Group buying website: what is the concept here?
I would say ‘My Dala’ is a social commerce company. Dala is Sanskrit for the word ‘Group’. MyDala features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in a variety of cities across India. The idea of the website is to get people together in a group to avail huge discounts on services that we will not be able to get as individuals. For instance, while one can easily get 20 percent discounts in restaurants in various ways; we have arranged for campaigns that provided discounts at 80 percent. Similarly, we did a gym deal at 93 percent discount. A gym deal that is worth Rs 3000, which we are selling for 200, needs no convincing. Even after we took the deal off, we had people who were willing to come to our office and drop money to get the gym deal. So instead of us trying to convince them, there they were, convincing us. These are discounts unheard of and the kinds that an individual can never get. It is a generally accepted fact that we Indians love bargaining and getting good deals. Such deals have a great potential to go viral. If you get a fantastic deal at a good discount, you tend to tell your friends about it, then they come buy at the website. This is the power of ‘group buying’ or ‘social commerce’.
 |
| Anisha Singh MyDala.com |
The concept itself is very old and there are scores of companies in the US and other countries that have been doing business around this concept since the 1990s. I started looking at the concept around April 2009, noticing the popularity surge of social networking websites such as Facebook, Orkut, Twitter, etc. By August 2009, we were putting things in place for MyDala. Our first soft launch deal went live on 23 November, 2009. I think it is around 15 December, 2009 that we did the formal launch in Delhi. At our website, you do not have to register yourself. To get to know about the deals on a daily basis, you can visit our website, opt-in for our daily-mailer or SMS, or simply get to know them from our social networking pages.
Ours is a very simple business plan where it is a win-win situation for everybody. The retailers win because they get committed customers; we only win if the retailers win and the customers win when they get deep discounts for being in the group that bought the deal at MyDala.
How easy or difficult is it to get deals to feature on the website?
Being the first business in India with this concept, it took us a while to get the people here to understand. Their obvious question being, "Why should we dilute our brand by featuring a deal on your website?" We had to explain it to them that this not like a print ad or a TV ad where you run your promotions but never get to know the true ROI. Ours is a very simple concept—we will not charge you any marketing fee. We broke it down for them by saying that the deal from their company is highlighted on our Website for one whole day. Even if enough people do not buy the deal, you will have gotten that whole branding exercise done across our 15,000 fan base on Facebook, Twitter, mail-outs, etc without having to pay a single penny for it. We only charge them for deals where at least the minimum required number of customers is acquired.
I think what clicked with them was the fact that we were giving them a medium that they had never ever gone into. We were showing them that they were getting committed customers through their door.
Are there any criteria for choosing whose deals feature on the website?
I must admit that we are a bit finicky about this. We try and identify quality retailers who we know for sure will provide the same level of service to the customers generated from our website, as they provide to any other customer, whether you have a discount or not. For us our customers’ convenience and satisfaction matters more than anything else and we make this very clear to our retailers. Having said that, we have deals coming in from the likes of VLCC, which we run as pan-India deals. But our conscious effort is to pick deals from small and medium businesses that offer niche products and services that are different.
Are there any criteria for choosing what deal to feature and when?
This is a tricky one. We have a get-together on Friday and get a deal line-up ready. We don’t wait till when the deal comes in. We try to not repeat similar deals in any given week. For instance, two salon deals in one week is something that we won’t do. We will do one saloon shopping and one recreation. We have six verticals that we play with—shopping, recreation, beauty, health, restaurants and services. We only do six deals a week because a Saturday deal lasts till Monday morning and we have Sunday off. The overall criteria is that we try and get a good mix.
You have been in business for three months now. Do you have any numbers to share?
We have 34 employees working at MyDala. As per Alexa ranking, we are in the top 800 Websites in India. We have around 400 followers on Twitter and more than 15000 fans on Facebook. We have closed over 100 deals as of now, have sold out well above 2140 deal vouchers. Talking only about Delhi, we have closed deals that account to a total savings of over Rs 15 lakh in discounts. We are now present in three cities—Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
written by nfl football jerseys, October 07, 2010
Hope visiting this page will grab your trust, all anyone really wants is a trustworthy supplier who they can count on to deliver on quickly, correctly, and top quality every time!
written by Desy, September 03, 2010
Thanks
written by Snehal kamat, August 24, 2010
its a great idea... expressed well
all the very best to MyDala.com
written by power balance, July 17, 2010
Animal Shaped Rubber Bands
http://www.toptoys2trade.com/animal-rubber-bands-c-46/
mosquito repellent bracelets
http://www.toptoys2trade.com/mosquito-rubber-bracelets-c-41/
written by lvpkumar, June 22, 2010
Thanks again
lankampradeep@yahoo.com
written by rubik's cube, June 21, 2010
want something special, come here
led flashing bracelets, make any ordinary night extraordinary.
cheap bakugan toys,
finger skate, power balance
ddung, barbie girls
organ donor dolls
at http://www.toptoys2trade.com
written by sushil kumar pandey, June 15, 2010
All the best to Mydata.com team
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Unfortunately, group buying for luxury items/ real estate has not been adequately explored.
http://dealmela.in - India's first dedicated real estate group buying portal hopes to bridge this gap.
We are in the process of launching a group real estate buying portal viz. dealmela.in (under beta) based on the following propositions:
a) Bulk discounts based on number of user sign ups. We intend to target builders at the pre-launch phase / slow moving real estate items
b) Project Based user communities who can then leverage their combined might to negotiate discounts from builders.
c) Time - bound / Last minute deals with call for immediate action driven by fear of deal loss.
d) Pre-qualified private buyers club with access to "exclusive deals" (suitable for situations where sellers do not intend to leak the "discount" in the market for fear of underpricing their product for willing buyers.
We are looking for associates/ partners prior to the launch of this site (still under development). Please call Shivarama on 09930996966 for further discussion.