GrabOn: Coupons to Save on Everything | Revenue & Business Model | Startup Story
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The number of online shoppers in India is on a rise. As per a study conducted by Boston Consulting Group, there were 90 million online shoppers in India in 2017, and the numbers are increasing. The convenience of shopping from the comfort of one's home, availability of a wide range of choices, and incurring lesser cost when compared to offline shopping are some of the major reasons why many prefer to shop online. Besides, the emergence of affiliate marketing companies offering attractive coupons and discounts on online shopping has made online shopping even more preferable. GrabOn is a startup that is helping more and more Indians fall in love with online shopping with all the irresistible offers and deals that it brings for various sites and brands.
GrabOn - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | GrabOn |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Hyderabad |
| Sector | Coupons & Deals |
| Founder | Ashok Reddy |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Parent Organization | InspireLabs Solutions Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | www.grabon.in |
GrabOn - About and How it Works
GrabOn - Founders and Team
GrabOn - How was it started?
GrabOn - Name, Tagline and Logo
GrabOn - USP
GrabOn - Target Market
GrabOn - Business Model and Revenue Model
GrabOn - Revenue
GrabOn - User Acquisition
GrabOn - Startup Challenges
GrabOn - Awards and Achievements
GrabOn - Future Plans
GrabOn - FAQs
GrabOn - About and How it Works
GrabOn is helping Indians save big on online shopping. GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more. They have now ventured into the e-Gift Cards space, providing discounted Gift Cards from top merchants like Amazon, Myntra, BookMyShow, Shoppers Stop, MakeMyTrip, PVR and more.
The end product delivery model is via digital dissemination of information, for e.g., providing information onscreen upon clicking, to access the same on website and mobile web, through emails, & SMS; and via physical dissemination of the same in a few use cases, e.g., paper coupons and gift cards directly to consumers.
GrabOn's user-focused interface and non-intrusive coupon browsing experience combined with innovative and rich tech stack are designed based on customer feedback and consumer insights that they gather carefully.
Every time a shopper purchases a product/service online, orders food, or hails a cab, they look for savings. With GrabOn's coupons, people can access deals with ease and security. Besides, with GrabOn's Gift Cards platform, users are enabled to save on online gifting by availing various ongoing offers and exclusive deals. GrabOn offers its users the best and the latest coupon/promo codes, deals, offers, and gift cards. These coupons are genuine and are validated frequently by their team of in-house experts. GrabOn has been able to provide consistent, authentic services even on Gift Cards, owing to their position as industry leaders and due to its strategic alliances & relations with top clients. These coupons/deals can be redeemed, and Gift Cards can be purchased by visiting the website or directly through the mobile app.
Vidhi Punamiya
GrabOn - Founders and Team
Ashok Reddy is the Founder and CEO of GrabOn.
Ashok Reddy is responsible for organizing, coordinating, and overseeing the company strategy in terms of business decisions, partnerships, and more. He is an alumnus (M.B.A., PGPMAX) of Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and pursued executive MBA from Harvard Business School. Before founding GrabOn, he served as the president & co-founder of Sellers Commerce and Landmark IT Solutions. He served as the Chief Technology Officer position at SmartTouch Interactive and as the Vice President, Information Technology at IncentOne. Prior to that, he worked as a project manager at Infosys Technologies Ltd.
GrabOn's current employee strength is 50. GrabOn boasts of a cool office space designed to bring out the best in its employees.
The team at GrabOn believes that a person can give his or her best when they are in a relaxed state of mind. And their cool office space bears testimony to this fact. Their workspace is the very definition of ''style means substance''. Elegant yet practical, GrabOn's floor is divided into various zones which serve different purposes. There is an 'Ideal Zone'' where one can relax and engage in conversation with one's own mind to produce exemplary and creative ideas - says Ashok
As the leader, Ashok believes in  investing time in building and nurturing the company culture by engaging with the employees and helping them grow professionally while contributing to the overall growth of the organization.
GrabOn's  hiring structure is designed in a way that it selects not only the best talent but the right fit of candidates who share and believe in the company's vision of helping India save on everything.
GrabOn - How was it started?
While Ashok reddy was in the US working at the managerial position across several MNCs and Fortune 500 companies, he came across the multi-billion-dollar coupons industry. Such an encounter fascinated him and simultaneously realized the potential of the same industry in India. He, therefore, returned with the motive of setting up a coupons & deals company that will make online shopping affordable and comfortable. While most of the existing coupon websites would roll with a cookie-cutter version of a website, GrabOn dared to go with a platform that emphasized more on user experience and less on coupon listing. Within months of launch, the company registered huge footfall with visitors actively using GrabOn to redeem coupons and activate deals.
I have been blessed with a team of hardworking and passionate individuals who gathered actionable insights and data points based on months of extensive market evaluation, competitive research, and assessment of risks and growth possibilities - Ashok says speaking of GrabOn's product validation stage
Once they gathered all the required information, the GrabOn team started working on designing the service, perfecting their business model, and simultaneously prepared their pitch deck and started networking with the right individuals and organizations. They started small and bootstrapped their way to the top of the industry.
The initial people who were a part of the discussion process during the early days of GrabOn were merchants mostly from the SME background, who supported a user-focused approach adopted by GrabOn.
The company's growth has been possible because of our user-first approach, whether it is our offerings or the technology that we implement. The people with whom we initially discussed about GrabOn realized the potential of what we had and kept on pushing us till we had a huge traffic footfall and returning visitors, which in turn helped us become the #1 player in the industry
Vidhi Punamiya
GrabOn - Name, Tagline and Logo
After a lot of deliberation, the GrabOn team finally zeroed in on GrabOn- signifying grabbing onto the right deal/coupon. The brand caters not only to the coupon users but also deal-seekers. However, unlike many of its competitors, the brand name does not include the word 'coupon'.
GrabOn's tagline 'Save on Everything', is representative of the things the company wants to do i.e., help users save on anything and everything by availing the best deals, offers, and discounts.
Chayanika Goswami
GrabOn - USP
GrabOn's USP is its customer-centric approach, which translates into offering only up-to-date and verified coupons & deals helping its customers make a decisive choice. This, along with their completely ad-free, non-intrusive UI/UX and strategic alliances with top players from different verticals, is what makes it India's most trusted savings destination.
GrabOn - Target Market
The industry that GrabOn operates in broadly includes coupons and deals, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, and online shopping. Their primary target market is basically the e-commerce segment in India, with a market cap of about USD 40 billion with a 30% Year-Over-Year growth. While the e-commerce market continues to grow, the competition between major brands will increase as they fight over gaining consumer share. With internet penetration happening across tier-3 and tier-4 cities, new consumer sectors will open up, providing an opportunity to smaller, niche brands to grow their local audience further through e-commerce. Affiliate Marketing has been one of the sectors providing the highest ROI to the e-commerce sector. In future, the collaboration between e-commerce companies and the affiliate marketing industry is only to grow further.
GrabOn - Business Model and Revenue Model
GrabOn operates on the B2C model. Their Business and Revenue model are based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
It generally works on Strategic business model by listing all the Top online brands/business in its platform. With a network of over 2000 Clients, some of the top clients of the company are:
Abhidutt sharma
GrabOn - Revenue
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The Grabon revenue is speculated to be around 4 million, $4.88 million to be precise, as recorded on December 31, 2019. GrabOn's market share in India's deal and coupons industry is 70-80%. The brand boasts of having 40 million subscribers, as of April 2020 and receives around 25 million page views.
Revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
GrabOn - User Acquisition
GrabOn launched its services with an awareness that there is an existing gap in the industry concerning the coupon service provider. Hence, through individual referrals about the authentic deals available on GrabOn, its customers had naturally increased. The excellent user interface and state of the art coupon browsing experience have further promoted customer satisfaction and customer base expansion.
Post-launch GrabOn rolled out the Buzz Notification feature, which alerts users with the latest coupons, hottest offers, ongoing sale events, and limited-time exclusive deals. They were the first in the country to partner with Uber's hot air balloon initiative during Diwali 2015. GrabOn's partnership with ACT Fibernet has allowed them to expand their services across India by leveraging ACT Fibernet's country-wide network. Their subsequent tie-ups with Paytm and Mobikwik have also proved fruitful.
GrabOn - Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges faced was providing a seamless coupon browsing experience to the user.
While most of the existing companies ran their website on a cookie-cutter script, we started designing our website from scratch with a customer-first mindset. Our non-intrusive design and lack of irritating pop-ups were rewarded by the customers.
GrabOn team strives to keep the platform updated, keeping in tune with user requirements. GrabOn launched the industry-first Buzz Notification feature, which was one of the experiments that worked out really well in company's favor. After that, they kept on experimenting, and the latest one is in-app Coupon and Cab Finder, which helps the user find coupons for food, entertainment, recharge, and cab-hailing directly from our GrabOn app without switching between apps.
GrabOn - Awards and Achievements
- Recognized as a trailblazing startup within months of launch, by CNBC, YourStory, Business Standard, Inc42 and more.
- GrabOn’s efforts were recognized by IBM during the Startup Star award in 2016.
- GrabOn’s website won the ‘Best Design’ award at the HYSEA Annual Awards 2016.
- Winner of Future Group’s Retail Startup Awards, 2017
- Winner of the Entrepreneur of the year (IT, Internet & Telecommunication) Industry Award from Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Awards in 2018.
- Ranked 266th among 1000 High-Growth Companies in the Asia Pacific region, 2018 in a survey conducted by the Financial Times in association with Statista.
- Winner of Tech Companies to watch out for at BW Business world #TechTors, 2018.
- Winner of the High Growth Startup Award, at TiE-ISB Connect  2017.
Some of GrabOn's biggest achievements so far include -
- It introduced industry's first Buzz Notification feature which alerted the users about the latest coupons, hottest deals, ongoing sales, etc.
- GrabOn Savings App launched with innovative features such as Coupon and Cab Finder
- Collaborations with successful movies viz. Bareilly Ki Barfi, Half Girlfriend, Naam Shabana, and more.
- Onboarded top players across several verticals like Truecaller, PhonePe, PayPal, NPCI, IndusInd Bank, ICICI Bank, SpiceJet, TruJet.
- Launched GrabOn Gift Cards and sold over a million e-Gift Cards since the operation started.
Chayanika Goswami
GrabOn - Future Plans
GarbOn has helped over 3000+ brands in the past 6 years. It has become the #1 player in the coupons and deals industry and retained the position organically. Their strength lies in understanding the user behavior and presenting the most refined shopping deals, right when they need it. Every aspect of its business is centered around the audience. The trust of its merchant partners follows automatically as they have been able to provide them with the highest ROI year on year. Its Loyalty Engagement Partners are Vodafone, ACT Fibernet, Spiceject, Idea, Jio, Saavn, trujet, ICICI bank, IndusInd Bank, DBS, Apollo, Truecaller, MI and others. GrabOn also boasts of a robust client base, with clients like, Paytm, Amazon, Uber, Mobikwik, Foodpanda, OYO, Ola, GoDaddy, BigBasket, Flipkart, Dominos, PhonePe.
The company currently has plans to introduce a 1-2 year subscription-based loyalty program. GrabOn's vision is to grow from coupons and deals market leaders to one of the top 10 digital transactions companies in India by 2020. With over 25 million page views per month and more than 40 million subscribers, GrabOn is right up there with the e-Commerce giants. The foray into Gift Cards space has already started to bring in some significant traction with more than million e-Gift Cards already sold and counting.
GrabOn - FAQs
What is GrabOn?
GrabOn provides the user with the latest deals, offers, coupons, and discounts across categories like Fashion, Food, Travel, Recharge, Entertainment, and more
How much is the Revenue of GrabOn?
GrabOn is running profitably for the last 4.5 years. The company's revenue is around $4.8 million (FY19). With a userbase of 40 million subscribers, GrabOn's market share in India's deal and coupons industry is 70-80%.
Who is the Founder of GrabOn?
Ashok Reddy is the Founder and CEO of GrabOn.
How does GrabOn make money?
GrabOn's revenue model is based on coupon redemption, affiliate/performance marketing, direct partnerships with merchants, brand marketing services via their website, and Gift Cards sale. It is based on a cost-per-sale model generating revenue through end-user sale.
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