Onion price is a highly political and economically significant factor in India. When the onion prices soared in India in the last few months, Groupon came up with a brilliant, out of the box marketing idea. Read the story of how they conquered the Indian market just with a vegetable - onion!

1. How Groupon Conquered the
Indian Market with Onions!
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2. Overview
• Onion is politically and economically
significant to India– a little background
• Inner details of Groupon’s onion marketing
blitzkrieg
• The results
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3. India’s love affair with onion
– a little background
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People in India eat their way through 15
million tonnes of onions a year. Almost
every dish uses it, whether cooked in a
curry or eaten raw as an accompaniment to
almost every meal.
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4. India is the second largest producer of onion
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5. Leading onion producing states in India
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6. Lasalgaon in Maharashtra is Asia’s biggest
onion market
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7. Mass appeal makes it a political weapon
• The Congress Party won national elections in 1980 after
turning the high price of onions into a campaign issue.
In 1998, the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost control
of the capital, New Delhi, when a shortage of onions sent
prices soaring.
• Indian government banned onion exports for two weeks
in August 2013 and then hiked the minimum price to
discourage exports. They are also considering importing
onions from neighboring countries.
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8. Starting August 2013, onion prices started
going up
The price of a kilogram of onions in India’s cities has more
than doubled since the beginning of August, from less than
Rs 30 (45 cents), to Rs.70 ($1.14)
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9. Crazy things happen In India when onion
prices increase
• In an unusual case of robbery, three armed men stopped
a truck carrying onion and decamped with the vehicle at
Shahpura village on Jaipur-Delhi highway.
• In the capital city of Delhi, The Bharatiya Janata Party
opened special stalls to sell onions at rates significantly
lower than the market price, in a bid to embarrass the
government.
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10. People started protests across the
country against the price rise
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11. Reuters Analysis by

12. Groupon Spotted an Opportunity in it
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13. • Groupon.co.in (US based discounted deals site
Groupon’s Indian arm) spotted a great marketing
opportunity in onion price rise to draw more traffic to
their site.
• They started a weeklong bargain on Sep.5, and offered
1 kilogram of onions at 9 rupees (about $0.14) for 3,000
buyers for the next 7 days.
The Idea – Sell onions at 85% Discount
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14. Groupon’s tongue-in-cheek Ad read like this
People haven’t experienced onions in a long, long time. That
sweet, pungent aroma of onions being sautéed to a nice golden brown
before being added to your mum’s signature curry is no longer familiar.
Chai times haven’t been the same without the crispy, spicy onion bhajis of
childhood. Even your favorite bhel puri doesn’t taste the same, now that it
doesn’t include a generous dose of finely-chopped, crunchy onions to
balance out the khatta-meeta chutneys so perfectly.
The world as you’ve tasted is over…until now. Onions have moved on
from the kitchen to the spotlight. his much-coveted, much-written-
about, much-craved-for vegetable is now almost as expensive as
caviar, diamonds and Donald Trump’s wig! Men are scrambling to the
market to pick the perfect onion ring to please their ladies. In a time when
the onion prices are grabbing more headlines and spamming more
Facebook timelines than Miley Cyrus’ outrageous VMA
performance, Groupon steps in to save the day (your taste buds may now
thank us).
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15. They started with a teaser on Facebook
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16. On Sep 5th, revealed the deal on Facebook
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17. It took only 44 minutes to sell the first 3,000
kilograms of onions, and the sudden traffic
spike crashed Groupon's Indian site
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18. The site's Chief Executive
Ankur Warikoo tweeted
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19. They conducted #onionify
contest on Twitter
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20. Conducted e-mail campaigns around it
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21. Day this deal went live, the total
Google searches for Groupon
jumped by 400% in a single day
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22. More than 22 tonnes of
onion were sold in 7 Days
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23. Execution
• They tied up with one of largest onion distributors to
procure 3,000 kilograms of fresh onions every day. The
customers were barred from buying more than one
kilogram of onions per address.
• The sale of onions would start at 1 pm everyday until
3000 kg of onions are sold for the day for seven
consecutive days from the 5th September.
• Since they ordered 21 tonnes in bulk for 7 days, they
would have got a good bargain.
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24. Orders were home delivered free of cost in
78 cities across India within few days ..
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25. According to a response
in Quora by Ankur
Warikoo, the CEO of
Groupon India
The Results
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26. Gained wide media publicity
on leading publications
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27. International media coverage followed
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28. Several Indian TV channels picked it up
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29. Huge increase in traffic to Groupon site
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30. Gained high value links, citations and
social sharing from an SEO perspective
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31. They got over 16,500 new buyers on the site
over 7 days, at a never before cost
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32. They activated over 3000 buyers that had
not bought anything in the past 90 days
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33. Business went up by 60% and later
stabilized at 12% higher than the
base before
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34. The deal was nationally trending on
twitter for a total of 28 hours
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35. Finally, business generated by the new
customers has paid itself over several
times (compared to the spending for the
exercise)
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