Coupons.in is based out of Hyderabad, and was founded in July 2013. We have been transforming the way India shops online. Launched in the initial times when online shopping was a trend (rather than a norm), they began with a mission to help shoppers get value-driven deals for products and services online.Explain your business model? How does it work?We are a team of 30 who validate and update deals on a daily basis (this helps our site visitors to get the latest of deals and coupons), spearheaded by Surender Rao, Sai Pola, Sridhar Rao, and Sai Charan Reddy. This team brings expertise in ecommerce, affiliate and digital marketing of more than a decade. Our team is driven by the sole purpose of making online purchasing more valuable for people.
Who is your biggest competitor? What steps are you taking for differentiation from the existing portals?There are quite a handful of coupons sites in India. We differentiate ourselves not just by a SEARCH-ENGINE-LIKE-INTERFACE, but also by our robust analytics engine which runs in the back-end. The analysis helps us crunch enormous amounts of data to arrive at the best deals and coupons on a daily basis. This is how we deliver top notch deals every day.
What is the funding status and monetization model? Our initial seed of 1 million dollars came from our US investors to kick off the operations. We have nurtured a talent pool of resources, and the some of the funds is earmarked for upcoming strategic roll outs.
What are your future plans?`The plan is to bring in more retailers and reach the burgeoning and growing internet population in the country. The more visitors we reach, the better our analytics engine becomes, this way we can deliver valuable shopping experience and drive equal value to ecommerce and retail players on our platform.
How do you look at expansion?We are currently happy with our strategy, but we have plans to become the Google of coupons search in India.
What are the challenges you are facing right now? What is market sine and how much of the market share has Coupons.in captured?The online coupon and deal business model is relatively new in India. The entire business model is still in its infancy stage and the market size is estimated to be less than 2% of the eCommerce market. Thus, coupons.in has to try different tricks in the book and find out of the box ideas to trickle its concept in the minds of an average online shopper.
This challenge also turns into an opportunity as it can expand its user base manifold. The e-Commerce market is around INR 500 billion. If they pull the right strings, they can capitalize on the digital coupon market once the concept becomes a norm than a mere online shopping trend.
What are the traction details?We have more than 200 online stores listed as its partners. Since launch, over 2 million plus consumers visit the page regularly for massive deals and coupons. Till date, the number of deals redeemed is about 10, 56,895 and coupons used are around 10,000.
What are your biggest learnings till date?Analytics, analytics, analytics. In today's digital world, one has to learn from our visitors, about who they are, when do they seek deals, why, how, on what social platforms are they active etc. Such statistics will lead us to deliver the best user experience.
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Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
