An sms this morning advertising GroupTable.in brought a smile to my face. Come Thursday, me and the missus start looking out for restaurant deals for the weekend. GroupTable looks like a one-stop-shop for us, that will save us searching koovs, Snapdeal, SoSasta, and the few other deal sites that feature restaurant deals, if at all.
GroupTable welcomed me with a sleek, clutter-free UI, offering deals for 'fine dining at affordable prices'. However, I was in for a surprise when I went in to register and was told both my number and email were already taken!
Since I use the same password across all such random sites, I was quickly able to get in, but it took me a while to decipher that Group Table is the same as GroupOn.in, the same company that started off as Group Off and had later bought the Groupon.in domain, which prevented the real Group On to have groupon.in as the domain name.for their Indian operations. I believe it was the same reason behind Groupon buying the rather cheap sosasta.com. (And So Sasta had to include "Sasta" in Sanskrit means "cheap" in their About Us section.
So Group Off became Group On (They used the tipping point as the turning of the Group from 'off' to 'on'), but perhaps the company couldn't compete with the other biggies in the Indian market, planting the seed for a niche deal site for restaurants. This is where most of the other daily deal sites started with, but later digressed to provide deals in all possible areas, most turning into partial e-commerce sites with discounts on. And now Group On has given way to Group Table. Both groupoff.in and groupon.in redirect to Group Table.
I wonder what is the rechristening of Group On to Group Table heading to now. There are few possibilities I can think of now:
Appendix: The following domain names now redirect to Group Table:
GroupTable welcomed me with a sleek, clutter-free UI, offering deals for 'fine dining at affordable prices'. However, I was in for a surprise when I went in to register and was told both my number and email were already taken!
Since I use the same password across all such random sites, I was quickly able to get in, but it took me a while to decipher that Group Table is the same as GroupOn.in, the same company that started off as Group Off and had later bought the Groupon.in domain, which prevented the real Group On to have groupon.in as the domain name.for their Indian operations. I believe it was the same reason behind Groupon buying the rather cheap sosasta.com. (And So Sasta had to include "Sasta" in Sanskrit means "cheap" in their About Us section.
So Group Off became Group On (They used the tipping point as the turning of the Group from 'off' to 'on'), but perhaps the company couldn't compete with the other biggies in the Indian market, planting the seed for a niche deal site for restaurants. This is where most of the other daily deal sites started with, but later digressed to provide deals in all possible areas, most turning into partial e-commerce sites with discounts on. And now Group On has given way to Group Table. Both groupoff.in and groupon.in redirect to Group Table.
I wonder what is the rechristening of Group On to Group Table heading to now. There are few possibilities I can think of now:
- Either Group Off has agreed to be, or planning to be, acquired by Group On. Grouptables.in can function as a subsidiary of groupon.in, which in turn can run under the bigger conglomerate Group On.
- Group On made an offer Group Off could not refuse, and all this domain-name shuffling is a part of reorganization.
- Group Off refused the offer to be bought, but agreed to sell the domain name for an obscenely high price.
If Group On is involved, as in options 2 and 3, it may be yet another small step by the unprofitable company which is otherwise all set to go public, to enter and compete in the Indian market which already has 50-odd daily deal sites.
Whichever way it goes, it would be interesting to see how Group Off Table grows and competes with Group On.
Whichever way it goes, it would be interesting to see how Group
Appendix: The following domain names now redirect to Group Table:
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