India’s Snapdeal dabbles in group car buying to differentiate itself from Groupon clones

With Groupon’s success, websites offering daily deals are popping up like mushrooms all over the world including India, where there were at least 30 coupon sites as of July 2011.

However when it comes to differentiating these coupon sites based on the deals being offered, there is one striking problem, and that is the lack of merchant exclusivity. All coupon sites, at least in India, are pushing similar lifestyle or restaurant deals.

Snapdeal, which is currently India’s largest coupon site, in its continuing struggle to differentiate itself from these Groupon clones, has announced that it has teamed up with Tata Motors to sell the latter’s car models at a heavily discounted price on their site, starting with Indica Vista.

Tony Navin, vice-president -business development, SnapDeal said:

E-commerce business in India is showing resurgence and consumers aren’t fighting shy of deal sizes that cross Rs 20,000-25,000. We are introducing products that are bulkier in value and form and plan to offer car deals at discounts one won’t find anywhere else.

Snapdeal said that it will also explore future opportunities with other car models and manufacturers, based on the success of these deals.

While Snapdeal’s initiative to stay one step ahead of its competitors is pretty remarkable, we are pretty sceptical as to whether the coupon giant will be able to convert these deals into success, since buying cars is usually considered to be a long term investment and the conversion rate will therefore be pretty low.