Musstbuy.com Comes In As Another Group Buying Daily Deal Site, Will Its Parentage Help?
The maiden business venture from BSB (a mobile internet joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and Japan's SoftBank Corp) appears to be an e-commerce firm trying to find a foothold among a plethora of daily-deals sites in India. Although there are no official statements to that effect and the site in question Musstbuy.com states the copyright (with 2010 as a dateline) rests with Y2CF Digital Media Pvt. Ltd, according to Pluggd.in the new venture is part of BSB, a venture in which none other than Kavin Bharti Mittal (one of the twin sons of group chief Sunil Mittal) is personally involved.
We had written about BSB and its plans here. Techcircle could not immediately verify if Musstbuy.com is indeed a part of BSB that was just launched three months ago, but here's our quick review of Musstbuy.
The site that is currently in a Beta stage, offers location specific daily deals (users can either choose the city or enter the pin code of their location) in different categories that include Take a Class (dance, instruments etc), Body Art (Tattoos), Stay Fit & Healthy (gym, dental checkups etc), Eat & Drink (food and beverages), Home Improvement (product and services), Get Pampered (spa and salon) and Have Fun (tarot reading, etc). The deals are sorted as per freshness, popularity, expiry date and in alphabetical order (A to Z).
Nothing unique in the categories of deals being offered compared to existing players such as Snapdeal or mydala. But we found the pin-code concept appealing, as it takes the location specific deals one level down. This could be more relevant for gaining traction, especially in large cities where it would be futile to expect consumers to travel half of the city to other end of the town to avail a pedicure treatment, for instance.
However, we found the site's search engine is yet to trawl and sort the deals accordingly. We tried using a pin code of East Delhi and it threw up deals scattered all across Delhi.
Visitors can opt for deals by signing up on the site by providing their name, email and mobile number. Payments can be made by credit or debit cards, net banking, cash cards and mobile payments (State Bank of India/Paymate) and users will get the deal delivered via SMS and e-mail, which is pretty much standard. Although since musstBuy is a group buying platform, a minimum number of INs are needed for the offer to go 'Live'. If a customer buys the deal online, they only have to pay the minimum advance amount and in case that offer does not go 'Live', the company will refund the cusomters money.
If a deal is sold out, users can also select the 'Wish' option that notifies the user whenever the deal is next made available. Users can also provide details about the kind of deal he/she would like to avail and the company will notify the user on a similar deal, if/whenever it is available on the site.
Users can also opt for daily offer emails for their city and additionally they can also get daily SMS alerts on their mobile phones (like any other daily deal site). Users can also register with their mobile phones if their mobile service provider partners with musstbuy by SMSing MB to 56660.
As of now, the site displays a promotional code that entitles the user to a free first purchase.
The unmistakable Airtel link is there to draw synergies with the group's existing network in communications. After all, Airtel is the biggest operator of mobile services in India. Whether Musstbuy.com (assuming it is indeed part of BSB) leverages the mobile network of around 175 million users in India, only time will tell.
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