Angel investors Rajan Anandan, Rehan Yar Khan, Sunil Kalra - all part of Indian Angel Network - and one more unnamed individual have invested an undisclosed amount in Hyderabad-based MyZingo eCommerce Service Pvt Ltd, which runs BuyThePrice.com, an e-commerce site for consumer electronics and appliances. This is the first round of funding for the company, which was founded in December 2009 by Ranjith Boyanapalli, Tharachand Surydevara and Jagdish Kothapalle.
BuyThePrice.com follows a unique model where it offers different deals on any given product based on the number of interested customers. These are real-time deals - so if any user backs down, the prices fall back, and it is clearly visible. BuyThePrice is unlike group buying/ daily deal sites conceptually - while discounts and deals are distributed by such sites only once the set number of interested consumers are 'locked in'. Here the number of users and the discounted price is flexible.
Ranjith Boyanapalli, Founder and CEO, MyZingo eCommerce Service explains, "Buytheprice was created with a technology differentiator and will remain separate from other group buying site. Our technology platform collates demand and maps it against the supply prices to decide the final selling price." The platform is built on LAMP and hosted on NetMagic.
The funds will go into adding more social features to the site and expanding to Mumbai and New Delhi. They employ 13 people at Hyderabad office and are adding 10 more immediately, according to Boyanapalli.
Consumer electronics is one of the top selling categories online and there are a multitude of players already in this segment such as eBay, Futurebazaar, Videocon's eDigiworld.com, Indiaplaza, Infibeam, Gadgets.in, HomeShop18, Naaptol.com and more.
Angel Investor Rehan Yar Khan reasons: "If you compare it to other ecommerce sites, you will notice it is very well made. Besides, the innovative technology behind it, the way their user base has soared very quickly and their consumer understanding (they had the Nokia X5 as soon as it was launched), all have worked well for them."
Khan is an e-commerce entrepreneur himself as he had founded Flora2000.com, a flower retailer from India targeting global markets. He is also on the board of backup software company Druva Software Pvt Ltd (it recently got series A from Sequoia Capital India) and a board advisor of Pune-based Innovize Tech. Anandan, former managing director of Microsoft India, has completed 16 angel investments so far - the latest being authorSTREAM, a Slideshare and Scribd competitor. Kalra is an angel investor and director in Innoveda Biological Solutions Pvt Ltd and TaxSpanner Pvt Ltd.
The site currently offers mobile phones, cameras, computers and PC accessories, mp3 and media players, LED/LCD TVs and kitchen appliances. It will add more brands per category and sub categories but will not get into other retail domains such as books, said Boyanapalli.
In January, the company will offer vendors a partner portal to enable them to add more details and update prices on the site, he said.