Open2Save.in, Your, online, deal, aggregator

Online shopping is yet to take-off in India. ET has published an article about the rise of online shopping in India following the terrorist attacks. Diwali would be a good start for the online trade. Sooner than later online trade will kick off and in a big way. The cycle that US went through might be repeated but our companies can learn from what has happened in the US. What worked there might not work here. What did not work there might just work here. In a first of its kind Bangalore-based AeNwis e-Systems has launched a deal aggregator called Open2Save.in. It is promoted by Vaibhav Tewari and Sridhar Turaga, who were earlier the co-founders of iSeva.

The deal aggregator works on a online and offline approach. This seems to be the right approach for India where people are still reluctant to buy something without seeing or touching. Though the idea is not new, the execution is.  In US for example there are a bunch of deal aggregators like fatwallet, Slickdeals, Gottadeal, deallighted, Techbargains.com. Can you name at least 2 deal aggregators in India? The answer is none. At least not that I am aware of. There is a deal aggreagor called MoneySaver which offers discount coupons, but that’s another story which we will check out later.

Open2Save.in is at least 3 years ahead of its time in India and has opened up shop in key cities. There are few online only retailers like Futurebazaar, Indiaplaza.in, Cafegadgets.in. Retailers should follow an online and off-line mode until India’s internet penetration and infrastructure are upto the mark. That is the reason why we are not seeing a whole host of online retailing. Our courier system is still broken and only limited to the metros.

Open2Save.in is available only in select cities like Bangalore, Mysore, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune.  Delhi is the recent city in their list. It aims to open up to 20 more cities by the end of this year. The current number of retailers in their database are 1700 and this is expected to be around 2500 by the end of this year. Total number of retailers is estimated to be a whopping 10000 by end of 2009. The deals would be in Laptops, Mobiles, LCD TVs, apparels, among 34 other product categories.

Retailing is a potential long tail and deal aggregation is even more so. Irrespective of the economy and retailer’s business an aggregator has the potential to be profitable all the time.

Open2Save have recently tied up with Zook to tap the mobile platform.

Are there any other deal aggregators in India?