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Mondus seeks patent for way it does ecommerce

Tender foots

Two twenty-something e-ntrepreneurs who scored £1 million in venture capital after winning a competition in the Sunday Times six months ago have finally launched their new e-business. What's more, they're looking to protect their investment by patenting their e-commerce platform in much the same was as Priceline.com. Although Mondus.co.uk went live a fortnight ago they waited until yesterday before going public with the online tender service. Aimed at the SME business-to-business (b2b in Net speak) market, Mondus.co.uk enables customers to target a number of suppliers with a single request. According to Rouzbeh Pirouz, co-founder and UK MD of Mondus.co.uk, the service has already been used 50 times to request quotes for business products such as computers and stationery supplies. A number of orders have also been placed averaging at between £5000 and £10,000. One request for tenders was just shy of £2 million. Mondus makes its money by charging a commission for sales. "With 200 suppliers already signed up we offer a whole range of business services online through one purchase request form," said Pirouz as he also announced that he had secured a further $3 million worth of investment from British Internet fund ZOUK Ventures. "It saves customers money because they benefit from competitive bids and it saves them time because it's a lot quicker than using Yellow Pages," he said. For the suppliers, it's another route to market, and a cheap and easy way to generate sales leads, he said. According to Mondus, SMEs spend more money on ordering products and services than on the actual items themselves. It claims a $27 purchase for office equipment, for example, amounts to $107 spent on the manual ordering process. ® For more bubble-bursting Net hype tune into Cash Register and turn on to our daily Net Finance News

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