This is a description of how local community - malls, merchant groups, cities can come together and offer deals. The money flow can stay in the local community. PowDeal offers a deals platform and empowers local community to compete effectively with Groupon, LivingSocial, and other national brand deal sites. We believe that every local community can come together and compete effectively by offering deep discounts, and more important they do not have to take away more money from the local merchants for PowDeal offers a Cost Plus model to make it affordable to any local enity - malls, cities, local merchant association, etc.

1. 1. Introduction
Deals, Incentives, Promotions, and Coupons are the cornerstone of modern life and
every consumer likes a good deal. It appeals to the limbic brain – primitive brain and
makes them feel good. This has been the basis of offering incentives and deals.
National Brands offered most of the deals and coupons with massive distribution. The
deals were offered at local levels too, but the distribution was limited. With or without
Internet, National Brands had a distinctive advantage over local merchants for they have
bigger marketing budgets. Local business and local merchants are the mainstay of any
neighborhood and society at large. Unfortunately with the inequity in terms of financial
strength of National Brands, the local brands are fighting for their survival.
Internet was supposed to democratize this inequity between National and Local
Merchants. Internet never equalized this gap for local merchants – National Brands
continued to have distinct advantages for they had the marketing muscle and
distributed their content through hundreds of affiliate sites, which generated leads and
amplified their message. The affiliate sites were paid either for performance, clicks,
views, registration and a combination thereof. The fundamental problem is: How could
local merchants compete with National Brands?
2. Local Economy and the Market
The Local Merchants market place is highly fragmented and scaling has been very
difficult. Lots of Companies have tried and failed till the advent of Groupon. Groupon is
deal-of-the-day website that is localized to major markets in USA. As of October 2010,
they operate in 150 markets in North America and 100 markets in Europe. Groupon
started two years ago, and has been one of the fastest growing companies, It is believed
that their revenue run rate is $2 Billion for year 2011.
Till Groupon’s arrival to local market place, there was absolutely no distribution for local
markets. They have been able to accomplish this by offering deep discounts on
everything they offer. And once again they have taken over this market the old-
fashioned way by hiring thousand of sales people in every local market to keep the
pipeline of deals going. They have been able to drive traffic to local merchants, and by
any measure, they have done an extraordinary job on bringing focus to the local
merchants.
Local Marketplace is the cornerstone of any neighborhood and provides sustenance to
the local economy. It is the fabric of any society – it connects goods, people, and things.
It is the essence of community from times immemorial. It is a huge marketplace, if it
can sustain in the long run. The deals marketplace is substantial and is as shown in
Figure 1 below.

2. Figure 1: Daily Deals Market
Though Groupon is widely successful, it begs the question if this is sustainable in the
long run.
3. Sustainability and Issues of Local Marketplace
Though Groupon is widely successful, it begs the question of sustainability. It is
impossible for any merchant to survive for long offering deep discounts. The local
merchants have enormous challenges to compete with National Brands. Groupon is one
solution, though good, is not sustainable.
The local merchants need tools and solutions where they get the same exposure as the
National Brands with a fraction of the cost. They cannot compete with enormous
market reach of National Brands in terms of marketing, deep discounts, distribution,
advertising, and technology advantages.
There are lots of tools available but local merchants are not adept at using them. The
tools though available virtually free are fragmented. The tools need specialists and this
would be very expensive and impractical for local merchants. There are lots of places

3. where merchants can be listed either free or for a fee. The sites include City Search,
Yelp, Yellow Pages, Google Place, and a host of other sites. The consumers are
inundated with information, and most of it is meaningless and irrelevant to their needs.
Distribution is the hallmark of any business. Without the right distribution, the business
has very little chance to survive let alone compete. A solution that incorporates
distribution of content and creation of deals at virtually no cost to merchants is the ideal
solution. This solution provides hope to local merchants. And more important, it is
critical that local operators provide the solution so that the money flow is within the
local community. The local operators include local malls, local media companies (TV &
Radio), local city governments, neighborhood merchant association, etc. All these
groups are deeply connected with their local community and have a better chance to
market and distribute the deals to the local marketplace.
4. Local Marketplace solution
Any solution that helps local market place should have the ability to compete with
National Brands and have the following attributes:
• Content and Deals Distribution on Web
• Content and Deals Distribution on Affiliate Sites
• Content and Deals Distribution on Mobile Platforms (phone, Blackberry, Android,
Nonie, Windows)
• Content and Deals Distribution on Social Media (Face book) and Micro logs
(Twitter)
• Deals Interface to create deals and make it available on all channels
instantaneously
• Cloud Platform to make the solution offering comparable to any enterprise
solution
• Analytics and Reporting to merchants so that merchants can offer meaningful
content and deals
• Personalization of deals by neighborhood and other attributes
• Customer lists for each Merchant based on opt-in to receive future deals and
offers from each of the local merchants
• Built-in viral features to invite friends and family
• Social Media Applications to drive more traffic
• SEO Optimized local marketplace website to drive more traffic
• Content tagging
• Deals Anytime/Anywhere on Mobile Phone
• Deals-of-the-day Offering
The ideal platform discussed above offered to local merchants at a reasonable price
would clearly help them compete effectively and sustain their business. It is imperative

4. that ideal platforms combine content, deals-of-the-day, and local deals. The existing
solutions in the marketplace do not address this, and there is huge opportunity for any
local operator to offer the above platform.
5. PowDeal Platform and Solution
To drive traffic, it is important to promote the local business offers on a wide variety of
channels - web, mobile, twitter, and social networking. How do you utilize all these
channels to maximize your impact with limited marketing budget? PowDeal is the
answer. PowDeal combines most of the features as specified in the previous section.
PowDeal’s robust content and deals platform (“Platform”) allows local businesses to
create digital discounts and promotions instantaneously. The discounts and promotions
are accessed by the customers on all channels - mobile device, Facebook, Twitter, local
business website, and other affiliate sites. PowDeal has integrated a robust location
based services (“LBS”) platform. The applications built with PowDeal LBS are location
sensitive. The consumers can find promotions and discounts anytime/anywhere
relevant to their current geographic location.
Online and Mobile
Component
User
Admin & iPhone
Blackberry Management
Support
Interface Android
Addition
Merchant Interface Core PowDeal Engine
Analytics - Facebook Integration LBS Component
Keyword - Twitter Integration Restaurant DB - Yellow Pages
Widget - Deals Component Messaging - SMS, Email
Search, Loyalty Engine
Merchant Core
Component Component
Comprehensive and scalable technology platform

5. Search and keywords are integral to finding the right content. This is integrated with the
Platform, and can be used with virtually no coding. The content that is created or
imported within the Platform can have attributes and keywords, and this enables
personalized search for consumers.
Social media is being widely used to discover content by consumers. The Platform
integrates with Facebook and Twitter, and local business can use this without coding to
promote their content and drive traffic.
Using the Platform content is distributed through a variety of affiliate sites either as RSS
Feeds, XML Feeds, and Widgets. This gives local businesses an opportunity to distribute
their content widely and thereby increasing traffic.
In addition to RSS and XML feeds, the Platform provides a robust API that can be used
by other applications to promote local business deals. It is impossible to anticipate
future applications. In lieu of that the Platform API will provide basic deal, search, and
lbs functionality that developers can use to create new applications. The API can also be
used to build mobile applications. The Platform comes with 4 native mobile apps that
can be used to promote local business deals. The mobile platforms supported include
iPhone, Blackberry, and Android.
The content and deals that are created within the Platform are flexible and support a
wide variety of attributes – start date of the deal, value of the deal, end date of the
deals, number of downloads allowed, support for images, “copy” for content, renew an
old deal, keywords for the deal, neighborhood information for the deal, and a host of
other features. The deals can then be made available on Facebook and Twitter.
6. PowDeal Advantages
Powdeal is the only company with a comprehensive deals and content platform that can
be white labeled. Powdeal will customize the site to suit your needs including adding
deals-of-the-day features for local merchants. The solution offered lends itself to be
operated by local operators. The Platform helps local economy by sustaining local
economy and keeps the money flow within the local economy. Powdeal empowers
consumers, and make them feel good about their community.
With PowDeal, you have a partner that will take care of your technology needs in terms
of content and deals. It also runs your application as a service and will provide 24x7 IT
and Technical support. This will help you can focus on your business and get more
consumer traction!

6. The Platform is horizontally scalable meaning by adding more servers we can support
demand. The local operators can start with a few servers and add more servers as the
demand increases. The Platform is designed to be highly available and fault tolerant.
Powdeal will offer Cloud Platform as a service with both IT and Application support.
Cloud computing has reduced the costs of running a business. The Platform supports
Cloud and appropriate resources deployed based on customers demand and
affordability.
Management of the application is critical so that the consumers and businesses are
supported immediately. And also the applications have to run effectively 24x7 with no
disruption of service. The Platform comes with a management interface where a local
business can be provisioned and supported.