The industry estimate on online trading of steel indicates that the number of consumers in this sector has doubled during the last three months.

And riding the boom is the Essar Steel Ltd owned click for steel.com that has become the first portal to sell prime steel online. In the bargain, the company is now looking to the virtual business coming good for over 20 per cent of its total turnover.

Essar Steel, which has posted a 40 per cent growth in sales during the first quarter of the calendar at Rs 1,322 crore, claims that it may be on course to sustain this rate over the current fiscal as well. The steel major, which had closed 2003-04 with a sale of Rs 4,024 crore, has targeted a sale of Rs 5,500 crore during 2004-05. Interestingly, an incremental sale of Rs 750 crore is expected to accrue from online trading alone.

Talking to Business Line, Mr Vikram Amin, Executive Director, said, "Our virtual business is growing at a clipping rate and, going by the present trend, clickforsteel would be doing a business of not less than Rs 1,100 crore this fiscal. This by itself is significant as last year the portal only accounted for Rs 350 crore. We feel clickforsteel has set a new trend for other portals to follow - retailing of prime steel on the net. Also, we are focused on servicing the 10-15 tonne category consumers, thus widening our base." The results are already evident as the Hazira plant has begun to function at its rated capacity of 2.4 million tpa, up from 1.93 million tpa in the last fiscal. Largely, this half-a-million tonne growth has come from its share of the 10,000-strong online customers for steel in the country. The bottom line at the portal is that prime steel has become available at rates that are 5-10 per cent lower than that available through the traditional multi-tier dealer network.

"The message that we have been sending across, along with other leading steel portals is that there is no shortage whatsoever of the commodity as these are the makings of the traders to jack up prices. Our standard online customers who buy anywhere between 10 and 15 tonnes, save about Rs 25,000 to Rs 35,000 per order.

At one-fifth of our total sales, online trading is fast emerging the smart way to sell steel for Essar," Mr Amin said.

The strategy of tapping the full furnace capacity of 150 tonnes at Hazira by going in for a mix and match of bulk buyers and the online customers seem to be paying rich dividends for the company.

Be it the manufacturers of boilers and fabrication units from Gujarat and Maharashtra, the ship repair yards of Goa or the steel furniture makers of Rajasthan and the sundry manufacturers of Madhya Pradesh, they all seem comfortable clicking the mouse to buy steel.