Groupon got India wrong, but this guy’s doing it right

Ankur Warikoo, CEO of Nearbuy.

Give a man a coupon and you’ll make money off him for a day. Teach him to use a deals site and you’ll get him hooked for life.

That’s what Ankur Warikoo believes. He’s the CEO of Nearbuy, the company that was spun off from Groupon’s India store.

The story’s got quite a few twists and turns. Groupon entered India with high hopes when it bought discount deals startup SoSasta. Sasta means “cheap” in Hindi, so the name didn’t do much to change India’s perceptions about this kind of online shopping.

Presumably, the startup wasn’t making much money – my assumption comes from Groupon’s spectacular failure in neighboring China – and soon SoSasta was rebranded as Crazeal, an amalgamation of “crazy” and “deal”. Not much more enticing.

When Groupon was first here, it focused a lot on sales and deals and flat discounts. That doesn’t help retain customers.

Crazeal floated along for the next year, until something clicked. It decided to turn its India business into a separate entity but kept the same CEO, Ankur. Sequoia Capital then invested US$20 million and Groupon’s majority stake moved into the minority. The new creation changed its name to Nearbuy.

Ankur doesn’t indulge any rumors about the buyout. “We were the fastest growing company in the portfolio,” he claims, “but Groupon had much bigger things to focus on in the West and India needed its own strategy.”

That’s where Ankur comes in. Before Nearbuy, he helped set up Rocket Internet in India, co-founded Accentium Web, and sold Gaadi to Google Capital-backed CarDekho, so he’s got an eye for what works on the web in India.

What exactly is so complicated about molding a deals startup to fit the Indian landscape? For Nearbuy, it’s the seemingly endless diversity of the country.

What shoppers want

Across the globe, customers interact with offline merchants in many different ways.

In China, where Groupon failed, local giants Meituan and Dianping have done far better, and most people attribute this to their ability to cater to local interests.

Photo credit: gato gato gato.

Signing up stores

Hindsight and foresight