Mobstreet.in

Finally, landed into a slightly different group discounting site - mobstreet.in !! Unlike other group discount web sites, this one offers two types of discounts - Open deals and Mob deals. While the Open deals become active as soon as they are being published, the Mob deals turn active only when there are a minimum number of users who sign up for the deal. Probably, that's one of the reason you can see the deal categories different from the one's that i have been seeing on earlier sites. The focus appears be more on electronic gadgets and tours/travels. I did not notice any restruant or health club related offers (some relief to increasingly confused users!!) Interestingly, I could see offers on air tickets which was quite a deviation from local services. You can get latest deals on mobile or by email.
The buy workflow involves charging the customer a small amount as an advance. The pending balance amount needs to be paid to the vendor after deducting the advance payment. Not sure which cities are current being covered by this site !! Check it out here if you wanna experience it.

Mydala

I had a chance to look at mydala.com - another group discount web site. The process and approach remains the same. Each day the web site publishes a deal at 12 PM. The deal remains valid for 24 to 72 hours. A customer can buy the deal at the announced group discounted price. Each deal becomes valid only if a minimum number of people have signed up for it. Once the deal is closed and it has achieved the required number of people the customer receives a printed discount voucher in his email box. The validity of each deal depends upon the vendor's offer and is published clearly on the web site under "What the catch" section.

There are multiple payment options - by cash, credit card, netbanking, IVR, oxicash etc which makes the payment easy for customers. I could see the following retail segments leveraging this as a medium for sales promotion:
1. Restaurants
2. Slimming and beauty services
3. Tours and travels
4. Movie theaters
5. Shoes and bags

Currently, if offers this service in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Pune, Hyderabad, Chandigarah and chennai. You can get the latest deals on your phone or email. Give it a try, click here.

Taggle.com

Taggle.com is yet another Flash Discount web site that is trying to leverage the power of group discounting to create a win-win situation for Indian consumers. So far the service is launched only in Bangalore, and i did not see any great deals. Probably, its a soft launch phase and only offers i could see was related to a restaurant and a resort.

The only distinguishing feature that i see here is the availability of multiple customer touch points. In addition to web buying, you can now also buys deals over Phone or chat with a person in real time to get good deals. None of the sites that i have seen so far in this category provide these additional touch points. I wonder why no one has so far thought of using SMS as the most preferred touch point for receiving the deals.

However, the biggest challenge i see for these web sites is to convince the retail merchants to sign up for this channel!

See this interesting video on GROUP BUYING from taggle to know more about this concept here

snapdeal.com

Snapdeal.com is yet another popular Indian flash sales site. Instead of looking at a predetermined number of bookings for getting a deal, it adopts a token amount payment from the user. Everyday snapdeals offers a deal to its user on the web site that remains valid for a period of 24 hours. In order to book the deal, the user pays up a small advance which if i am not mistaken is snapdeal's commission. The remaining amount needs to be paid by the user to the vendor when he buys the product or service. Once the user pays the advance, he receives a discount voucher in email and unique code over sms. The user needs to print out the voucher and use it within the validity period mentioned in it which is typically valid for 2-3 months.

You can subscribe to daily alerts in order to get the latest deals from snapdeal.com. One thing that i have noticed here is that the sales are offered only for services and does not include any consumer good or clothing. This probably stems from the fact that Indian consumers are still not ready to buy products online till they touch and feel the product.

Overall, I liked the site for its clarity and simple user interface. It is currently offering local discounts for restaurants, spas, saloons, adventure holidays, hobby classes in Pune, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, New Delhi/NCR . Check it out here.

Koovs.com

Koovs.com is an interesting flash sales indian web site which offers online group discounts to its registered users. The company offers discounts from various associate vendors for a limited time period. The deal becomes active if it receives minimum number of orders within the limited time period. The company issues a discount coupon called "Koovs" which the user can print out and show it at to the partner vendor to avail discounts. The company is primarily targeting the local restaurants to woo the customers. This looks like an interesting concept though not new in the e-commerce world but definitely is unique in Indian e-space.

For the vendors it is a pretty interesting opportunity to get higher visibility and good promotion at a low cost. I haven't been able to dig deeper into the commission structure but i believe it will be lucrative enough for both the vendor as well as for Koovs to make this work in a profitable manner. For an Indian consumer its a win-win solution given his apatite for sales and freebies !! You can register at koovs.com to get the latest deals

PAPAM - indian e-greeting site

Looking at this years startup profiles, this site caught my attention for two reasons:

1. The name was very unique though in Indian context Papam means a "Sin".

2. In today's world of SMS's and e-greetings this one was a bold move to enable someone to send out a paper greeting card something which people have kind of forgotten and have replaced with e-greetings and SMS's.

Papam is truly an interesting idea given the fact that many of us have stopped using the paper greetings giving way to technology due to sheer convenience. Papam provides an interesting and convenient way for consumers to create, personalize and send paper greeting cards to anyone in the world. Business model appears to be straightforward - earn money by selling greeting cards and other gift items like flower, paper wall hangings, paper jewelery, personalized T-Shirts, Mugs etc.

There is a great opportunity for papam to tie-up with various existing e-gifting sites who lack the printed greeting cards and expand its business without spending too much on customer acquisition. Overall its a site worth trying to express your feelings to someone you love and care! Click here to access the site.