Discount deals inspire founding of a start-up

Hyderabad: Belief in one’s own idea despite an adverse market situation and the ability to sail out of difficult time are the hallmarks of a real entrepreneur. R. Rama Raju, the founder of Hyderabad-based five-year old deals company Upto75.com.

“When there is huge potential, everyone comes in; but what matter is how well you design your offering. But what matters even more is how much patience you have to make your business a success. I struck to my business idea in the most trying times. Many have come and vanished; but we have survived and are all set to put our expansion plans in the topgear,” Mr Raju told this newspaper.

A chemical engineer by education and a son of drug maker Dr R.R.K. Raju, he started Upto75.com in 2009 just months before US deal site Groupon was founded.

His company negotiates discount deals with service providers on behalf of customers. Unlike other group buying companies that charge customers for discount coupons, Mr Raju gets commission from the companies.

“Though I had founded my company before the US deals firm, the success of Groupon lead to mushrooming of similar sites in India. In just two years, there were 100 Indian Groupon clones making the discount deals space difficult to survive,” he recalled.

Mr Raju, who had already co-founded a successful startup Ybrant Digital, remained undeterred with the altered market situation and kept investing in his idea.

Mr Raju proved himself correct in the next couple of years. By 2013, 95 per cent of the Groupon clone sites have shut down in India. “This gave us space to operate more effectively,” he added.

Currently, Upto75.com has 20,000 to 22,000 visits every day and have loyal business houses that repose faith in the company.

Mr Raju believes that the online medium will be the dominant space for group deals and discount deals as more people log on to internet.

He feels that the tough time that he had seen during initial days had taught him about the deal space and plans to capitalise on these lessons.

After five-year long journey, Mr Raju feels that the time has come up for the next level of growth. “In one year, we want to grow our user base by 10 times. We want to make Upto75.com a Rs 500 crore company by investing in marketing and talent,” he said.

Though he has a long way to go, Mr Raju feels he has made a mark in this space as most of his rivals have adopted his business model of charging merchants.