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With this, the daily deals site plans to expand its presence to top 20 cities by June 2012, as well as introduce new product categories every six months.
Dealsandyou.com, the daily deals site of Smile Group Venture, has received a funding of US$17 million as part of its expansion plans. While the funding was led by Mayfield Fund and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), other investment companies such as Nokia Growth Partners and Intel Capital also participated.
With this, the company plans to expand its (local deals) presence to top 20 cities (from the current 12 cities) by June, 2012, as well as introduce new product categories every six months. Currently, the site offers national deals in products, travel and retail.
Kachru adds, "The ideal way will be to launch the initial public offering (IPO) in another four years, and we seem to be heading in that direction gradually."
This is the second round of funding for Dealsandyou.com. It had earlier raised US$1.5 million in its first round of funding from Group Buying Global AG.
For the record, the daily deals category, which is currently worth about Rs 300-400 crore, was introduced two years ago with the launch of Mydala.com in November, 2009; subsequently, other sites were launched, including Snapdeal in February, 2010, and Dealsandyou.com in August, 2010.
Currently, Dealsandyou.com offers local deals to 12 cities and national deals to more than 250 cities in the country