Capital FM Partners With Rupu to Launch Own Daily Deals Website

The daily deals market in Kenya is getting crowded. After Zetu, Rupu and Mocality, now we have Capital Deals. Capital Deals will be the deals part of Capital Web offerings. The Capital FM deals is indicated to be powered by Rupu Deals. I am not sure what the arrangement will be but it might just be Capital FM getting paid for the marketing or Rupu boosting the traffic on Capital FM website.

On the website there is a mention of Rupu while on the radio advert Rupu is not mentioned anywhere. The arrangement might also be that Capital FM is running their own thing powered by the same script from Rupu while the only thing Rupu gets from Capital FM is a mention. The main daily deal on Rupu’ website is also very different from what is offered on Capital FM Deals.

A daily deals aggregator called Zambu was recently launched in Kenya but it does not look like it is regularly updated. It would very interesting to have all the deals on one platform and compare them. Zambu might just be so handy only that it is not know how well Rupu and Zetu are doing while Mocality is reported to be struggling in there despite having a strong financial backing.

It seems that today’s deal on Capital FM site is a 68% Discount on Weightloss and Muscle tone adjustment. Regularly it costs Ksh 6,000 but you get to buy it from Capital FM Deals for only Ksh 1,900.

Capital FM Group has the media publicity muscle to wrest most deals from other players and so it would be so interesting to see how they fair on this field. The group has recently started Jobs, Classifieds, Motors and Kids portals in a quest to conquer Kenyan web space. Check out Capital FM Deals here.

—————————————- UPDATE —————————————————————

I have just spoken to Munyutu Waigi of Rupu and he gave me some interesting scoop on the deal. Rupu has an arrangement with Capital FM that Rupu would offer Capital FM a free exclusive deal for Capital FM per week for 52 weeks (one year). Rupu would do the value proposition and Capital FM would deliver on the publicity front. All the earnings from Capital FM deals would go to Capital FM.

Munyutu also had great perspective on the business. Rupu has been in the Kenyan market form the last 11 months and 8 days. Rupu Kenya is owned by Ringier Kenya which also owns PigiaMe. Ringiers Kenya is in turn owned by Ringiers Switzerland and they are intested in innovative web solutions on Deals, Marketing and Classifieds.

Munyutu say that Ringiers Kenya will be unveiling two innovative products, targeted at East African market and Kenyans in particular, by early 2012.

Rupu Kenya now sells an average of between 55 to 65 deals per day with some of the most memorable deals being;

• The Sankara Dinner for two where clients save 50% to buy the deal at Ksh 2,000
• The Scuba Diving deal worth Ksh 11,880 sold for Ksh 5,940
• The Lunch Box offer worth Ksh 400 sold more than 110 in less than 25 hours

Rupu now employs more than 16 employees from an initial 6 with most of them being in marketing.