If you stand at the edge of the cliff — with the ease of online shopping ahead of you and the familiarity of physical stores behind you — CompareRaja.com gives you the final push to bungee jump. The recently launched online price aggregator site not only shows prices for a product on various online retailers like Flipkart and HomeShop18, it also offers discount coupons for most major online retail brands.
In Delhi to promote the site — a new entrant in the growing market of price aggregators — Founder and CEO Rohit Chugh explained that the browser widget, social media link and mobile apps are his USP. The browser add on — currently available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox — has a drop down menu which shows prices on all major online retailers when you visit their site to look for a product. For example, if you’re looking for a book on FlipKart, the add-on called CompareRaja Genie shows the price of that book on other sites too.
When you visit CompareRaja.com you also get to see discount coupons on each of these sites. Once you figure out which coupons are applicable to you, you can figure out the actual price you have to pay for the book. The mobile app for Android and iPhone lets you do the same. So, if you’re passing by Landmark or Crossword, you can compare online prices on your phone, before you enter the store.
As discount coupons vary and are constantly updated by the retailer, the site still doesn’t give the final price right away. “We would rather show the listed price than give wrong info on the add-on, but on our site you can figure out which discounts are best for you. We also have an ‘ask a friend’ button, which connects to Facebook,” said co-founder and CEO (India) Prasad Shejale.
The button allows you to post the price, product and retailer to a friend — someone you trust for online retail — instantly without having to open multiple tabs. “We constantly get inputs on our Facebook page on products. We plan to rate retailers based on these inputs on logistics, service and so on,” said Chugh.
Chugh also runs a popular British price aggregator site and a voucher site VoucherKing and BigTicketShop. CompareRaja currently focuses on mobiles, cameras and camcorders and, tablets. He said that it will soon be moving into the online book market.
The site’s parent company Logicserve was able to gain a foothold in European markets, through discounts coupons or vouchers, which serve as deal sweeteners. “They help us understand market preferences better,” said Shejale. In India, the site will be competing with established price aggregators like PriceMantra, MySmartPrice, Junglee and CompareTheBazaar.
