Pune360.com is a classifieds website that you should check out. I am aware of (at least) twenty different classifieds sites in India but this is the one, which seems to stand out the most. It has a pleasant user interface, it’s design is simple & uncomplicated and I found it extremely easy to use, search and navigate. All these classifieds sites have borrowed ideas (in varying degrees) from Craigslist, but Pune360 has added some innovative features to the basic Craigslist model, which makes it’s design uniquely refreshing.

The classified section allows users to post free ads for Pune city (based on geography) in various categories. The interface where the listings show up, is in the form of a table, showing the date, the title of the ad, the category and the location. This allows you to quickly run your eyes down the list and narrow down to anything of your interest. In my opinion, the ability to navigate easily is one of the key drivers for a successful classifieds site, and on that count, Pune360 scores much better than other classified sites.

I think Pune360 is actually transitioning from being just a classified site to being a city based portal. For, it has separate sections titled ‘The Writing Wall’, ‘News’ and ‘Real Estate’. The ‘News‘ section covers local news & events in Pune city. The ‘Writing Wall’ is actually a blog and has a collection of useful articles (though not necessarily about Pune). The ‘Real Estate‘ section is a new section and currently has information about various upcoming real estate projects in the city.

Pune360 plans to have similar sites for other Indian cities pretty soon.

I spent some time browsing through the site and here’s some quick feedback that I have for the Pune360 team.

– I think some of the categories in the classifieds section have far less relevance to an Indian audience (e.g ‘Man seeking Man’); it might make sense to ‘Indianise’ the category structure completely
– The location of the search bar at the bottom of the homepage seems incongruous to me; it should probably be at the top of the page, for maximum eye-contact
– There seems to be some overlap between the ‘Writing Wall’ and the ‘News’ sections..

Overall I think, Pune360 is a ‘refreshing’ departure from the cluttered mess that characterize Indian classified websites; I look forward to its launch in other Indian cities.

The Times of India group has recently launched a real estate portal called MagicBricks. With this, the online real estate space in India has actually got quite crowded. We already have quite a few real estate portals (99acres.com, PerSquareYard.com, IndiaProperty.com etc) and all of them look (more or less) the same to me.

Magic Bricks is a full-feature real estate portal. You can list or search for properties (residential or commercial), search for details about specific projects, builders or property brokers, get information about real estate trends/news, learn about home loans, Vaastu tips for home design et al.

I spent some time aimlessly browsing through the site. A few things caught my attention and in fact, left me pleasantly surprised. I am no admirer of TOI’s online ventures but, with MagicBricks, they have tried to push the envelope with a few (technology enabled) innovations, which I would like to bring to the notice of the readers of this blog. Here’s what I found interesting about MagicBricks–

Virtual Walkthrough Tour– This feature allows a property seller to upload a video of his property that prospective buyers can browse through. Its like a real life-like preview of the property. You can actually get a small architectural layout of your property made and link separate videos for individual rooms, interiors, exteriors etc. Its actually done very well and is worth checking out. However the starting price for this feature (at Rs 28000/-) seems insane to me. I don’t see people spending that kind of money to get their property’s video uploaded. A simpler solution that allows users to upload their own videos for a reasonable cost, would probably make more sense.

Locality Mapping Service– This is a free facility and using this, a user can browse through a basic online map of the locality where the property is located. On the map, the locations of civic landmarks like hospitals, shopping complexes, cinema halls etc are flagged off, in relation to the property’s location. Its simple and well thought out; unfortunately the mapping service they are using (mapmyindia.com), while being the best one around in India, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Live Help/Chat– There is live IM enabled help on the site and you can chat with customer care during Indian office hours. There’s no rocket science involved in this, but the fact remains, that this is the first public website in India (to the best of my knowlodge) that allows live (and free) chat with customer care. Pretty useful.

Microsite– This is a sort of a customized webpage for property agents or brokers, where they can put up a brief profile and list their property listings. This feature makes imminent sense, given the fact that a significant proportion of the user base for such web portals happen to be agents & brokers rather than individuals. I’m sure MagicBricks is not the first portal to do this but nevertheless, I thought this is worth pointing out.

Overall, the site’s design looks quite cluttered to me. Only time can tell whether TOI can leverage these innovative features to steal a march over others, in the online real estate space.