Amongst the few group buying players which have been able to make a mark, Koovs.com is now offering to sell a range electronics and apparels though there newly launched discount store. The approach is same as the local deals category, to offer “heavy discounts” on consumer electronics and other lifestyle products.
The move is not new for the group buying space as every one has been testing the products space with one off deals and last week SnapDeal announced getting into the products space with a focussed approach.
Here is a candid mail from Manish Tiwari, CEO of Koovs.
The Indian group buying arena is undergoing a visible yet slow transformation from offering discounts for service categories like beauty, health, and dining to the inclusion of products from popular categories like computer peripherals, electronics and apparels. The race to become a one stop shop for all services and products is on.
Call it umbrella strategy or what you may, this sudden shift in strategy was expected to dawn upon the players as the Indian e-commerce stage was still not ripe enough for a full throttle Groupon replica to be based on services alone and make enough moolah to appear under the shopping radar of Google or Groupon itself. And why not, some may ask, as Groupon itself, has offered certain product based deals every now and then.
If we go by the recent trend, one will see that the top three Indian group buying websites have started offering lifestyle and necessity but predominantly electronic products. We knew when we set out for growth that our goals will not be satisfied by offering services based deals alone, as it is restricted to tier one city only. More so, featuring services based deals is manpower intensive and the ROI doesn’t justify the effort.
So what do you think of the move? Will they be able to compete against the biggies? Does the e-commerce space of selling electronic products have bigger challenges to deal with?
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
