Exclusive | Bullish on Indian e-commerce: Groupon's Ankur Warikoo

The industry leader in daily deals segment, Groupon Inc’s Indian unit, Crazeal has recently completed one year of operations in the country. The company has achieved a notable distinction of being the number one in its category as per the latest Comscore Data. Groupon has presence in over 48 countries across the globe and is very optimistic about India which it considers as the fastest growing market in the global portfolio.

On the eve of Crazeal’s first anniversary, Adgully interacted with Ankur Warikoo, CEO, Groupon India. Sounding very bullish about India and the company’s performance over the year gone by he said, “We entered the market just last year and have grown organically to reach the #1 rank in the daily deals category (as per ComScore data). We are experiencing super-normal growth quarter-on-quarter and repeat buying pattern of close to 50%. Additionally, we are recognized as the best destination for high quality  deals, by our consumers, which is a fantastic achievement in just 12 months.”

Groupon sold more than five lakhs deal vouchers and featured more than 15000 deals in 12 months; it worked with more than 3000 unique merchants across the country. The company sold one gift voucher every 33 seconds. Elaborating on the reasons behind its success in India, Warikoo said, “Because of the deal quality, there is no other science to this business. Groupon globally works with the best merchants and offers the best deal structures to our customers, while solving business problems for the merchants.”

Being in the online space, customer loyalty service is fundamental to the company’s business which can  be derived only through quality and services. If the customer does not get a good experience on the deal purchased, Groupon follows a ‘No questions asked” 100% return policy.

In a similar way it cares for its merchants as well and has a strong team of relationship managers to cater to their business problems. As such it is the only site that provides businesses with the opportunity to be “a hero for the day”, so they get strong promotion from the sheer number of eyeballs that notice their brand on the homepage. Adds Warikoo, “we are strongly committed to the Indian market and are also launching our global robust technology to cater the needs of the merchants in India. The Merchant Center is an intelligent application that provides merchants a platform to evaluate and track their performance.”

India has witnessed a huge growth in e-commerce in the past one and a half years and customers online have been bombarded with innumerable offerings. Competition is becoming fierce but Warikoo is unfazed. He says, “competition is always healthy as it leads to the overall growth of the industry. For me, the real competition for Crazeal are other Groupon countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong.”

As its long-term growth strategy, Groupon intends to focus on the quality of deals as “only then can we be in the business for a long time. If you give the best quality of deals, customers will stay. We focus on one deal a day and make that special. We are in the market of products, travel and local services - and all three of them are growing at such a pace that for the next 1-2 years we are simply looking at consolidating our base in the three.”

However despite growth prospects being bright there are challenges like infrastructure challenges,  logistics, payment options, talent availability etc. One of the biggest challenges the deals segment of the e-commerce industry faces is getting consumers to adopt online shopping. People have been habituated to buying things from retail storefront. While it is a challenge, it is an opportunity also. Says Warikoo, “We solve this by working with the best brands in the country – so customers come in with a lot of trust already established. Further as a global leader in this space, we take it upon ourselves to be absolutely transparent in our conduct and at the same time build the market in a manner.”