Finding the best deals online, in India

We seek sale like flies. Don't we?

I have been looking around for good deals lately for purchasing a DSLR. Frankly, Indian e-Commerce industry has a lot more to do before it can be safely considered as the best place for deals. Even then, the prices are quite competitive when you are hunting for specific goods, say electronic.

I wanted a site or some source that would let me know the best places to get the elusive deal for the product I wanted to buy. I came across three alternatives. Google.com, Junglee.com and pricedealsindia.com. Interestingly enough, we still do not have a comprehensive site that would offer all kinds of products with their available pricing for purchase online. The industry is far from attaining any kind of maturity at this stage. Hopefully, things would improve. Anyways, back to my DSLR hunt.


First stop was Google.com. Search for the product name you are looking for, hit the shopping option and get all the alternatives that Google throws up on the screen. Its not as professional as, say, google shopping site in US. But the relevance is there for the users benefit. Surprisingly, pricedealsindia comes up with a few pricing for the product at the top of the search result. Junglee is not to be seen at all. Which is strange since Junglee is the Indian subsidary of Amazon.com.

Next obvious one was Pricedealsindia.com. Now let me caution folks that this site offers deals for only electronic items. And the list is not that comprehensive but then it does cover the popular items. What I liked about this site was that it gave the best deals in town. It also mentioned coupon codes when ever there was any major offering on any site. You can also set alerts for price drops so that you can be SMSed for mailed regarding the same. I saw sites listed which I didn't even know they existed. Now the site only provides redirection and does not take onus on the authentication of the deal or the online retailer, but they warn you on their part. I got the lowest price for the specific DSLR model I was hunting on this site.  

Pricedealsindia.com offers price comparisons with coupon codes and shipping costs from quite a wide range of e-commerce stores

Lastly, there was Junglee.com. Now, this site is quite professionally done. It has registered retailers selling all kinds of products. It collates all the retailers for a specific model and lists them under the product details with their price offerings. Again, Junglee redirects to the retailers site when a user is interested in making a purchase. The lowest pricing on the DSLR model here was not the best but came close.

Overall, I feel that most online retailers need some kind of education to tailor their site or retailing system to inform external engines about their product pricing on an ongoing bases.

A local query with a camera dealer got me a price lower than the best offer online. That does not mean that online deals are bad. They are just not juicy enough at the moment.

PS: If you got better sites that identify good deals online, let me know.