The Livingsocial.com surprise

The US-based daily deals site Livingsocial.com, which has not launched its operations in the country, has managed to get more than four lakh unique visitors (June) on its site from India.

In a recently-released report on the 'online coupon category', comScore, the US-based digital traffic measurement firm, reveals that more than four lakh unique visitors landed on Livingsocial.com in June in India. Its US competitor, Groupon.com, which is officially present in the country via Sosasta.com and which is promoting heavily via digital advertising, recorded about six lakh unique visitors in the same month. Sosasta.com was acquired by Groupon.com in January 2011.

It is important to note that Livingsocial.com has not officially launched its operations in India as yet. However, the daily deals site has started building its user base in the country. It is advertising (search ads) on Google.com, with links directed to various city pages since the last few months in India. Information regarding the Indian cities where it will offer its services, is not available explicitly on the site.

A close analysis of the site reveals that it will provide daily deals services in about 14 cities in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jaipur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Nagpur, Pune and Guwahati.

Apart from Livingsocial.com and Sosasta.com, the comScore report points out that the daily deals category is dominated by Snapdeal.com, in terms of traffic. More than 1.47 million unique visitors landed on Snapdeal.com as compared to 0.99 million on Dealsandyou.com and 0.95 million on Mydala.com in June. Snapdeal.com claims that it has a registered user base of six million people.

Other sites which managed to get into the top coupons sites are Khojguru.com (2.4 lakh unique visitors), Dealivore.com (1.4 lakh) and Koovs.com (1.1 lakh).

Overall, more than 4.6 million internet users (above 15 years) accessed coupon sites from home or work locations in June, in India. The data does not include users who have logged on to daily deals sites via mobile devices or from cyber cafe computers. About 62 per cent of the total unique visitors were male, while 32 per cent were females. A majority of the visitors belonged to the age groups of 15-24 years (34 per cent of total unique visitors), and 25-34 years (43 per cent).