Over the past few months, Groupon's core feature set has been cloned and ripped off to no end by a significant number of companies in Silicon Valley; these startups are horning in on Groupon's share of the U.S. market and, more importantly, U.S. advertising dollars. Internationally, Groupon hadn't yet forged deals with entities outside North America, but international clones were beginning to reproduce the Groupon model in markets around the globe.
Groupon decided the infrastructure of these companies was inherently valuable and has been on a clone-buying spree of sorts. In May, it snapped up Euro-clone Citydeal and in so doing fast-tracked its expansion into European markets including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden, Norway and Belgium.
Other large and strategically important markets remained unconquered, so Groupon has now gone after clones in Russia and Japan.
The company has bought a majority stake in both Qpod.jp and Darberry.ru for undisclosed sums, which means that Groupon's reach will extend literally around the globe. The companies' names will be changed to "Groupon," and the sites' branding and design will be aligned with the Groupon brand. Each company's founder will continue to lead it under the new Groupon name.
When the ink has dried and the details settled, this startup will be operating in 230 markets and 29 countries and is expected to have around 13 million subscribers. We can imagine Groupon has skipped over a great deal of red tape by structuring its expansion this way; it's working with companies that are already "the best in their markets," according to CEO Rob Solomon.