Online B2B Marketplace IndiaMart has tied up with HSBC, Monster.com, CC Avenue, E Mudhra and Sage to offer a suite of services to its existing customer base, at subsidized rates. On offer are trade accounts, recruitment solutions, payment gateway solutions, digital signature and ERP Solutions, at 20%-25% of the regular price. An Indiamart representative told MediaNama that these are yearly deals, and not on a revenue share basis, and more importantly, non-exclusive in nature. Thus, competitors like TradeIndia and Alibaba can also partner with these platforms to offer their services. What's on offer? -- Payment gateway solutions from CC Avenue -- Digital Signature from eMudhra: 20% off -- Worldwide Tenders from TendersZeal: 25% off for a subscription -- Recruitment Solutions from Monster: Upto 75% off -- Trade Account from HSBC -- ERP solutions from Sage: 50% off on ERP solutions These are for members only, so one needs to sign up and sign in. While on the face of it, these appear to be just promotions, this could serve as a differentiator for IndiaMart, despite the non-exclusivity: the broader trend has been a move towards platform services - it isn't possible for sites like Yahoo and Facebook to run all services for their users on their own, and remain at the bleeding edge of innovation, so they've taken a platform approach and either (as in case of Yahoo) outsourced services to partners, or they've opened up their API to allow third party applications to address their user base. Trade sites…
