Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) new baby, Windows 8, is only a few days old, but already one Indian company is claiming to be the first to make an e-commerce app for the brand-new Windows app store. Cbazaar, an online store for handmade or ready-to-wear ethnic Indian clothing, already has its app online, made with the radical Windows 8 Metro style in mind.
The Cbazaar app – find it here in the Windows Store – uses bold-coloured panels and the full Metro user-interface (also pictured below), and allows users to browse, search, and buy anything they fancy without needing to go to the regular website. Since the site ships internationally, the app could be of use to Windows 8 early adopters around the world.
The app, inevitably, can only be run on Windows 8, so it’s currently only available to folks who’re testing out Microsoft’s free ‘consumer preview’ – i.e. beta – version of the desktop OS. Microsoft revealed earlier today that a million people had already downloaded the beta, and so the new Cbazaar Windows 8 app has a fairly sizeable amount of potential customers able to download and use it.
Cbazaar is owned by the major Indian web company Hanmer MSL. In an announcement this event, Rajesh Nahar, CEO & co-founder of Cbazaar, admitted:
It was quite a challenging task to keep in pace with the technology that allows us to venture into a whole new realm of handling apps. Furthermore, accomplishing this advancement at a break-neck speed marks a niche, and bridges the gap between the end user’s demands and our capability to serve, technology-wise. We are expecting to witness a sea of change, an obvious result of this progress.
Which I think translates to We were the first… nya-nya-nya-nya-nyaaaaa! It’ll be interesting to see a whole new app wave from other major e-commerce sites in the region – from India’s Flipkart to China’s Tmall – in the run-up to Windows 8 launching for real later this summer.
