Times Internet has acquired a majority stake in CouponDunia Media Private Limited, which owns and operates coupon marketplace CouponDunia. The financial terms of the deal were not revealed. CouponDunia will continue to operate under CEO Sameer Parwani, who will now work closely with Times Internet and other Times of India Group companies. Times Internet’s existing deals site TimesDeal will now be merged with CouponDunia. TimesDeal was competing against the likes of GroupOn, but group buying sites never gained enough traction in India and now the bigger e-commerce players offer similar limited period deals. Couponing sites on the other hand have been doing pretty well. Besides India, CouponDunia Media Private Limited also operates CupomWorld in Brazil, KuponDunya in Turkey, KodyBony in Poland and CouponDunia Indonesia. Parwani said that CouponDunia has more than 1 million subscribers and receives over 2 million visits a month. It is driving Rs 500 Cr of purchases annually from over 1,500 online retailers and brands. It competes against companies such as MyDala, Cashkaro, Pennyful, CupoNation, CouponRaja.com, RetailMeNot.com. What this means for other players in the market Couponing sites negotiate deals with e-commerce companies and other retailers and pass them on to customers. In case of e-commerce companies the offers are in most cases, similar to the affiliate rates offered by services. Most of these e-commerce sites explicitly tell normal shoppers not to use these ids to make purchases for themselves, but that is the principle these couponing sites operate on. The combined entity of Coupondunia and Timesdeal will be able to negotiate better deals from all the players in…
