Are you a small team running a growing business? Are you crazy about numbers and believe that visuals are the best way to understand/present them? Google Code’s Chart API is a neat utility to quickly build good looking charts that can help you monitor your business. To quote the prerequisites as mentioned on the page:

To use this API, you should have a little HTML experience; a little patience to read the documentation; and a little persistence to keep trying if your first charts don’t look as you expect them to.

At Chaupaati, we use Google Chart Tools and we love it. If you are looking for a simple, quick and effective charting solution, why don’t you give it a spin.

You are a small business. You have a neat product line up. You probably have a retail showroom. But you also have tie-ups with logistics partners who can deliver your products anywhere in India.

Does your business have an online store where customers can buy your products? Importantly, does your business have a phone store where your customers can call to order and pay?

Chaupaati enables small and medium scale businesses to create a phone + web store in less than 15 minutes. Just log on to www.chaupaati.in/post and create ads of your products (remember to select the ‘I want to sell’ option). Your customers can discover your products by logging on to www.chaupaati.in or by calling 922-222-1947. Once they select the product, they can pay using credit card, debit card or net-banking on web and using a credit card on phone.

On successful completion of order, we’ll send you order and delivery details in real-time. Just ship the order to your customer and settle collections with Chaupaati at the end of month.

Adya International, Bikanervala Sweets and Toube Bas are some of the small and entrepreneurial businesses who’ve set-up their phone stores on Chaupaati. We hope many more businesses will find value with our system.

Looking for great deals on computers, mobiles, electronics, appliances, automobiles, furniture, real estate and repair services? Now you can search for deals in your locality; refine your search by budget, location, advertiser, and keywords; and make contact with the advertiser instantly by SMS. Discovering good & current deals in your neighbourhood was never so easy.

Whether you are a business or household, you can advertise your deals on Chaupaati and reach millions in Mumbai, especially those who are not online. You get charged only when you receive responses on your mobile by SMS. We let you try the service by posting your first ad for FREE. To continue advertising on Chaupaati after your trial, you can top-up your account by Rs.200 to Rs.20,000, and then post as many ads as you would like and for as long as you would like. Remember, you only get charged for responses.

If you are a business and would like to regularly advertise on Chaupaati, please select a subscription plan that best fits your requirement.

You may call 922-222-1947 between 8a to 10p, 365 days a year, and speak with a friendly Chaupaati representative in your favorite language to search & post deals, manage your account or purchase a subscription plan. Over 50,000 people from Mumbai use Chaupaati. We welcome you to join the community…

Shruti and I moved to a new home last week. Given the nature of both our work, neither of us has much income and we need to save every buck on this move to minimize damage. The perfect case for using Chaupaati. Here are my experiences so far.

1. Bought a used Washing Machine: Harish Vyas (name anonymized) was upgrading to a bigger washing machine. He found out about Chaupaati from a Gujarati newspaper ad and decided to advertise his washing machine deal by calling 922-222-1947. He was asking for Rs.5,000 for a 6.5KG LG Fabricare washing machine, originally bought at Rs.18,000 one and a half years ago. After Shruti found this deal on Chaupaati, she visited for an inspection and then made an offer of Rs.4,500. The following weekend, I went with the car, completed the transaction, loaded it up at his home and transported it to our home. Before making the payment, I made a cursory inspection, got a promise to return if there were any surprises, and understood all fittings and settings so I could have it up and running the same day back home. Harish lives in Andheri West 2km from our new home, and it sure helped that his engineer dad is hands-on and knows his machines. Sure enough, the washing machine was up and running the next morning with all fittings. No surprises. Except, Harish has not yet paid Chaupaati and does not feel obliged to! As we have discovered the hard way, the individual advertiser does not like to pay after use. If the deal does not happen, they feel no obligation to pay for responses received, no matter how genuine. When the deal happens, they behave just like my mom does in the mall. In a buy-four-get-one-free deal, she always asks the shopkeeper for the free thing, WITHOUT buying the four paid ones. Consumers, after much coaxing, are willing to pay for that one response that translated to a deal, and have something nasty to say about all others and feel no obligation to pay for them. Now Chaupaati collects money in advance, after a FIRST AD FREE trial.
2. Bought a second sale Microwave oven: Rahim Khamisy (name anonymized) is a wholesaler of second-sale LG products and a customer of Chaupaati’s century plan (100 contacts). He has built relationships with LG-corporate and gets bulk stock of LG seconds products, which he supplies to many local entrepreneurs across Mumbai. These products are typically showroom pieces with minor external damages or excess inventory of a discontinued series, and are covered under parts and service warranty (non-replacement) by LG. The asking prices are usually 30-50% off MRP and make it great buys for the value-seeking consumer. Besides supplying to dealers across Mumbai, Rahim does retail sale in his locality. Because of Chaupaati, he has now extended his retail network to rest of Mumbai, as long as customers are willing to visit the little corner of Khar East where his workshop is located in the periphary of a slum. Shruti was looking for a new microwave oven (convection+grill) in her neighbourhood and found Rahim’s deal for a 26 Liter LG. The asking price for a Rs.11,500 MRP microwave was Rs.7,800 in seconds. Shruti brought this down to Rs.7,500 before we made a visit. After inspecting and testing the machine at the workshop, and understanding the warranty process in detail, we haggled a little more and picked up the machine at Rs.7,000 even. We baked papads in it the same evening.
3. Signed up an AMC for two air conditioners: As part of my rental agreement, my landlord required that we sign up an annual maintenance contract for the 2T split AC in the living room and 1.5T window AC in the bedroom. This way he is sure his machine gets serviced (a compulsary activity in polluted Mumbai). I called Chaupaati to find technicians who offer AMC in my neighbourhood and got connected with five technicians. Within the next 10 minutes, I had spoken with each one of them, without making a single outbound call. Each one relentlessly redialled before they could describe their deal to me themselves. Each offered a slightly different rate and service package for the combo deal. The interesting discovery was that there are multiple AMC contracts - service AMC contracts (basic) and parts and spares AMC contracts that cover all replacements (comprehensive). A few hours later, I struck a deal with the landlord by e-mail that we would sign up a comprehensive AMC and he would pay the difference between comprehensive and basic. Everyone wins. The technician visited the same day, inspected the A.C.’s, signed the contract, picked up the cheque and scheduled the first service appointment for next weekend. The interesting part is that technicians on Chaupaati get a chance to specify all their service plans (about half a dozen in case of air conditioner repairs), complete with the pricing and description; something they cannot do in any phone yellow pages where they simply get one business listing for the service offered. They can get creative about their keyword selections so they show up in multiple categories, but nothing differentiates them from each other besides location. What made my day was that one of the technicians introduced himself as a technician calling from Chaupaati Bazaar!

Incidentally, Chaupaati completed a full year of operations (since first employee) last week. One year later, this was all in a weekend’s work…