The brand that initially entered the Indian market as ‘So Sasta’, did not appeal to its customers and hence renamed itself as Crazeal. After fighting a legal battle with an Indian firm they regained copyright for ‘Groupon’. Since then Groupon India has been making quite a few waves in the cyber world because of it’s out of the box offers. Of late, Groupon launched a mystery offer across 78 cities in India – a concept similar to the one run in the United States and Malaysia. The mystery deal had customers paying INR 199 for a pack of goods that they had no idea about but the assurance given was that the actual price of the product that the buyer would get in about ten days would be “way way higher” than INR 199 and that there would be three items in the pack. The offer lasted while the stock of 850 surprise packs did. Within 90 minutes of the offer going live on the Groupon India site, around 200 packs were sold.



Groupon India CEO, Ankur Warikoo, tested the waters by purchasing one of the surprise packs himself. “The kit contained a branded bed sheet, an ice cube bucket and a high-end mobile phone battery. The total estimated price of the package was over INR 5,000. The products were fully-functional, original, branded products from legal sources and there were no hidden costs. We wanted to create a buzz around Diwali and got talking to our product merchants,” reveals Ankur Warikoo, at the Pitch CMO Summit 2014, New Delhi. Such deals are a result of great merchant relationships as revealed by Ankur, and of course, not to mention a lot of out of the box thinking.



At a time when the entire nation was crying because of exorbitantly high onion prices, Groupon India decided to do the unimaginable. The company decided to offer a kilo of onions for only INR 9, as opposed to onion prices being close to INR 100 in the rest of the market. The deal ran for seven days and the idea behind it was to enable their customers to ‘experience the joy of buying’.  Only 3,000 kgs of onions were put up for seven days and this deal created huge traction for the brand.  The deal became so popular that it led to the crashing of the website on the second day of its launch. On the final day, the entire stock of onions was sold in 6 minutes.



Taking care of the entertainment angle for its customers, the company bought out evening shows of The Dark Knight Rises movie at PVR Select CityWalk and offered them to their customers at a 50% discount. During the screening the Groupon team personally visited the theatre and interacted with the 4800 customers that availed this discount. They used the ‘Joker’ angle of the movie to bring out the message of ‘jokes on you’ towards the people who were paying full price for the ticket. Groupon conducted an event with the Delhi Gourmet Club and partnered with the top 11 premium restaurants across Delhi-NCR as of the ‘Delhicious Week’ held from the 1-7 February 2014. As part of the deal they offered their customers a special menu at these restaurants which was available only to them. A little over 600 customers enjoyed this exclusive experience.



Not only this, Groupon India partnered with Atlantic airlines and The Bellagio to offer an all expense paid trip for 2 to Las Vegas along with US$500 to spend. “Groupon is the best example of reinvention that we know of,” said Ankur. On being asked about what the company had in store for the future, he said, “I would love to go back to the onion one more time.” Point proven.