Why did Nearbuy Fail? Tips to Keep in Mind for the Coupon Websites

Today is the time when we have everything on our phones. Any product or service we need, we have an app for it.

The startups begin by providing their products and services online. But there are other people as well who have stayed in the offline markets only.

So now apps even enable to bridge the gap between customers and local entrepreneurs. Nearbuy came up with software solutions to bridge this gap and develop a connection between the two.

Nearbuy provides information about spas, events, restaurants, and more. It helps the customers as well as the businesses to discover and connect with each other.

About Nearbuy- The Indian Lifestyle App
Foundation of Nearbuy
How Does Nearbuy Work?
How Nearbuy Makes Money?
What Challenges Did Nearbuy Face?
What are the Reasons for Nearbuy’s failure?
Few Tips for The Coupon Websites
FAQ

About Nearbuy- The Indian Lifestyle App

Nearbuy is a lifestyle application that helps to connect customers with various businesses. It offers discounts, cashback offers, and information about various services. These include restaurants, spas, movie theatres, gyms, salons, and more.

It provides amazing offers that allow the customers to save money every time they visit a restaurant, watch a movie, and others.

Nearbuy helps you to explore your own or a new city. It helps you to discover the hotspots around you.

Foundation of Nearbuy

Nearbuy was founded in the year 2010 as Groupon India. The founders of the company included Ankur Warikoo, Snehesh Mitra, Sumeet Kapur, Sachin Kapur, Ankur Sarawagi, and Ravi Shankar. It has its headquarters in Gurugram, India.

Nearbuy is a management buyout of its parent firm Groupon. In the year 2015, it received investment from Sequoia Capital India. With this, the company rebranded itself as Nearbuy in India.

This step intended to cater to the needs of the Indians in a specific manner. Chief Executive of Groupon India, Ankur Warikoo believed that it would be better to follow a specific path for local Indian markets rather than the global path.

How Does Nearbuy Work?

Nearbuy provides a platform for the customers to get deals and discounts with service providers. To enjoy these deals, a customer has to first register on the company’s website or app.

After registration, a person can look for deals according to their preference. When a person finds a service of their choice, they can buy it at a deal price. Then the customer receives a coupon that they have to present to the service provider.

In this way, a customer enjoys the services at a discounted price.

How Nearbuy Makes Money?

Nearbuy allows offline businesses to sell their products and services online. It provides a platform where businesses can list their services and make sales.

The businesses get a platform to market themselves and gain customers. Nearbuy receives a commission from the service providers on every service sold via the platform. It offers amazing discounts and deals which attract the customers. This enables the businesses to make more profits and thus, more commissions for Nearbuy.

In this way, Nearbuy acts as a mediator between the customers and businesses.

What Challenges Did Nearbuy Face?

The toughest challenge for Nearbuy was to create a place for its belonging. The company faced troubles in explaining its services to the users.

Nearbuy has been looked upon as a platform that gives discounts. It aimed for more than it. Ankur Warikoo explained its aim as to take offline businesses online. The platform is meant to help the customers discover, buy, and save at the same time.

The company wanted to make the Indian consumers explore the offline markets in a new way. To make people understand this was the biggest challenge for the company.

Few consumers could understand the importance of it. The rest on the other hand didn’t like to understand its importance.

What are the Reasons for Nearbuy’s Failure?

India is a market where customers love to enjoy discounts. Nearbuy was here to help with it. But still, the company could not attract many users. This made Nearbuy unable to stand strong on its own.

Some reasons why Nearbuy failed are:

• It was difficult for the company to make people have a proper understanding of its services.
• The virtue of a discount-oriented platform was quite limited in India. This made Nearbuy unable to attract and keep customers.
• A large part of Indian consumers did not deal in online money transactions. This made the platform useless for a large number of customers.
• Nearbuy saw great success in its early days. With this, they expanded their services in more cities. All this required more merchants and money. But the company could not gain enough consumers. This derived the company of its transactions.
• Another important reason for its failure was that it was not a necessity. It did not solve any major problems of the users. It means it was not adding a significant value to the customers’ life.
• Indian customers have a deep love for discounts. They demand some extraordinary deals that they cannot find anywhere else. Nearbuy could not offer that amount of satisfaction.
• Platforms like Paytm, Amazon acted as their competitors. These gained more trust among the people. Thus, almost robbed Nearbuy with its users.

In 2017, despite its funds, it could not stand alone and grow. So, it got acquired by Paytm in December 2017. Now, Nearbuy has Paytm as its parent organization.

Few Tips for The Coupon Websites

The coupon websites do not solve any major consumer issues. So, they need to remember certain tips to grow well. These include:

• The best tip is to find niche opportunities. The competition in the discount areas is too high. It is good to select a niche and provide the best deals possible in it.
• Make use of affiliate sales. It is important to know the interests of the people and offer deals accordingly. This helps to acquire a bigger audience.
• When your site offers a discount, make sure it's bigger than others. If not, then customers don’t need your website.
• Use effective discount keywords. This will help to target the right audience and gain their support.
• Indulge in email listings. This will help you to turn your site visitors into email subscribers.

Conclusion

Over the years, Nearbuy has seen a great number of ups and downs. It helps people in saving money with its various deals and discount offers. It acted as a bridge between the customers and offline businesses.

In this way, the company helped offline merchants to earn more sales. Also, it helped the customers to explore the best things to do, buy and enjoy them. With its success and failures combined, it continues to function under its parent organization, Paytm.

FAQ

What is Nearbuy?

Nearbuy is a lifestyle application that helps to connect customers with various businesses. It offers discounts, cashback offers, and information about various services.

How much did Paytm buy Nearbuy for?

Paytm acquired Little Internet and Nearbuy for Rs 272.31 crore.

Why did Nearbuy fail?

Nearbuy failed in India as it did not solve any major problem of the consumers and people weren't looking or craving for deals platforms in India.