Almost all daily deal / group buying sites we have seen till date have been pushing deals for low ticket size lifestyle purchases. These deals mostly rely on impulsive purchase due to the price point. There is no planned purchase as there is no predictability around the deals. We’ve had only one reasonable player, IAN invested Groffr, that is into this space of group buying for planned purchases like real estate, auto mobiles etc.. Groffr, I am told is driven a lot by offline mediums than online. Then there is also grtDeal with similar model.
Runpapa is Ahmedabad based startup applying the same pull based group buying model to Cars and Bikes, including insurance and loans for the automobiles. Pull based deal meaning you define what product you are looking discount for. If there are enough member joining that group, a Runpapa negotiator gets a deal for you.
The site has been live since May and traffic is pretty low except for a couple of spikes. Surprisingly, they have 181K Facebook fans. Runpapa is also looking to launch in US soon.
Though the model of pull based group buying is pretty good in terms of value delivered to end user but solely depending on online as a medium would be deterrent for them. Preferably, popularizing such groups on corporate internal mailing lists / bulletin boards and events would help them capture a large set for a common group in lesser time. Runpapa does claim to have a offline marketing strategy as well.
What do you think of Runpapa? How much would you wait to get a discount on your favorite car?
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
