Pay Rs.29 To Enter A Lucky Draw – Really, What’s Happening To Daily Deals Sites?

Local deals business is dying and this is clearly visible from the move towards selling more products. We have talked earlier about how products (and not just spa deals) make more sense given the larger target audience that it can cater to. For the same amount of tie-up effort one can do more number of transactions and with same or higher net revenue per transaction.

In an attempt to show more transactions to investors and keep the users engaged some daily deals sites are creating a new vertical, that of sweepstakes or lucky draw. As a user, you are asked to pay up a minor amount, say Rs.29 to enter a sweepstakes that could win you a holiday worth Rs.15000 or a Blackberry mobile worth Rs.10,000 etc.

Going by the books, this is illegal in most states of India. And if these sites would have limited to pure sweepstakes then users wouldn’t have received it well. But they have a turn around for that. If you don’t win the sweepstakes, the amount you paid will be maintained as e-wallet balance for your future purchase on the site.

Is it good or bad? There is no generic answer to this. But definitely this move shows a clear desperation and is an indicator of that, not all is well. But then as long as it works for the site and users stick to it, everything is fine.

This move has 2 added benefits for the site. Firstly, it provisions a negative working capital. It’s almost like micro-funding your venture from your users. Had they asked directly for maintaining prepaid wallet, the effect wouldn’t be same. One other benefit is increase in transaction volumes. Users are more likely to spend the balance of their e-wallet then spend real cash. There is lesser mental friction. Psychologically, it’s virtual currency and accelerates the spending in the same way that credit card does vs. currency bills or Sodexho food coupon does vs. real cash.

Is it doing good? Given that there were only one such sweepstakes on these sites earlier and now there are dedicated mailers only for sweepstakes with 4-5 such offers, these must be definitely doing well.

Though one thing they should try is to actually improve the product. Get some real deals with easy process flow (T&C) on the site that users are not embarrassed to use at the merchant’s. This might help me finish up my wallet balance and enter more sweepstakes. This will solve more problems for them.

Have you bought into any of those sweepstakes? What do you think about such “innovative methods” to make users spend?

Related posts:

1. Annoyance With Daily Deals And Group Buying Sites [Landing Page Optimization]
2. TRAI Regulation And Impact On Daily Deal Sites [30% Traffic Fall]
3. Ezeego1 And Cleartrip Launch Deals Service
4. Business Model for Deal Aggregators? Should Not Be Aggregation of Deals
5. Exclusive: Via Launches Deals Service–Snapdeal Gets A Serious Competition

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News Roundup: iPhone 4S Launching In India on Nov 25th

Both Airtel and Aircel have announced the plans to launch iPhone 4S in India. Aircel has in fact shared on its Facebook page that they will launch the device on November 25th.

While the two operators haven’t yet announced the price of iPhone 4S in India, be assured that it will be tied with a complex data+voice plans.

Important to note that the unofficial iPhone 4S Price in India starts from INR 42,000.

Also see: Will Galaxy Nexus Hit The Indian Shores The Day It Launches Globally?

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TRAI dials up international regulators for lowering roaming tariffs

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has opened channels with its counterparts in other countries, including the UK, to address the issue of high tariffs for international roaming services. TRAI has suggested that regulators should ask local operators in their countries to enable bilateral roaming agreements aimed at bringing down the tariffs.[source]

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Rs 50 cr penalty on Airtel, Tatas for ILD licence violation

The Telecom Ministry is understood to have imposed a penalty of Rs 50 crore each on Bharti Airtel and Tata Communications for providing international private lease circuits to foreign company SingTel in violation of ILD licence terms and conditions.[source]

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WestBridge launches India evergreen fund

Investment firm WestBridge Capital has raised India’s first so-called evergreen fund from global investors, or limited partners (LPs). Unlike traditional funds, the $500 million (around Rs. 2,500 crore) corpus that WestBridge has raised will not have an investment cycle. Instead, returns generated on investments will automatically be ploughed back into the investment pool, creating a perpetual flow of capital for investments. In other words, this evergreen fund will do away with the need of raising subsequent funds for investments.[source]

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Videocon looking to sell stake in unit for $75-$100 mn

Videocon Industries is looking to sell a 25% stake in its direct-to-home broadcast services business for roughly $75 million to $100 million and is in talks with private equity firms. Potential investors in the unit, branded D2H, include ICICI Venture, the private equity arm of ICICI Bank, sources said. Videocon has hired UBS to find an investor [source]

Related posts:

1. News Roundup: Religare & Airtel Partner For Mediphone Service, IIMA To Launch 100 Cr Fund For Sustainable Energy
2. And Finally, iPhone 3GS to be available in India
3. News Roundup: iPhone4 Coming to India Very Soon, airtel Launches USSD based Facebook access services
4. News Roundup: Huawei, ibibo to provide free calls, SMS on Huawei mobile phones
5. iPhone 3GS Price in India [Heart breaker]

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Weekly Recap: InMobi Story, Microsoft Goes After Android App Developers.

Most Popular articles published week ending Nov 13th.

Most Popular:

• Work-Life Balance For An Entrepreneur? Here is How to!
• Microsoft Goes After Android App Developers In India–Port Two Apps And Get A WP Device.
• The InMobi Story [Told UnPluggd]
• Hottest Skills and Cities for Indian Startup Jobs [Infographic]
• IPaidABribe Goes Mobile. Now SMS When You Pay Bribe
• IITians Can Do A Startup And Apply For Campus Placement After 2 Years[Burn The Bridges, Will You?]

Startups/Entrepreneurship/Funding

• Cricketer Zaheer Khan Invests in Exclusively’s New Fashion Label –Sher Singh
• A Nifty Product Management Lesson From Google Chrome
• BundleBaazi Gets You Discounts When You Buy A Bundle Of Products
• The InMobi Story [Told UnPluggd]
• The Story of Milaap, A Micro-lending Platform [MyWay Series]
• Aspiring Minds Raises Series A Funding From Omidyar Network
• DealsAndYou Secures $17mn Funding
• Local Search Player, Getit Launches Deal Coupon Service
• A Look at AngelPrime’s CTO-in-residence Program
• Guruji’s Adiquity launches Real Time Bidding (RTB) Exchange for Mobile Ads
• TradersCockpit–Define A Trading Strategy. Back Test With Historical Data
• OfferGrid Secures Seed Funding From MyFirstCheque

Technology

• PAAS–All You Need To Know About [101]
• UCWeb Launches UC 8.0 Browser in India

Market Reports

• India PC Market Grew 13 Percent In Q3, 2011 – Is It Seasonal Or Will It Continue?
• Half of Indian Consumers Do Not Want To Be Bothered in Social Networks [Report]
• Report: 100 Million Internet Users In India, Cybercafe Usage on Decline

Digital World

• News Roundup: Neha Dhupia To Foray Into E-Commerce, Airtel To Disconnect 20 million Numbers
• Find Pluggd.in on Google+ Pages: Is + a Poor Social Network or a Great Collaboration Tool?
• India’s Internet User Growth Touches 100 Million – Where Will The Next Wave Come From?
• MapmyIndia launches ShowNearby, a free location-based places app for Blackberry, Android and iPhone
• Google Translate for iPhone App Adds Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu
• Microsoft India appoints Chakrapani GK as Head of Consumer Channels Group, India
• Location Labs Expands Presence In India

Gadgets

• Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S Now Available In India For INR 27,000
• The Water Proof/Dust Proof Motorola Defy+ launched in India, Priced At 17,900.
• HTC Rhyme now available in India For Rs. 24,799

More on Gadgets.

Related posts:

1. Weekly Recap: IIT Fee Structure, InMobi Funding [and more]
2. Weekly Recap–Dell’s Android Phones in India, Carwale, Yoda [and more]
3. Weekly Recap- Social Entrepreneurship, Microsoft Yahoo Deal..and more
4. Weekly Recap: Nokia pushmail banned in India [?]
5. Weekly Recap – Oct 6th – 13th

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Lashou Puts off IPO Roadshow Due to Accounting Issues

There’s no new Chinese IPO on Nasdaq from Tudou’s August listing on. Lashou.com, one of the most audacious group buying services was wildly rumored to and highly expected to be the next one till latest rumor shattered the picture.

Just like Groupon’s uneven IPO process, the IPO journey for Lashou is also a bumpy one.

In October, Lashou was reportedly selecting CCIG (China Capital Investment Group), Nomura Securities and Barclays as new main underwriter to replace Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. Everything seemed fine and fared normally. Then earlier this month, the Beijing-based service held up its IPO roadshow to clarify accounting issues with the SEC. Barclays is the lead underwriter.

The company planned to raise US$ 80 million by selling 5.4 million American Depositary Shares at a range of $13-$15.

According to its prospectus, in the year ended December 31, 2010 Lashou lost US$ 10 million while had 1.62 million in revenue. For the first half of 2011, Lashou brought in $8.9 million in revenue while lost a staggering $60.5 million.

Founded in September 2009, Lashou raised US$ 166 million in total from three rounds of funding:

Series A July 2010  US$ 5 million

Investors: GSR, Rebate Networks GmbH, Taishan Invest.

 

Series B Dec 2010  US$ 50 million

Investors: GSR, Rebate Networks GmbH, Tenaya, Norwest Venture Partners.

 

Series C Mar 2011  US$ 111 million

Investors: GSR, Milestone, Reinet Columbus Limited, IPROP Holdings Limited, Tenaya.

 

Related posts:

1. Lashou Selects New Underwriters, Will Raise $100M to $200M at $1.1B Valuation
2. Chinese Groupon, Lashou and Meituan both Confirm They Raised Venture Capital
3. Lashou Making Profit Now?

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Start-ups to Build Teams and Focus at iWeekend, 18-19 November

Beijing has no shortage of start-up community events. This weekend, iWeekend is back to spur entrepreneurial activity and make ideas happen.

So if you haven’t heard of iWeekend, it is an international non-profit organization across more than 21 cities dedicated to promoting the culture of entrepreneurship in new technologies.

I participated in the last iWeekend back in April and had a great time pitching my idea, building a team, moulding my product and developing a prototype. I think for everyone, there was a great sense of achievement in such a short amount of time.

This time, iWeekend will be different. Instead of a whole weekend from Friday night to Sunday night, the event has been compressed into just Friday night and Saturday.

The format has also changed. iWeekend is inviting a more diverse range of participants and are accepting applications from idea stage to early stage start-ups with existing products or services. To help teams fill necessary gaps in resources, iWeekend is encouraging people from finance, media, marketing, consulting and engineers to participate and potentially find a project to join more seriously. To make the day more productive, teams will be asked to select a particular challenge to work on. For example, entrepreneurs could pick refining a revenue model, enhancing a brand or developing a marketing plan. I think this focused structure is great for entrepreneurs looking to really accelerate their business with the combined effort of a mixture of talented people.

Throughout the day, entrepreneurs have the opportunity to ask questions and get advice from mentors. Confirmed mentors for this weekend include David Kay – Founder of YuenFenFlow, Gonz Ferrero – Angel investor and Associate Partner of DFR Asia and Bill Zhou, Founder of Ifindu.cn.

I really encourage you to participate. It’s a great way to make friends and even start your journey to building a great company!

Here are the details

When: Starts Friday 18 November 6:30pm, Ends Saturday 19 November 9pm (see full schedule here)

Where: Oracle Building, Tower C, 21st Floor, 5 Jinghuanan Street, Beijing (Jintaixizhao line 10)

How much: Pre-registration 60RMB, At door 100 RMB – includes food and t-shirt! Register here.

 

Related posts:

1. iWeekend Coming to Beijing at 19th Nov
2. StartUp Weekend Beijing is On This Weekend!
3. iWeekend Beijing Rocked!

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Holidays in the Maldives

Because of their unique geography, your holidays in the Maldives are blessed with innumerable world-class dive sites, many of which are yet to be discovered. In terms of offering easy access to as many of the best diving sites in the Maldives as possible, liveaboard cruises are simply unbeatable: no long transfers, no bumpy speed boat rides. Whichever direction your route takes, at the end of the trip your logbook is sure to feature plenty of stunning, and in some cases legendary, dive sites. One of the main reasons the Maldives are so popular with divers is their abundance of large marine animals. After all, whale sharks, manta rays and various kinds of reef sharks are among the common fish of the Maldives. Encountering one of these giants of the ocean is a riveting experience, not unlike seeing an elephant or a lion in the wild, which is why liveaboard cruises also often referred to as “safaris”. Overall, boat holidays in the Maldives offer an irresistible sense of adventure. As the boat makes its way through the atolls, it often stops off at local fishing villages, anchors near uninhabited islands and crosses channels between atolls.

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Introduction to Mozilla’s WebFWD Accelerator – 17 Nov

This Thursday, there will be an Introduction to Mozilla’s WebFWD Accelerator talk by Diane Bisgeier, Program Manager of WebWFD. During the session, audiences can mix and mingle with Diane and other professionals over wine and a buffet dinner. WebFWD is Mozilla’s Innovation Accelerator, a program which supports Open Source projects by offering mentorship from industry experts, access to the Mozilla global network, infrastructure and other world-class resources.

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Event Details

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When: Thursday, 17th November 2011
Time: 7pm-9pm
Where: Plug-in, Blk 71, 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent (Map)
Register here.

 

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“Acid Test for Technology Entrepreneurs” — a talk by Henry Wong — 16 Nov

This Wednesday, IDA Singapore will organize a talk entitled “Acid Test for Technology Entrepreneurs” as part of their iSTART programme. The speaker is Henry Wong, a venture partner at Garage Tech Ventures. He will share his experience and insights from the perspective of a Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

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Event Details

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When: Wednesday, 16th November 2011
Time: 9am-1230pm
Where: Plug-In@Blk 71, 71 Ayer Rajah Crescent, #02-18, Singapore 139951 (Map)
Register: Email vincent_goh@ida.gov.sg

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Japan’s No.1 e-Mall Rakuten Trying To Be Like Twitter/Facebook By Rakuten Profile

Japan's largest online mall company Rakuten started promoting its unknown service Rakuten Profile [J] since around October 10 to its 62 million members.

The service comes with Twitter-like "tweet", following/followers, Facebook-like "share", your profile badge on Rakuten blog,

Rakuten Profile seemed to launch without any release around August 9, 2011 [J]. There were no no news coverages recorded on Google News of August. Official Staff blog did not mention it [J], too, though the staff blog is inactive and there were only three posts in August.

Then, 11th of this month, some of Rakuten pages started showing ads linked to a promotion page of Rakuten Profile [J]. There, you can earn 5 Rakuten point by registering the profile service and connect it with your Rakuten blog. Everyone can receive the 5 point, which you may use for 5 Japanese yen (US￠4) discount.

The service logo says it is still in Beta stage.

This service introduction page [J] covers what Rakuten Profile is.

From it, Rakuten Profile is a place,

• "to create": your profile with your hobbies, what you like, short daily messages(="tsubuyaki" = tweet)
• "to connect": search your friends' ID then follow, or send an invitation mail
• "to find": news as your friends interests are shown up on your timeline
• "to share": your blog posts and news to your friends, followers

My profile page is here [J],

It also has an RSS Reader feature with "Share" button.

All entries of Rakuten blog now has "Share on Rakuten Profile" button, with other sharing buttons for Twitter, Mixi and Facebook.

Rakuten has been running another profile service Zenryaku Profile [J] since Rakuten bought it in 2002. That service has over 6 million users but majority of users are students, which can not be a main customers of online shopping stores and Rakuten did not give its "Rakuten" brand to it like it did to other services they bought.

According to the staff blog, Rakuten Profile will replace with the current profile functionality on Rakuten Blog in January 2012.

Rakuten does not look like putting much resources into this new social networking service if you compare with Facebook/Google/Twitter, but it might be necessary to have those social features integrated with its blogs and community sites to keep its users inside Rakuten services.

Japan’s No.1 e-Mall Rakuten Trying To Be Like Twitter/Facebook By Rakuten Profile

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Work-Life Balance For An Entrepreneur? Here is How to!

“My wife walked out of the house last week. I’ve known her for 7 years and we’ve been married for 5years and now I feel our relationship is purely transactional. I’m consumed by my startup and think about it every waking minute. Am obsessed with it and want to make it a roaring success. My wife works in the financial services industry and she too works long hours. We moved to Bengaluru from Mumbai so that our quality of life would be better. She travels on work and so do I. I get back home late and she’s either in bed or on her laptop. There’s no time for anything else. I don’t or can’t talk to her about the pressures I’m under. Don’t think she’ll understand. I keep responding to emails and SMS messages when I’m home. I don’t want to lose out on any business opportunity. She wants children and I am not sure I’m ready to be a dad till my startup is done. Am depressed and lonely. But I cannot give up on my startup dream. What should I do?”

So said the 31 year old CEO of a startup. And he wasn’t the first such person saying this to me. Have rather unfortunately been at the listening and counseling end of such laments increasingly over the past couple of years. It seems that the pressures of a startup are putting enormous strains on personal relationships.

As India undergoes a huge socio-economic change, pressures on each one of us is bound to increase. Pressures brought about by changes in traditional expectations and aspirations in gender-roles. These changes are fuelled by the media, financial independence, confidence and an assertion of individuality. Nothing good or bad or right or wrong about this. These are the ways things are they need to be understood and managed in context. As more and more youngsters decide to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams, they will need to grapple with the issue of managing their work and personal lives.

A digression: in the month that my son was born and my mother passed away, I decided to quit and do a startup. The urge was uncontrollable and I took the decision without consulting my wife! I was in Silicon Valley and she was in India (we had decided to have our son in India). She was surprised and understandably upset but then was fully supportive. I travelled several times from the US to India during those initial days. Those were the days of emotional roller-coaster rides. After several months, my son and wife joined me in the US (visa issues delayed the family reunion!). The startup went through ups and downs – emotional and financial. It wasn’t easy by any stretch of imagination but I was confident that I’d get all the support from my wife. Yes I did get all the support though it wasn’t always visible or expressed!

It is important therefore to ensure the following:

- That the partner or spouse understands how important the startup is for you and they support it wholeheartedly. Openly talk about the trade-offs and sacrifices both have to make.

- That you understand how important it is to have that support and therefore make efforts to show it

- Spend time with the family and don’t keep checking messages during this time. Consciously keep aside time. My time, your time and most importantly, OUR TIME. Be religious about this.

- You don’t have to respond to every message in the next nano-second. You will be surprised that the world still spins on its axis if you don’t!

- Be open and discuss things. Take interest in the other person’s day

- Remember to take pleasure in the small things eg just hang out together listening to music.

It is important therefore to remain grounded in one’s beliefs and values. With a rapidly growing consumerist mindset, there’s this pressure to enjoy the next great car, house, gadget and vacation. The startup doesn’t offer one the luxury to splurge on these or even if it is one those startups that does, then the time to enjoy these isn’t available. Therefore before you jump into a startup, think about why you are doing it and be clear about your motivations. A startup is not a cool place to hang out in or a get rich quick scheme. It is a vehicle to make your passion and dreams come true. And it is very critical that those who you want to share your life with understand this. As you should their point of view and understand the difficult trade-offs before you decide to do the startup.

What do you think?

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About the author: Sanjay Anandaram is a passionate advocate of entrepreneurship in India; He brings close to two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate executive, venture investor, faculty member, advisor and mentor. He’s involved with Nasscom, TiE, IIM-Bangalore, and INSEAD business school in driving entrepreneurship. He can be reached at sanjay@jumpstartup.net. The views expressed here are his own.

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Adds Pluggd.in Team: If you are reading this on a Sunday (the article was published on a Sunday), you need to do seriously look at the above mentioned suggestions (otherwise, do join the Pluggd.in gang, which works throughout the week/month/year!).

Related posts:

1. Managing Work-Life-Blogging Balance as a Blogger
2. Of Obsessed Entrepreneur and Do VCs need security guards @Work? [Fund me or I will Kill you!]
3. Why Work for a Startup? Are you bribed to work or is your work a bribe? [Featured]
4. An Entrepreneur’s Tale of Loss, Provident Fund and Lessons Learnt
5. Entrepreneur, share thy burden. The VC-Entrepreneur Story part II

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