(From left) Atul Jain, Tejas Kadakia and Sapan Kadakia of cityoffers.in

Every day as soon as dawn breaks and she has had her cup of tea, Sanjana Ray gives in to an addiction. In a matter of a half hour, she cracks a record number of deals with whoops of glee. A full-body massage and pedicure at a spa for Rs 450, a couple of salsa sessions for Rs 200, a two-night/three-day travel package to Kumarakom for a throwaway price of Rs 25,000 and a few fitness classes at just Rs 500 for a week.

It’s a long list but does Ray give any deal a miss? The chances are zilch, given that she has bagged a hefty 50 per cent to 90 per cent discount on each deal.

Ray is one of many who’re addicted to the newest craze in cyberspace. Deal-a-day websites — many inspired by the hugely successful global discount giant Groupon — are cropping up so fast that it’s almost tough to keep track of them.

Their premise is to offer fabulous and sometimes almost unbelievable discounts on everything in services from spas, adventure sports and travel to real estate. And if that isn’t enough, they dish up equally low and enticingly priced electronic gadgets, apparel and other goods.

It is a formidable list of websites (about 30-odd ones have come up in the last two years) that could spark off the shopaholic streak in you. So be warned, dear reader —you read on at your peril.

Here’s The Deal

(From top) Anisha Singh, CEO, mydala.com; Ashim Dutta, founder, coupon2buy.com; Raj Iyer, CEO, groopoffers.com

Most of these websites are single-minded in their focus. They offer a window of 24-hours to snap up the cheapest deal. The deal goes ‘live’ —that is, it’s activated — once a minimum number of people buy it.

A quick note: Once you have registered, you need to be quick, because the deal closes once it is bought by the requisite number of people. If you can rope in friends, it would get you credit to help bring down the amount you pay for your own deal.

The best bit is that these websites offer ‘local’ deals — on offer in your city.

The sites try to make the mode of payment as flexible as possible but in most cases payment is by debit or credit card. Usually you have to make part payment to the website when accepting the deal. Then you’ll get a message on your mobile phone and an email of the voucher, which you take to the merchant/vendor for redemption of the deal. That’s when you make the remaining payment in cash.

“The motto is group buying and the power it gives you to get bigger discounts,” says Raj Iyer, the Mumbai-based founder and CEO of Groopoffers, a daily deal website that kicked off in February, 2011.

Groopoffers offers deals in everything from electronic gadgets to tickets for movies and various sporting events. It offers deals in 14 cities across India including Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Calcutta. The website cracks some 100-150 deals a day and offers discounts of 40 per cent to 95 per cent on products. For instance, recently it offered a cabin luggage bag from Giordano priced at Rs 3,599 for a modest Rs 1,699.

One of Groopoffer’s unique points is that it offers property deals and plots for second homes at a discount — using the power of bulk buying. For instance, an apartment in Bhubaneswar that was originally on offer for Rs 2,800 per sq ft is selling on Groopoffers at Rs 2,700 per sq ft.

Interestingly, it also happens to be one of the first to offer deals on organic fruits and veggies. “For example, we just sold Basmati rice from brands such as Shakti Bhog and Lal Quilla at a 65 per cent discount,” adds Iyer.

Anisha Singh’s Mydala was the first website to kickstart the daily deal culture in India in August 2009. “When I was in the US, I came across the Chinese model of group buying and that of Groupon, which was in its nascent stages as it hadn’t launched its website yet. I found it to be a perfect fit for Indians because I do not know a single Indian who would possibly pass up on a deal, be he a Maruti or a Mercedes owner,” laughs Singh.

On Mydala, you might chance upon fun deals offered by the likes of Essel World and Water Kingdom, with which Mydala has exclusive tie-ups. The website boasts of a daily traffic of 1 lakh-1.5 lakh visitors and a subscriber base of 2.2 million customers.

Group buying is also the key word at Taggle that has just launched in the five cities of Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. Its forté is in offering ‘unusual experiences’ such as helicopter rides and scuba diving courses.

“Since we were late in the market, we had to get noticed quickly. So while everyone was playing with bottom-of-the-pyramid deals, we strategised to start at the top,” says CEO John Kuruvilla, formerly a brand manager with companies like Air Deccan and Deccan Charters.

Within one month of its launch, Kuruvilla says that his website launched a deal for air tickets from Jet Airways that came at a flat 35 per cent discount on the original price of Rs 54,000. “That’s big money in the group buying space where deals are mostly ticketed low,” he adds. He reckons Taggle has about 4.5 lakh subscribers so far.

A Mixed Bag

(From top) Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal; Ananya Bubna, MD, Groupon India; John Kuruvilla, CEO, taggle.com

There are some websites where group buying isn’t essential — though they do have some element of it.

At SoSasta, the website that was recently acquired by Groupon, anyone can buy a deal without getting restricted by a group-buying deal. “But because customers end

up buying multiple coupons and referring deals to friends and family, it naturally goes the route of group buying,” says Ananya Bubna, MD, Groupon India.

Others like Coupon2buy and CityOffers too do not resort to only group offers. Their main purpose is to give super-localised services.

Coupon2buy, a six-month-old website started by Ashim Dutta that is finding its feet in the business, is looking at launching such a new feature. Their main purpose is to give super-localised services.

“Let’s say you are walking around in Connaught Place in Delhi and you want to know the deals on shopping or restaurant meals in that area. You can download an Android/iPhone/Nokia application that allows you to browse the deals and receive a voucher via SMS and email. You can use it for redemption right on location,” says Delhi-based Dutta. Coupon2buy is offering deals in 10 cities including Delhi, Ahmedabad, Calcutta and Chandigarh.

Similarly, CityOffers, started by a trio of young professionals, Atul Jain, Tejas Kadakia and Sapan Kadakia, came up in Ahmedabad in November 2010. Their motto is also to keep it localised. “It’s about bringing anything you might need within arm’s reach,” says Tejas Kadakia, former business analyst with BNP Paribas Bank. They offer discounts starting at 40 per cent and going up to even 100 per cent (if you have discount coupons) on anything from ice creams to mobile phones and other lifestyle products.

Tejas rattles off statistics to prove that the website is already a hit. “In the first month, we sold some 1,500 book coupons for InfiBeam, an online shopping portal. Having done well early, we could shift base to Mumbai,” he adds.

There are some websites like Snapdeal and 24hoursLoot which do not rely on group buying. Snapdeal, for instance, offers services such as spa massages and pest control services apart from lifestyle products like fashion accessories and electronic gadgets.

“Since we cross 100 deals typically within an hour, we never had to promise numbers to merchants,” confirms Sandeep Komaravelly, head of marketing at Snapdeal.

Snapdeal has notched up a subscriber base of 5.2 million users across the country since the time it launched in February 2010. It is part of a larger company called Jasper and was founded by CEO Kunal Bahl and COO Rohit Bansal.

Then there are niche start-ups like 24hoursLoot that offers only T- shirts. “Every day you have one deal that is offered at a discount of 40 per cent to 50 per cent for 24 hours,” says its Pune-based founder, Arpana Priyadarshini. The website has its own in-house designers designing T-shirts and it caters mostly to the college crowd and young working professionals. It has a daily traffic of around 25,000 and about 12 lakh subscribers totally.

The Catch

Our first instinct is to wonder about the hitch behind such phenomenally cheap deals — after all we have been tutored to look suspiciously at free lunches.

“They are not grey market/refurbished items. Every offer is covered by a warranty,” assures Iyer of Groopoffers. In many cases, products are offered at a discount when they are overtaken by newer models.

What’s in it for vendors? These sites work for them in different ways. For a start, they move large numbers. Secondly, there’s the visibility factor. Jose Kumar, managing director, Cold Cargo, says how its frozen food products started selling at high speed when they were put on Taggle. About 600 vouchers were sold in a day and as many as 20,000 people clicked on the site.

And while these websites promote newbies, they are strict on policing the brands that they sell. Singh of Mydala, for instance, blacklists merchants if there are complaints lodged against them.

For other vendors, daily deal websites are a gateway to a wider audience. Nurul Ayan, the corporate communication manager for Amoda Spa in Calcutta, says that the spa tied up with Snapdeal to promote the spa during weekdays. “With vouchers, we are assured of footfall on lean days,” he adds.

Yes, the story just gets better for the customers, the websites and the vendors. And these websites will be a huge new force in the marketplace.