Mydala Crosses 5 Million Subscribers, Launches A New WAP Portal

Indian group buying website, mydala.com has announced that it has crossed five million registered users this week, since its inception in November 2009.

This follows the company’s earlier announcement of 3 million users in July 2011, which effectively means that the start-up has recorded two million new users in the last three months.

To commemorate this occasion, Mydala has launched a new mobile WAP portal, at m.mydala.com, in a bid to reach out to all feature phone users, presumably in tier two and tier three cities.

Explaining the need for a WAP portal, Anisha Singh, founder and CEO of mydala.com said:

Mobile is the future growth story for India, with over 858 million wireless connections, out of which 46 percent of the mobile subscribers being capable of accessing wireless Internet, and Indian consumers are becoming more receptive to accessing discount deals on their mobile phones.

Using mydala’s new mobile WAP site, users can now buy their preferred deals not only with a smartphone, but also with any basic feature phone that has Internet connectivity. The best part is that you don’t need to download any app to be able to take advantage of our deep discounts.

Giving an overview of this new WAP portal, co-founder and CTO Ashish Bhatnagar stated that it makes use of the advantages present in the WAP2.0 protocol to offer a zippy, secure, and extra simplified shopping experience to users. This portal features an integrated payment option, similar to its BlackBerry app, through which users can make payments through various payment modes like credit card, debit card, OxiCash, voice payment, or cash on delivery.

He also announced that mydala will feature special WAP-exclusive offers, in order to promote the usage of this WAP portal.

Dubbed the first group buying site in India, the company recently raised a second funding round of $3.6 million from Info Edge (India), following its initial round of $1.8 million and seed input of $250,000 from the founders of CX Partners.

The company currently offers a BlackBerry app and there were reports of an iOS and Android app in the works. However, there seems to be no sign of either of the apps, two months down the line.