Mumbai, India — In an attempt to tap into the bubbling daily deals market, Rediff.com, India’s oldest Internet portal, last Tuesday jumped into the coupon-based on-line shopping arena by unveiling a group buying site dubbed as “Deal Ho Jaye!,” which works like newspaper classifieds, allowing customers discounts at local businesses, in a similar fashion as other services like Groupon.
Rediff.com is India’s biggest online provider of news, entertainment, communication and shopping services, catering through offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and New York. Their Deal Ho Jaye! Service will expose their audience of over 15 million viewers a month to local merchants and services, as well as local events and attractions.
The site has forged alliance with over 700 merchants to offer deals of 30 to 60 percent off in each of the 40 cities the service is available in.
“We will associate with high quality merchants on the local level and will offer discounts ranging from 30-60% on normal prices,” Rediff’s Chairman and Chief Executive Ajit Balakrishnan told reporters.
“With the unveiling of Deal Ho Jaye!, Rediff now presents local merchants and business owners options for reaching consumers well beyond their traditional scope, building upon our e-commerce platform. Merchants will now be able to reap benefit from Rediff.com’s reach to generate business through new customers by offering special discounts and promotions on Rediff Deal Ho Jaye!,” said Balakrishnan.
Balakrishnan continued, “Deal Ho Jaye! will enable consumers to discover new services and experiences in their city, such as restaurants, spas, hotels, healthcare, tattoos, hobby classes, adventure sports and other local attractions across 70 categories and at 30-60% discounts, thus helping them make the most of their quality time with their family and friends.”
For instance, residents in larger cities catered through the program will receive the ability to search for deals on a more local level. As an example, Mumbai consumers can see deals in South Mumbai, the Mumbai suburbs and Navi Mumbai.
Moreover, as with numerous other daily deal sites, the Deal Ho Jaye! works similarly like Groupon or Living Social by offering users heavily-discounted deals at local businesses, and offers will be listed for one day only and consumers will have to pay in advance with either an electronic payment or cash, which will be picked-up by a Rediff representative from the consumers’ doorstep, (see screeshot below).
“On payment, customer will get a coupon which carries a unique number and the customer pays the remaining amount to the merchant to execute the transaction,” Balakrishnan said.
In addition, the tempting scheme here is that Rediff is also offering a Cash On Delivery payment option for the deal coupons. It also allows users to get deal coupons via Post, and SMS, in addition to e-mail, unlike most deals site which only send coupons via e-mail.
Besides, Rediff will get a percentage of the transaction as its commission, Balakrishnan said, without disclosing a minimum number on which the company will work. Also, it will negotiate deals before they are put up on the website so that the buyer gets enticed. The merchant will not pay anything to Rediff for merely hosting the advertisement, he said.
The vast list of daily or (and) group deals sites is becoming long, each passing day. While e-commerce websites like Infibeam and E-Bay India also offer daily deals on their sites, dedicated players include SnapDeal, Indiatimes Active Deals, Taggle, BuyThePrice, MyDala, DealsAndYou and SoSasta, which GroupOn acquired recently. The quality of deals on offer will be the biggest differentiator in the coming time.
Rediff, which has created a marketplace niche with a network of offline retailers, has tried to leverage it for deals. This is evident from the fact that it is offering local deals in a large number of cities, including Vishakhapatnam, Vijaywada, Raipur, Ranchi, Jabalpur, Aurangabad, among others, unlike most deals sites which claim to cover more cities by offering deals from e-commerce websites.
Interestingly, Balakrishnan rebuffed that India’s poor broadband issues would ever become a hindrance for the success of Deal Ho Jaye! since the service can also be accessed on WAP-enabled mobile phones and users can access the available deals on their mobile devices.