Entrepreneurship is on an all time in our country and across the world today. You may say the dotcom boom was probably bigger, but what is happening now is more real – real businesses, real ventures, real people and real ideas. As a platform that writes on startups, we get to hear of a fair share of these ideas. Now hear this one out.
Pune based startup DiscountBox.in is on a goal to organize information on various offers and serve it at the right time and place to customers who need such offers. So what the startup does is, work as an aggregator of discounts and offers. Shoppers can search and browse the site to find offers they are interested in. Therefore be it a car/laptop/furniture/groceries, shoppers can search for these on DiscountBox and they will get to know which store/mall/website has maximum discounts along with details and store locations for that particular product. DiscountBox provides both exclusive and common discounts which are available for both online as well as offline brands.
Yamini Dhote
Founded by Amol Ghormade, a computer engineer and Yamini Dhote a technology enthusiast, the idea came about when Yamini was struggling to find best prices while buying furniture after her marriage. And despite checking out retailers like HomTown, HomeStop, HouseFull, she was still not sure whether she got the best deal. Since boot-strapping in 2011, Amol claims to have over 700 merchants and retailers registered with them.
The startup is sector agnostic and works across categories like apparel & accessories, automobile, electronics, food, home appliances, hotels, restaurants, sports & fitness and travel among others. Amar Chitra Katha, HOLII, Ashtekar Jewellers, FlipKart, Sai Investments, Thyrocare and MarvelSoft Technologies are some of their customers. “The primary goal of DiscountBox is to organize offers available offline since that is where we buy the most and offline offers information is not available in a structured manner anywhere,” says Amol.
Amol Ghormade
The co-founders work with a small team of two in Pune. The team members go after online and offline brands and retailers tell them how to use the platform, show them how it works — as this is the new concept and sign them on. Some of the customers they are working with have come through affiliate programs. Amol says DiscountBox is not competing with deals/coupons websites rather they are a scaled-down competition to SAP’s real-time offers management system. “We have taken the innovative approach of using the same offers management platform for promoting offers and getting real-time feedback of how it is received by consumers,” explains Amol.
On the retailers end, DiscountBox offers a cloud-based offers management platform which provides tools to manage, promote offers and get analytics information about them. DiscountBox also provides an intricate metrics of their promotions to brand managers and retailers so that they are better poised to take decisions related to these promotions, says Amol. DiscountBox is also developing REST API`s which can be integrated with POS(point of sale) software at the retailers end. A mobile app for the site is also under development.
The startup is dependent on Google Adwords and Facebook for advertising and claims to receive 400,000 visitors every month. They have three ways to make money – A) subscriptions based model: which is for big brands and retailers who want to use DiscountBox to manage, promote and get analytics information on their brand performance. B) commission based model: which is used by eCommerce ventures where they just want to distribute online coupons. In this case, DiscountBox will charge them only if a transaction happens. C) They are also work for free with ventures that are willing to promote their DiscountBox page and offers themselves.
Amol says their single platform offering for brands and retailers to manage, promote and do analytics is a big pull for brands. “So it’s just a one time effort of uploading offers and DB intelligently does management, promotions and analytics of them,” says Amol. The startup is currently on the lookout for funding and support to take the venture to the next level.
preethi@yourstory.in