Coupon and discount marketing platform mydala has partnered with Airtel to provide deals and offers to its subscribers when recharging their accounts using the ‘My Airtel’ mobile app.
The partnership will provide Airtel subscribers with deals and offers in categories including beauty and wellness, food, shopping and entertainment among others. Coupons for popular brands like PVR Cinemas, Flipkart, Amazon, eBay, Myntra, Pantaloons will also be made available to users.
Note that mydala had entered into a partnership with Aircel to launch ‘Aircel Joys’ in February last year. Through this deal, it claimed to offer up to 90% discount on various products exclusively for Aircel customers. It also has similar tie-ups with other telcos like Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Tata Docomo. In May 2013, Info Edge CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi had said that these telco partnerships accounted for a significant revenue growth in the company. As of April 2013, mydala claimed to have 6 million users on Vodafone alone.
Currently, mydala claims to have 4 million transacting customers monthly, with over 6.6 million transactions per month. It also claims to have 50 million unique visitors, 25 million registered users and 4 million transacting customers per month, with 80% of its revenues coming from the mobile platform.
MyDala offers coupons across various categories like restaurants, health & beauty and travel. It also has a product section through which it offers product deals across various categories like electronics, books, mobile phones, lifestyle, apparel, and appliances among others. In September last year, the company had launched a new grocery vertical which would allow shoppers to view offers on grocery items from local kirana stores. However, the company doesn’t hold any inventory of these products and acts more like a deals marketplace.
Launched in November 2009, mydala has raised around Rs 28 crore investment from Info Edge and angel investors like Ajay Relan and Jayanta Basu of CX Partners until now. It had raised Rs 18 crore (around $3.7 million) from Info Edge in October 2011, Rs 9 crore ($2 million) from Info Edge in April 2011 and $250,000 angel funding from Ajay Relan and Jayanta Basu in November 2010. Last year, it had stated plans to expand operations to 250 cities. According to the company’s founder and CEO Anisha Singh, mydala broke even in April 2013.
Competition:
– Local coupon and deals generating platform Groupon India has raised ‘external funding’ of $20 million led by Sequoia Capital earlier this month. Groupon was formed in India after it bought the Indian platform SoSasta in early 2011. SoSasta founders Ananya and Udayan Bubna joined Groupon post the acquisition. The company was called Crazeal before it was renamed to Groupon in late 2012.
– Times Internet, which operates TimesDeal, had acquired a majority stake in CouponDunia Media Private Limited, which owns and operates coupon marketplace CouponDunia, in May last year. Post acquisition, TimesDeal was merged with CouponDunia. Besides India, CouponDunia Media Private Limited also operates CupomWorld in Brazil, KuponDunya in Turkey, KodyBony in Poland and CouponDunia Indonesia.
– Other players in the coupons category include Yebhi, which turned into an online products aggregator and couponing site in September last year, PayuPaisa which had launched an automated all-in-one payment solution targeting e-commerce marketplaces in October 2013 and Freecharge which acquired the stealth mode startup Preburn in October last year, among others.
