While Flipkart’s BigBillionDay sale attracted all the attention last week and Amazon India quickly followed it with its Diwali Dhamaka Week sale, somewhere lost in the background is GroupM and Google’s Grand Diwali Mela. Last month, Google had stated plans of launching a virtual shopping and entertainment platform by tying up with the media buying agency GroupM. The company had mentioned that GroupM was responsible in bringing in the brands onto the platform, while Google will provide tech support. The platform seems to have gone live on October 2, however we didn't realize the site was live until Google India's tweet today, indicating how low-key the campaign has been despite being backed by Google India and GroupM. Take a walk across the Online Diwali Mela! Get samples at Re.1 every single day until Oct 20! Visit http://t.co/RlfvqpyIw6 for more details. — Google India (@googleindia) October 15, 2014 Lead Generation initiative? From the looks of it, this initiative seems like a lead generation platform for participating brands rather than offering product deals to consumers. Brands onboard include FMCG brands like Comfort, Vim and Huggies, cosmetic brands like Lakme and Ponds, and online real estate portal PropTiger. OLX, LINE, Fiat, and Horlicks. The site mentions that it offers samples for products across various categories at one rupee each, however at the time of writing this article, we've noticed that almost all brands have run out of samples, and it will be restocked at 10AM tomorrow morning on a first come first serve basis. Apart from this, brands like…
