Some deals platforms gain, others lose

The second week of November was a bad time for deals and coupon platform Nearbuy . It was just after demonetisation, and Nearbuy saw its sales go down by 35%. On November 12, its founder and CEO Ankur Warikoo sent a mail to all offline merchants to support the company's cashback deal with bigger discounts. The merchants responded. This had an immediate impact on sales, which rose by 25% over the average sales before demonetisation.Deals discovery and coupon platforms that offer discounts and rewards on purchases are seeing a mixed impact from demonetisation. While coupon apps like Nearbuy and Little that primarily deal with offline merchants are seeing an increase in sales, companies like CouponDunia and Cashkaro, which onboard only online retailers, have seen a slump in the number of deals.Mumbai-based CouponDunia, which has over 2,000 online merchants, has seen a 10% decrease in the number of transactions following demonetisation, which founder and CEO Sameer Parwani attributes to the falling numbers of cash-on-delivery (CoD) orders.“It was anyway a down period after Diwali and now people have stopped using CoD to save on cash,“ he said.Cashkaro's transactions have fallen 20%. “There is general setback in spending,“ said founder Swati Bhargava. But she added that many have started transacting online, which is leading to some ecommerce players offering discounts on prepaid deals.The companies are also seeing more deals for basic items, like groceries. CouponDunia saw a 100% surge for deals on online grocery platforms like BigBasket and AmazonNow.This trend of greater spends on basic items and less on non-necessities has benefited platforms dealing only with offline merchants. Bengaluru-based deals company Little, which used to clock an average of 5,000 transactions a day , has seen that number double to 10,000 since demonetisation, mainly from restaurant and beverage companies, including Cafe Coffee Day. The average ticket size, however, fell to between `300 and `350, compared to `500 earlier.“Number of transactions per category has seen an increase as customers look to use cashbacks to cut costs,“ said Ankit Ghai, national sales head, Devyani Group, which manages Pizza Hut and KFC.Crownit, which lets users collect rewards on online spends and redeem it later, has seen a 20% increase in business since demonetization. Founder and CEO Sameer Grover said that there has also been a 15% increase in the ticket size of purchases.Charlette, a Mumbai resi dent, spends `19,000 on an average per month on restaurants , e-commerce, cabs and retail shopping through Crow nit. But her daily spends have increased since demonetization, and she has spent `19,000 in just the 20 days following demonetization.With merchants keen to make offers to increase sales, Little has added over 3,000 new offline merchants since November 8. “There is increasing demand from small outlets in the top tier-1 cities,“ said COO Sumit Agarwal.Nearbuy's Warikoo says new merchant signups have gone up from 250-300 a day to more than 450 since demonetisation.