‘Deal’ has become a bit of a buzzword on the Internet of late. Although it can mean any sort of deal, it usually now refers to group-buy deals. We have so many of these group buying sites – hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them – in Asia.
India is no exception. In an effort to sort through them all, DiscountPandit was created to help users track and search these deals, making it easy for users to find relevant deals quickly. Alan DSouza, the founder of the deal search engine, explained to us:
With a growing number of deal sites across the globe and an increasing number of businesses offering deals and discounts through offline and online media, customers are finding it increasingly difficult to find the best deals whenever they need them. DiscountPandit.com is attempting to provide a hyperlocal social deal search engine for users.
Or perhaps you might see DiscountPandit as an aggregator but with a deep focus on building a good search engine for daily deals. So far, deals can be searched based on exact location and deal category. But I’m kinda disappointed that time limits, prices and brands aren’t part of the search criteria.
Here’s a simple flow chart on how DiscountPandit works:
The search works pretty well for now. I’m pretty happy with the results that are presented to me. The design looks alright but somehow I’m finding it a little cluttered — perhaps the narrow width plays a part.
Also, DiscountPandit is providing its own deals – which I find a little unnecessary. I’m convinced that the problem here is about making deals searchable, not creating more deals to overwhelm users. DiscountPandit should definitely spend its resources on search and not creating deals. Just my two cents. We shall see how the start-up work its way up to become India’s local deal search engine. Can they?
