MUMBAI: TimesDeal.com will begin offering its deals free of cost. It has traditionally charged users for 20-40 per cent of the deal value upfront.

With this move, the buying portal from Times Internet, is disrupting its business model.

TimesDeal has traditionally operated with a similar revenue model to competitors such as Snapdeal, who charge an upfront amount to purchase a deal. TimesDeal will no longer charge consumers for its deals.

TimesDeal made this decision after some learnings, some purposeful and some accidental. In February, TimesDeal ran a Valentine‘s Day promotion and for the promotion all deals were made free. As a result, there was a 10 times increase in consumption. This drove the internal conviction for a free product, the company said.
 
Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani said, "After the Valentine‘s Day‘s free promotion, we knew we had tapped into some significant, latent demand in the market for free deals. We started working on the free product immediately after that. Last week, a promotional code was accidentally released and it spread on the Internet. TimesDeal experienced over 100,000 transactions, a dramatic increase in deal consumption before the code was withdrawn. While TimesDeal lost revenues from the mistake, it helped further validate our belief in a free deals platform just as we were about to launch it."

TimesDeal aims to focus more intensely on the discovery of deals, which will make the process of consuming a deal "faster" and "simpler" and also allow users to avail more targeted and personalised options of their interest.