Real estate major HDIL has roped in Raj Kundra, British Asian businessman who came into limelight after marrying Bollywood hot shot Shilpa Shetty, to launch a real estate classified site around the group buying model. The model, as we already know, works in the same way as Groffr and GRTDeal.
The site, GroupHomeBuyers.com lists new residential properties from top Indian cities. Users can join a group for a given property and when a minimum required number of members join in, the site allows you to make purchase at discounted prices.
There is nothing much to talk about of the site. The product seems to have come out from your “web design company” around the corner. What’s noticeable is that along with Raj came in Shilpa as the ambassador or rather cofounder of the venture.
Yes, Bollywood celeb a as founder of a web venture! Though this is not the first time a Bollywood celebrity is doing this – Salman Khan’s Being Human Watches and Ajay Devgan’s movie ticketing site did receive good buzz in the media. This trick of using Bollywood celeb works well in India, atleast when it comes to getting media coverage [Read: Shah Rukh – Goolge Plus Case]
The initial brand rub from celebrities gives the marketer a pat on the back from his boss and then no one really bothers about the product after few days. The same method was also used by Twitter by getting Ashton Kutcher in US and again featuring shows with Priyanka Chopra, Mallika Sherawat etc. to create buzz in India.
Anyways, that’s not what I really wanted to write. The news is that the press release carries the wrong domain name. It says GroupHomeBuyer.com instead of GroupHomeBuyers.com. The sad part is that a lot of publications carried the same error. It is understandable for the ones who syndicate the press release verbatim but even the ones who carried the story from journalists have the same mistake (dear journos, do you even read what you write?) .
What’s happening with the reported domain (i.e. GroupHomeBuyer.com)? Well a Bangalore based social media promotions company has booked it and went live with Google ads last night. The domain is available for sale. A little effort in SEO and probably he will earn more than Shilpa’s first web venture.Happy domain squatting buddy!
Watch this video introducing Shilpa Shetty’s ‘Real Estate Ecommerce’ venture:
Recommended Read: Indian eCommerce And The Hype [Interesting Infographic]
[Naman is a startup enthusiast and has worked with couple of Indian startups as Product Manager. He is the founder of FindYogi]
