Apoorva Sahni, a 24-year-old Mumbai-based marketing executive, logs on to the Net daily while the rest of the office has lunch. It's the perfect time for him to check out the auction scene — online.

Three months ago, purely out of curiosity, Mr Sahni bid for a Nokia handset in www.bidorbuyindia.com. After bagging a bargain at Rs 6,500 ($140), he can't stop himself from bidding for more.

That's online auction-mania for you, and it's catching on fast in India. Besides big names like Baazee.com and Bidorbuyindia.com (which is a partner channel with both Rediff.com and Indya.com), several others are striving to create a unique selling proposition.

Adding to the uniqueness is the relatively new interest in the Internet in India — there are an estimated 1.4 million Net users in India — heavy-duty promotions by these Web sites, curiosity and very importantly, the Indian mindset of grabbing a good bargain.

Baazee started in April 2000 and is described by chief marketing officer Gautam Thakar as a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform, patterned after international models like ebay.com in the US.

"It is primarily a forum for users to transact any item they like. Not just secondhand goods," Mr Thakar told India Abroad News Service. The idea is to include small merchant establishments like a dealer in electronic goods and anyone who has anything to sell and enable them to supply nationwide.

Mr Thakar claims the buyer has a big say in fixing the price. How does an online auction work ?

To bid for a product, all one has to do is register with the Website; select the products from the categories listed and place a bid.

Some special auctions start from Re 1 onwards while for most of the products, the bidding starts way below the market price, with a gap of Rs 2,000-3,000. One is automatically informed over e-mail if outbid by someone else.

"Online auctions allow me to go beyond buyers within my locality. Here I get bidders from all over the country and don't even have to pay towards advertising my product," 15-year-old Mumbai resident Gavin Pereira, who likes to sell online, told IANS. Talk about an early start!

What also adds to the craze of bidding online for Indians—they don't throw things away easily — if the buyer mostly pays cash on delivery, doing away with the hassle of a credit card. This means the buyer doesn' t have to worry about not owning one or online card fraud.

"Cars have a big second hand market," says Thakar, adding that Baazee has tied up with Automartindia for this purpose. Bidorbuyindia has a tie up with Car Secure, from Indiacar.com.

"I recently bought a secondhand Fiat Uno (1998) from Bidorbuy as it was a good deal on an old model and gave me the option of physically inspecting the car before I paid for it. Without that I would not buy anything expensive online, " Mr Satinder Narula, 37, a Delhi businessman, said.

Online auctions even extend to the highbrow realm of fine art. Saffronart.com, an art portal with virtual installations, art gallery and information on most of the known names in the art world, conducted its first online auction between November 24-December 1, 2000. The response was overwhelming.

But there is a certain amount of risk involved. A seller could back out of a transaction altogether if he is not making a decent profit. Secondly, inability to see a product before actually paying for it could have its pitfalls. But it doesn't scare never say die bidders. In November alone, Baazee.com had 434 registered users, with bidding levels up from 50 per cent to 70 per cent since the launch.

"We have around 450 odd transactions closing everyday, most in the categories of electronics and automobiles," Mr Thakar said.

According to regular visitors, what most Indian auction sites need to do is to put a proper monitoring mechanism in place in order to avoid fraudulent sellers as well as buyers.

As of now, most sites have a legal binding which says that once a person submits a bid he is bound to buy the product if he wins. Failure to do so only results in one's registration being suspended.