Saturday, March 12, 2011

Deal ya No Deal


Pluggd.in recently carried a huge list of Groupon Clones.  For the people who don't know Groupon, it is a website which gives deals and offers for various products and offering online and offline.  Groupon is currently active in 35 countries and recently have entered India and purchased Sosasta.com.  I knew this website from long ago.  There is not much change in the website or the deals they are offering.  So here is the list from Pluggd.in
1. SnapDeal – They are the leaders in terms of traffic with Alexa India rank under 25. That is more traffic than Naukri or IRCTC, making it the No.1 ecommerce portal in India in terms of traffic. Yes, I just said that.
Not only that but it has actually crossed Groupon.com’s reach in terms of global traffic (Alexa). How much did they spend to get there? How many transactions/revenue do they do per day? Well, we will keep that for the founders to reveal. SnapDeal is a one of the only ecommerce player, apart from OTAs to take up the TVCs route (to best of my knowledge).
Bangalore based Grabbon was acquired by SnapDeal and according to the founder that was the turning point for them. They are lately aiming to be THE place for deals and offers with even deals from institutes like NIIT on offer. I have been a big critique of SnapDeal’s execution strategy all along but it seems the marketing $s can actually buy you all the attention in world and in course a multi Bn. 
$
 Rs. valuation also.
Startups, they are into a different ball game. They are good at what they are trying to achieve with SnapDeal, the way they want to achieve it. Don’t burn your fingers by replicating or following them. The game is beyond our playground.
Oh, did i mention they roped in a deal for date with Gul Panag.
2. Taggle – $8.75Mn funding is what got it the initial attention. Traffic is rising steadily with a major upbreak in mid-January. Advertising is driving traffic but the spend isn’t much. They have about 187K fans on Facebook but the activity is really negligible. The whole idea of mixing ecommerce with social reach of consumers seems to be almost dead in all other sites as well.
3. MyDala – This was my favorite in terms of quality of deals but with time the edge is lost. Traffic is pretty much stable. 54K fas on Facebook with little to no activity.
4. Koovs.com – Traffic is seeing new high since new year. They are bringing in electronics on sale as well. Not much action apart from Delhi / Bangalore. Exclusive local deals just seem to be missing.
5. SoSasta/Groupon India – The action seems to be just starting here. The ads are getting more visibility lately. Surely will be the player to watch out for. For now they either have repeated deals from other competitors or it is mostly ecommerce deals. They have all the insights from their global presence but will the international strategy work in India?
6. Dealivore – Traffic is very unstable and on a downtrend. The 306K fan base seems to be sleeping. The team hasn’t shown anything remarkable yet. They already claim to have spent over Rs.2Crs. and this is the reason why Zuckerberg is so rich.
7. DealsAndYou – The founders hate me for their acquisition announcement that we covered earlier but I will try and reciprocate some love (while being neutral). The fanpage with 171K fans is the most active amongst all the above players. Their initial stand of making it a mix of social media promotion + lead generation for local businesses seems to be strong. They are also exploring a dedicated section for travel/holiday deals. The ad spend is aggressive and they stand second to SnapDeal in terms of traffic.
8. BuzzInTown – Their long standing content play is definitely visible on the fan page. Their updates about deals get double the feedback as compared to DealsAndYou, though same in % of fans. The presence is only in Delhi and Mumbai, with Bangalore being added lately. The portal is willing to spend Rs.25 per new registration for the deals(DGM) which seems to be a sensible UAC but isn’t very low. As far as I remember they were earlier spending Rs.10 per registration during non-deals days. They haven’t entered deals for electronic products yet which is a sign of the fact that they have more in the kitty to show before they give up, if they ever do.
9. Ebay – The big daddy of e-commerce is still testing its local deals app with presence in Delhi and Mumbai. It is certainly giving a step-motherly treatment to local deals though. Who in the world came up with the URL koupananIndia.ebaysocialapps.com. Its even difficult to find a link from ebay.in to this app. No doubt the traffic is so poor. They are barely able to sell 3-4 deals for every offer.
10. Groffr.com – One player that is actually standing out with deals for high value purchases like real estate, cars, bikes etc. They seem to have some offline action as well. Activity is mostly around Mumbai.
11. Groopoffers.com – These guys are trying to achieve everything with deals on restaurants, salons, real estate and products. The action seem to alive and building up, may be they will make some buzz.
12. Coupon2Buy – A relatively new player that is not showing much action and not doing anything remarkable yet. The deals are just getting started in Delhi, Pune and Mumbai.
13. CityOffers.in – Based out of Ahmedabad the action here is around this city only. Again a very new site with not much moolah to get in the race.
14. Foodome – Based out of Chennai these guys are concentrating on restaurants deals and home delivery of food only. Absolutely no marketing at all till now.
15. Dealmagic – Not sure if these guys are starting up or shutting down as they have no live deals. The fanpage hasn’t seen any update in past 3 weeks.
16. Masthideals – Not sure what they are upto. The “h” in the name suggests they are south India based, Chennai indeed. No deals live currently, past deals were around beauty salons and electronics mostly.
17. Groupon.in – Started as Groupoff they claim to have acquired the “Groupon” trademark in India. Deals are decent and traffic seems to be building now.
18. Scoopstr.com – Based out of Bangalore with presence in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore. Deals are decent, not much to talk about.
In the next post, I will be posting my personal list of discounts and websites which I visit personally for the discounts.  Hope you like them.  Meanwhile please send your comments and happy savings

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