Mydala claims to be doing 80K vouchers a day; eyes profits in early 2013

Daily deals as a business is facing consolidation with some players like Snapdeal pivoting to become an e-commerce marketplace, many shutting shop and others like TimesDeal switching business model. On the other hand, Groupon India (after the rechristening from Crazeal) claims it is on stronger footing after the industry shakeup.

Meanwhile, Info Edge (India) Ltd-backed daily deals venture Mydala.com has been lying low for some time. We caught up with co-founder Anisha Singh for an update on where the startup is headed.

For starters, the firm has moved from its previous position (more on that here), that of sticking to a 'group' buying platform, and has transitioned to a merchant marketing platform.

"We have not discontinued group buying. We have simply evolved from a group buying site into a complete merchant marketing platform for small businesses, as well as national brands. We help merchants in marketing across channels like social media, TV, mobile and e-mail, and they can even monitor their traffic," Singh told Techcircle.in.

Mydala launched a marketing platform for merchants in June last year. This platform, called mybuzz, allows merchants various options to promote themselves via mobile, TV and the internet.

Singh claims that Mydala.com is clocking around 80,000 vouchers on any given day but the catch is, it has not been the main site of the company all along and this number includes transactions registered by partner sites through syndication. "We are heading for break-even at break-neck speed and anyone who thinks we are shutting shop needs to do a reality check," she said, firmly refuting any rumour that Mydala's business is dying or withering.

The top three categories on Mydala.com are restaurants, health & beauty and recreation, in that order.

Mydala is also focusing on the mobile segment, with the current traffic from its WAP site nearly as large as the traffic generated by the desktop version. And the company will soon re-launch the mobile apps with a slew of social features.

"It is a hyper-local business with a lot more challenges, but we are pretty happy where we are right now. Our investors are also very supportive," said Singh.

Founded in September 2009, Mydala.com is run by Delhi-based Kinobeo Software Pvt Ltd. It is backed by Info Edge (which runs Naukri.com, among others) and raised two rounds of funding, totalling Rs 27 crore (read more on that here and here).

Earlier in 2010, the company had raised Rs 1.1 crore from PE veterans Ajay Relan and Jayanta Basu, as well as two unnamed US investors.

Asked about the next round of fundraising, Singh said the firm is not actively looking at right now. The sole focus is to become profitable as soon as possible and the company is eyeing profits early next year.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)