The year 2010 saw emergence of daily deal websites in India. It was regarded as one of the star business models and was quickly embraced by budding entrepreneurs. The history of deals site dates backs to the time when internet was still in its nascent stage but it was a limited affair. And back in the year 2008 Groupon, the daily deal site once again laid the foundation of daily deal websites. The daily deal model is simple and easy to understand the daily deal website features a unique time bound deal at a heavy discounted rates. The time for the deal usually last for 24hrs and there is threshold level of customers who need to buy the deals so that the deal should go live. The business plan almost seemed fool-proof, who will let live such a mouth watering deals? Many Indian Entrepreneurs had the knack of imitating US business model thinking of same result here in India.
- Daily Deal sites in India is facing tough challenge
Slowly Daily deal website started to emerge in India, one of the first and successful daily deal website in India is snapdeal.com. With the success of snapdeal.com more and more similar websites were launched like dealsandyou, taggle, koovs,sosaasta etc. As the time passed and with the entry of new players with strongly funded VCs money the game began to change. Now the daily deal space was on fire, it was survival of the fittest kind of thing. Money started to pump in the company with long-term objective. The money was primarily used in infrastructure set up, making strong technical support and for advertisement purposes. But the “newness” and “novelty” of the model started to wane and there was a pressure on margin. The business model which looked so bright and promising started to face tough challenges ahead. With the closing of Taggle and Dealivore it is evident not everything is rosy in the daily deal world.
At present most of this website function on pseudo name of daily deal sites. Instead they are metamorphosing themselves as a typical e-commerce player by selling“everything under one sun” philosophy. Though there is more to explore time will tell if this segment is here to stay or change.
