Mind
• You – Soul.

Happy Shopping.