New Finnish Startup To Challenge The Likes Of Groupon
Groupon has made coupons hot again and other players in the field are taking advantage of that. A new Finnish start-up Dealium promises to deliver best group discount deals through a mobile app that sorts the offers based on user's geolocation and preferences. In practice, it means that walking through downtown of Helsinki users could browse through group discounts relevant to their needs and purchase the deal directly through their smartphones by checking into the cafes or restaurants they prefer. The notification would also be shared with the user's Facebook friends and after completing different activities within the app, users could collect virtual points and compete with other users. The service would be launched into beta in Finland in the beginning of April.
Dealium aims to attract businesses to use their service by making it easy to set up campaigns (allegedly it takes 5 min to create a deal) and providing analytic tools to measure their effectiveness. The company also claims to help businesses deepen relationship with existing customers by providing customer loyalty programs. The service would be free for users but Dealium would charge advertisers a commission fee or a monthly subscription.
Jaakko Niskanen, founder and CFO, claims that combining geolocation and easy access through mobile gives the service substantial advantage over similar providers. That said, it would still require a lot of hard sales for Dealium to acquire their first advertisers and customers. Besides, existing group discount providers like Groupon, Facebook Deals and Foursquare already have a lot of following, which is the most valuable asset a service like that can provide. Dealium would have to work extremely hard to compete with that.
The team behind the start-up consists of five young entrepreneurs: Samuli Pihlaja (CEO), Santeri Ehnqvist (CMO), Jaakko Niskanen (CFO), MiikaPihlaja (CTO) and Lauri Peltola (web architect). The company is currently in negotiations for the initial funding.
http://dealium.fi/en/