On Tuesday, Deals.com.sg‘s website went down for at least six hours. This was after a series of shorter downtimes over the previous week.
“Part of this is increased viral growth, the other an exclusive deal with SPH/Stomp.com.sg to power their deals which is effective since about 2 weeks,” said co-founder Patrick Linden, who runs the site and its Malaysian counterpart, Mydeal.com.my, through Dealguru Holdings. Linden said the Alexa metrics on Deals.com.sg were fairly accurate; they show a tripling in traffic in the last three months.
Asian deals sites have been in the spotlight because of Groupon’s November acquisitions of sites in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines. Linden said that Groupon had approached his company, Beeconomic, the company it eventually acquired, and another Singapore site several months ago.
“[Groupon] outlined what a deal could look like. After a discussion amongst all stakeholders, including founders, investors and advisors we decided pretty quickly not to go for it,” he wrote in an email to us.
Singapore broadsheet the Straits Times speculated that Groupon paid roughly US$18 million for Beeconomic and its Singapore and Philippines sites. Linden called the figure “very far from accurate”.
Deals.com.sg is funded by German fund Rebate Networks, which has a portfolio of daily deals sites across Southeast Asia and Europe. Linden said he thought Groupon could become the second or third biggest player by marketshare in Singapore, behind his own site. He echoed Joel Neoh’s sentiment in our recent interview that there will be consolidation of competitors to no more than three large players by the end of next year.
“We have a competitive strategy in place which hasn’t really changed since Groupon bought their way in,” he said.
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