Groupon the world’s largest group buying site which offers consumers large discounts on products/services has just closed a recent funding round of $980 million and has already gone on a spending spree.
Groupon has acquired local South African group buying site Twangoo for an undisclosed amount. The Twangoo website will be rebranded to match that of Groupon in the next couple of months. It is still unclear whether Twangoo will switch over to groupon.co.za seeing as the domain currently belongs to another competitor local group buying site which could make drag out a domain dispute.
Groupon did not only acquire local group buying site Twangoo but they also snatched up SoSasta and Groupoer from India and Israel.
The three sites that was acquired are all regarded as leaders in group buying in their countries, and if you look at Twangoo it is clear that they are the leaders amongst the three sites in South Africa, with them offering deals almost every day for all major cities in South Africa.
There is an explosion of these sites in SA but they need to provide items people actually need or want. SaleWine.co.za focus on wine only and are showing massive growth . Perhaps this is worth a look?
Thank for the comment AJ, will certainly check out salewine
In Greece also, there is an explosion of over 130 group buying sites! (not everybody is doing a good job but the sites and deals are there). In my opinion, I agree with AJ, vertical group buying sites is the way to go. Wines is a good example, travel, watches, foods, beauty deals are also a nice example. In Greece, we have a group buying site focusing only on deals regarding watches and it’s going pretty good. I believe the vertical sites are going to survive the competition!