Disclaimer: this is a FYI post and not really a review of any products mentioned below.
Dealaajtak
The local deals market in India is heating up. While OffersforShopper (read the review and founder’s interview) is trying to penetrate into the local offline deals, sites like Dealaajtak are focusing mainly on online deals. The site has a neat UI and is pretty much on the lines of dealmaadi.com.
Well, time and again, I have believed that if one wants to get into the deals business, they have to jump “off the online avatar” and should really get into collecting the offline deals.
LinkedZone
An Indian version of LinkedIn, LinkedZone is a professional networking site which enables one to share connect with colleagues, refer jobs etc. I asked Mohit, founder of LinkedZone on why is it different from LinkedIn and this is what he has to say:
Well that’s the most common question I get. I think its different from Linkedin in terms of its simplicity and ability to navigate . Linkedin is quite complicated in terms of what you can do and what you cannot.They have whole set of rules which are at times very painful. Also at Linkedzone in time you will see more Indian jobs than you can see on Linkedin.
This is because Linkedin job postings are way too costly for Indian markets. Plus there are more features ( currently under development ) which are specifically targetted for Indians. Once they are out you will clearly see the difference between Linkedin and Linkedzone.
Funpiper
If Twitter is about “What are you doing”, Funpiper is about “How was your weekend?“. Funpiper is aiming to be a social network for people to discuss their weekend plans (on the lines of Yahoo! Weekender?) On being asked the details of Funpiper, this is what founder,Ajitesh has to say:
Funpiper.com is envisioned to be one stop shop for weekend planning where the most current short message style of blogging, Twitters and, Social Networking plays very crucial role.
Simply speaking.. people come and write about how was their weekend OR read about how others had their weekend. And, based on what they find exciting, they plan weekends with their friends(SN) in a unique fashion.
We are coming up very soon with enhanced UI look, social networking “My friends” feature, and PLAN feature.
Well, my feedback on these products isn’t too positive (where is the depth? If not for opensource CMS tools/pligg, will they exist?), but I might be wrong and hence, I request you people to give these products a dekko and share your comments/feedbacks.
Related: View the earlier roundup (secondshaadi,pinkvilla,kyazoonga).
tags: dealaajtak, dealmaadi, linkedzone, funpiper, offersforshoppers
well..I think you pointed it right – if not for opensource CMS/drupal/blogs, these sites cant even exist.
All half hearted efforts!
my feedback
> Dealaajtak : its good..okay to know about them.
> LinkedZone- no
> funpiper – no
Well..
If Dealaajtak collates all the deals across all the ecom sites, they hv a winner.
wat do you think?
funpiper, if executed well can be a neat idea.
after all, every monday mornign, don’t we ask others – how was ur weekend?
But at the same time current execution isn’t upto the mark.
These sites are not TOO great, as was rightly pointed out. But then , where the HELL do they get so many users from ? Are these just “plugs” , as was suggested in one of the earlier posts ?
Dude
You are turning out to be the ground zero for Indian startups!!
Great! Keep rocking
I believe the good part about CMS tools are that if you have a good idea, building a site isn’t a big deal.
But at the same time, if you have a bad idea – CMS tools get blamed for making the site building so easy!..
Dealaajtak looks cool to me..rest are damn *uncool*!
I think dealaajtak is doing a great job.
I somewhat disagree with “if one wants to get into the deals business, they have to jump off the online avatar and should really get into collecting the offline deals” view of yours.
Specially in indian market I feel only “online avtar” can succeed.
There are 3 reasons for me stating that:
1. India has shops in every galli and nukkad. First of all its impossible to collect offline deals in such jungle. Also If I find a good deal in offline store say in noida, its useless for a people in other parts of Delhi. Not to mention for people in other cities.
2. why sites like dealmaadi will definitely fail – lack of community concept in us(Indian people). we can never create community buildups like what Americans or Chinese do. These websites will die with lack of good deal postings.
3. sooner or later good retailing companies like amazon, reliance or walmart will come into market and most other stores will also go online.
in my view – good job dealaajtak. carry on the hard work..
Sanjay
“India has shops in every galli and nukkad. First of all its impossible to collect offline deals in such jungle. Also If I find a good deal in offline store say in noida, its useless for a people in other parts of Delhi. Not to mention for people in other cities.” – well, now imagine you have collated all such data.
Imagine the benefit you are providing to the Noida based guys!
WHat I am talking about is that there are local deals which are of immense value. And if one is just scraping thru’ the online deals, your chances of being killed by a biggies like Amazon/eBay is VERY VERY high. But if you have setup a process where you can collect offline deals (it’s difficult, I agree..and maybe that’s why it’s worth pursuing), you have a strong lock-in which nobody else can even match.
Let me know your thoughts!
-Ashish
a )wat i feel is that offstore deals in unorganized sectors are nt as attractive as online deals in terms of prizes coz in off stores u need to put lot of money in hiring ppl , maintaning showroom , bill , middleman this eventually makes off store items expenssive . as far as organized sector( india) is concerned they will surely get online sooner or later .
here comes the role of deal sites which posts cheapest deals available for a given product online n this price is obivously less then the offline prize coz of factors mentioned above .
b) public is lazy ..so am i . i will nt prefer to travel for a product which i can get online easily and if indian offstores wants to come over this problem then they need to courier products ..n for this option they need to go online… therefore the point is again going online .
c) online product selling is much cheaper then off store thats y we have amazon ,ebay all hitting the top .
d) deal sites are different then rediff shoping , indiatimes shoping n like others because they don’t sponsor or market ny merchant they jus post the cheapest deal available may be it on rediff/ indiatimes/amazon / nybig online store .
e) therefore deals sites will never die instead the more will be online shoping stores the more they will grow by filtering the best deals from all these site .
so good luck to all deal hosting sites like dealaajtak.com , dealmaadi.com , they will surely make big .
Why does LinkedZone have the pic of firangs when it caters to Indians ?
Secondly, what is it about being an India only initiative ? The world is flattening … business models ought to be global rather than localized to see the light of the day !!
@above
do you know most of the startups catering to the consumers starts from local catering then after developing a strong business foundation and strategy go global , as you can see now about India companies like tata, videocon, reliance, birla , ranabaxy , dr reddy
to go global u need resources , strategy , planning at a very large scale . its better to learn about economics then shouting big dialogs online.
You might want to add http://www.allindiadeals.com to your discussion about the shopping deals site in India.
Cheers,
Nidhi
I got one more site http://www.ShowMyDeals.com which is powered by Pligg CMS system .
I think this site is bit different and better
Great Interview by Loscreador.com. To make hay while the sun shines, shoppers need to be smart to search and make the right purchase in the right place at the right time…….Read more At http://www.loscreador.com/web2interviews/dealmaadi
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Found our site http://www.theofferdirectory.com good to be discussed here after skimming through the thread. The Offer directory is a comprehensive directory for all the shopping offer from the stores and online sites in India. A variety of other features are embedded in the site..suggestions please