The Telegraph – Calcutta, India
By SOHINI MOOKHERJEA
With the Tea Board all set to announce its partner for the e-auction initiative, mjunction, the joint venture between SAIL and Tata Steel, and NSE.IT, the IT consultancy wing of the National Stock Exchange, have emerged as the top bidders for the deal.
The Tea Board plans to invest Rs 15 crore over five years in the system.
mjunction has bid with CMC Ltd, the IT company from the Tata stable. While mjunction will handle the front end, CMC will manage the back end of operations.
The winning bidder will set up and manage the platform for two years before handing it over to the Tea Board.
The upfront investment on the system is Rs 8 crore. The Tea Board is also exploring the possibility of a chain of networked warehouses across the country to aid the auction.
“The aim is to ultimately encourage the garden sale of tea through e-auctions,” a Tea Board official said.
In the off-line auction system as well as in the existing e-auction one, bidding takes place at the auction hall, which limits the number of buyers and restricts their option to bid from the location of their choice. The proposed system will dispense with this limitation as well as with the participation of auctioneers in a serial manner. There will now be concurrent auctions with flexible timings.
e-auction implies that buyers will be able to place their bids simultaneously from any location .
This is why the 350-odd tea buyers in Siliguri, Jalpaiguri and other areas of north Bengal are fearing for their livelihood. The buyers are packeteers and blenders as well as agents who buy for other dealers.
A Tea Board official, however, said buyers would have instantaneous access to prices of other auctions, which will lead to a better price discovery and improve their bids.
The buyers under the new system can review all the instruments and enter bids online. Another feature is the anonymity of the bidders, which will prevent any bidder from influencing the market.
This is the third time that the project has changed hands.
