3mik, an on-line platform for sharing and discovering shopping items, is the brain child of two IIT Kanpur batch mates Rajeev Jha and Saurabh Srivastava. 3mik is based out of Kolkata and is in beta phase right now.
Launched in June 2012 , www.3mik.com is the on-line place to find the popular, interesting and unique Indian shopping Items. The idea is that as consumers, we have a wealth of information that we can share with other. Together, we can help each other find what we need as shoppers. The retailers can showcase their products in front of visitors thus gaining visibility for their products.
Sign-up is simple and intuitive. You can sign-up with your Facebook , Gmail or Twitter accounts. As of now there are twelve categories like craft,cars,fashion,home,kids etc. You can upload and share the items with other users. So who is going to find this useful? I believe right there would be two categories of users. One is the people interested in browsing interesting Indian shopping items and number two is retailers interested in showcasing their products.
As Saurabh Srivastava, one of the founder says, “Most of the on-line retail showcase the same items, have the same suppliers and as a user you will be hard pressed to find a difference. However, there is a vast world of retail beyond the boundaries of well known establishments. Our effort is to unlock the true potential of on-line retail by creating a network of retailers and shoppers in most democratic fashion. We started 3mik.com because there was not a single on-line platform for finding and sharing India specific items. 3mik launched the beta version in June, 2012. Since then response is very good from people and recently we crossed the ten thousand items on 3mik.”
3mik looks like an interesting collage of visually stunning images of items like hand painted piggy banks, earrings inspired from vintage keys, Lacware finger tops, quirky bookmarks and notebooks, finger puppets, saanp seedi print tables,rubber ring mats with animal designs, Aranmula Mirror, Nida’s don chairs etc. There is no dearth of artistic talent or creativity in India. A five minute browsing ride on 3mik.com will show you Dhokra, Madhubani, Patna kalam art, Kashmiri hand painting, Warli and wrought iron art works.
As of now it is more like window shopping. You can browse and search for items. However Srivastava has bigger plans for future. To quote him, “Taking a look at Quirky items is not the same as having them in house. Feeling of sitting on a Nida Mehmood Don chair is definitely superior to looking at it. But people do want to know where they can find such stuff on-line or closer to their homes. That is where 3mik comes in. Users can also share interesting stuff that they come across and share with people. Within a month or two,users will be able to upload videos along with the images of the items. We are also working on improving quality of images and the browsing experience. We want people to remember what they see.”
Even without these changes, 3mik.com is addictive. A nice place to hang out, discover or to even showcase your interests.
About the founders
Rajeev studied at IIT Kanpur and IIM Bangalore and has worked with MBT, Oracle, America Online (AOL) and Citrix. Saurabh studied at IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta and has worked with Infosys and Franklin Templeton. His last assignment was assisting 7to9 retail.
