With the presence of numerous cashback and coupon sites, finding a deal is not very hard, but to find a legitimate deal or working coupon can be really irritating. There is no shortage of sites where you will find hundreds of coupons with less than half of them actually working.

“The current market condition requires a place where deals are genuine, thereby offering the maximum success rate. This made us launch Dealozo in September 2016, which is an effort to revamp the existing model,” says Dealozo co-founder Shartaj Ahamed.

Dealozo is the brainchild of Ahamed and Kunal Roy, who have over 10 years of experience in the field of affiliate marketing. Roy is a software developer, while Ahamed is into SEO (search engine optimisation) and online marketing.

Dealozo is an affiliate marketing website focused on deals related to various ecommerce platforms. It is the property of Innovate Search, which is the parent company operating from Bengaluru for the last five years. Innovate Search owns and operates a conglomerate of web properties in ecommerce, affiliate marketing and media-buying.

“At Dealozo, we curate the best deals catering to a wide range of consumers. We serve a wide range of customers by offering deals related to various categories like food, clothing, stationeries, electronics, travel and most importantly flights,” Ahamed says. “Dealozo is not like any other deal aggregator site. It is a social platform wherein the users get rewarded for interacting and adding deals,” he adds.

Recollecting the experience, Ahamed says, “The initial users were our close associates and friends. Well, it took some persuasion to convince the initial users to sign up. Gradually, with the help of social media and word of mouth, we were able to pick up pace and the increase in registered users was quite visible. At present, we have over 12,000 registered users.”

“We earn by the affiliate programmes of ecommerce companies. We get paid from ecommerce sites like Amazon, Makemytrip, and Paytm whenever there is a sale. The commission rate varies from product to product and usually ranges from 3% to 15%,” he adds.

“In order to filter out the genuine deals, we check each and every deal. Although this process is time-consuming, we are planning to stick to it in order to provide the best deals to the people. Later on we plan to get away with this process and the deal verification will be done by the community members based on which there will be a voting mechanism,” he added.

“Getting people to trust your site is a big challenge which we think can be achieved by offering genuine products only. Our flight deals segment has been doing really good in generating public trust and interest, as this is a segment in which you can hardly find any genuine deals,” he says.

Quick facts
­Founders: Shartaj Ahamed and Kunal Roy
Into: Affiliate marketing
User base: 12,000
Funding: Bootstrapped