SoSasta.com, is the new kid on the block in the world of Groupon alike business models. SoSasta.com, a venture of Friday Media (P) Ltd. has been founded by ex-Google employees. Launched from Kolkatta initially, it is extending its presence in n cities like Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune.
Business Model
SoSasta.com provides a platform for consumers to explore the luxuries at an affordable price. The site offers as high as 95% discounts. A fantastic new deal is launched every day. Once a predetermined number of people join in to buy the product or service deal on a particular day, it’s sold and everyone gets a coupon code for the fabulous discount, which they can plan to redeem at the merchants location anytime in the next 1 to 3 months. The site has also set up a rewards/credits program in place for friend referrals.
What we liked about SoSasta.com
- First of all the name itself – SoSasta. It’s a well chosen name and depicts the true nature of the business in the simplest manner.
- Appropriate emphasis to customer service: They have an online chat option as well as the regular customer service phone number.
- They clearly provide the highlights as well as the catch in each deal. This ensures that the customers have the right information before purchasing the deal.
What we did not like about SoSasta.com
× The website design – The website scores very low on this front as it gives a much cluttered impression. Website’s background comprises of an inappropriate Lotus temple picture. It is hard to read the ‘About Us’ page which is written in grey over black background.
× Nothing new: It is just like any other group buying sites. Another business replicating the groupon business model.
Competitor Analysis
Websites with similar business models are already present like SnapDeals.com and mydala.com.
My 2 Cents
I would just say that all these sites providing everyday deals are in the good interest of customers. We can just check out all these sites and pick up the offer which suits us. There is no one good site and none bad ones.
Best Part of Sosasta is that it can capture East India Market very well as of now we have good players for North, South & West India.
but when it comes for Kolkota Region we can only see some group buying discounts on Snapdeal and Mydala. Sosasta Origin is Kolkata & it can benefit them to capture very well East India.
Regards the design yups its true there is nothing new but just hoping they will modify this in near future.
On behalf of 30Sunday, India’s Biggest Group Buying Aggregator we welcome Sosasta in Group Buying Industry and wish them very good luck.
Ex-googler? someone that works at Google for a 3 month internship is technically an ex-googler but not what one thinks of an ex-googler who left after 6 years and a boat load of cash.
I’m studying internet start-ups (primarily in India) for some time now. The study focuses on understanding shortcoming in business models of internet start-ups. Prima facie, the group buying business model might looks strong however creating a sustainable strong cash flows might be a difficult task for such companies. Moreover, I’m not very sure of how these companies will scale, and remain profitable at the same time. One should remember that there are very low entry barriers to an internet business and achieving sustainable revenue growth, scalability, and profitability may not be as easy as some entrepreneur think… We have seen many strong looking business models fail and you can relate most of these failures to a syndrome called “Deceptive Customer Behavior (DCB)”. DCB relates to the latency effect most customer demonstrate while buying on the internet (I use the word deceptive because most customers behave differently while buying on the internet than they usually do). This increases cost of customer acquisition while reducing conversion rate. “Selling profitably “while countering DCB is a key issue most internet business models should accommodate. Some of us may argue that this can be fixed on a trial and error basis and there is always a learning curve to any business, but the low entry barrier and constantly changing technology landscape leaves very low margin of error, shortens time to accommodate your business model, and limits your ability to take needed actions- now that you have used the scarce capital…
I’m shortly coming up with a “WIN INDEX”, its like a credit rating system, but measures probability of success of internet start ups.
My good wishes to all entrepreneurs who have taken the leap… only strong resolution and perseverance with concrete understanding of the DCB in your niche of internet business will help you succeed.
And the truth is only a handful of you will survive!!!
I’m open to thoughts and criticism. These are just some opening thoughts and in no way conclusive. … I’m willing to divulge more details of my study on a one on one basis…
Thanks
Ashwin
ashwin.dhumal@gmail.com
As Venu mentioned at the end of the article, it makes sense to check out all the offers available across daily deal sites and pick the most suitable ones. Buzzr.in’s daily deal section makes this task easier by aggregating daily deals of various daily deal players.
Sosasta is cheater. Do not trust on the expiry date mentioned on the voucher. They change the expiry date whenever they want and that too without any intimation once you have bought the voucher. My voucher which was expected to expired on 18th June 2011, they have expired it on 5th June 2011, without any intimation and they do not give refund as well.. Very Sad