Indonesian Groupon Clones

dealkeren
Dealkeren (means “cool deal”) is the partner site of the daily-deal sites, Ensogo Phillipines and Ensogo Thailand. Overall, the layout of the site is almost similar to Groupon. However, unlike Groupon, no minimum number of buyers is required. So far, dealkeren has covered cool deals in 8 big cities in Indonesia.

DISDUS
The name “DISDUS” comes from the abbreviation of “Diskon gede untuk semua”, which means “big discount for everyone”, founded by Jason Lemuda and Ferry Tenka in August 2010. Their site became more visible after partnering with Kaskus, the largest Indonesian internet forum, in October 2010. Just like dealkeren, DISDUS does not require a minimum numbers of buyers. However, new deals are offered every two days, unlike Groupon and dealkeren which have new deals everyday. The deals are only available for customers in two cities: Jakarta and Bandung.

Lapar.com
Lapar.com focusses only on culinary products, as the word “lapar” means “hungry” in Bahasa Indonesia. Even though it has just started in November 2010, the business runs smoothly with the average of 100 deals per day (Of course, we are talking about food discounts here!). With the tagline “Makanan top dengan harga edan” (top foods with mad price), Lapar.com helps to satisfy the hunger for people in Jakarta and Bandung. However, minimum numbers of buyers is required before the deals go through.

How about the payment method? Basically, the payment method is the factor that differs these sites from Groupon. As long as the infrastructure of online payment is still not structured well, different methods are needed.

It is also still not clear for me why credit card payment is not an option in Indonesia. Perhaps because the online payments systems are still not structured well, people still prefer to use bank transfer to credit cards. The transfer is mostly done from ATMs or at the banks (nowadays they also do mobile banking, from what I have just heard), instead of online.

Meanwhile, DISDUS has KasPay as payment option. KasPay is actually made for the online payment system of Kaskus, the Indonesian internet forum. What is unique about them is the method to top up the credits on KasPay using bank transfer.

Unlike the others, the customers of Lapar.com can only purchase the deals by using the TopUp credits. To top up the credits, buyers must use the bank transfer. This method seems to work really well, since it will ensure the customers to redeem more than one deal. However, for those who even do not trust the online purchasing, dealkeren has the solution. The costumers can come at dealkeren's office and pay there.

According to Asian innovation web, e27, Groupon is probably going to enter Indonesian market. Well Groupon, before you enter Indonesian market, you might want to adjust your game!

(DISDUS has been acquired by Groupon in April 2011. Sources: TechCrunch & DailySocial)