Offergrid, the deal distribution service has raised seed funding from MyFirstCheque, a seed fund that provides initial investment of INR 5-25 lakhs.
Offergrid earlier powered Pluggd.in deal service (though we have moved to in-house product now) and essentially provides publishers white labeled discount shops on their website or mobile applications. The service also allows the publishers to submit deals & offers from their advertisers to the OfferGrid Deal Network and syndicate to consumers.
Given that the deal business is currently going through a ‘defining phase’, the opportunity window for OfferGrid is very limited – the team need to move fast and tap media companies to offer relevant deals. Most importantly, the business model needs to be define d very clearly – is it a transactional based model vs. SAAS based pricing (for providing deal infrastructure). Currently, OfferGrid’s pricing is primarily based on revenue share – Turbo:50% rev share, Premium: 40% Rev Share, which is completely against the norm of SAAS based pricing services (Turbo is priced at Rs. 2499/month and Premium at 1499/month – so why would a team expect high paying customer to give away 50% rev share, as opposed to a lesser pricing slab?).
Update: The pricing is for the publisher (and not FROM), i.e. Turbo publishers get 50% rev share and Premium get 40% (of $$s made via selling deals).
I’d still recommend the team to price the service as a function of deal infrastructure service, instead of revenue share.
Aside, at PiHackathon, Offergrid cofounders launched DealRadio – a very cool service that brings deals+voice for people who need deal info on-the-move (more about the hack later today).
