{"id":9807,"date":"2010-08-18T10:54:54","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T01:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/?p=9807"},"modified":"2010-08-18T10:54:54","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T01:54:54","slug":"groupon-to-buy-majority-stake-in-japanese-clone-qpod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/groupon-to-buy-majority-stake-in-japanese-clone-qpod\/","title":{"rendered":"Groupon To Buy Majority Stake In Japanese Clone Qpod"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/qpod.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-9808\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/08\/qpod.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"140\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nEveryone in Japan&#8217;s startup scene has been guessing which of the about 20 <a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/22\/recruits-new-coupon-site-troubled-raises-suspicious-on-groupon-model\/\">local<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/09\/japans-first-daily-deal-service-piku-raises-usd7-3m-vc-round\/\">clones<\/a> Chicago-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groupon.com\">Groupon<\/a> would buy for about 3 months now. And today it came to light that the Americans have chosen to go for <a href=\"http:\/\/qpod.jp\/\">Qpod<\/a>, which offered its first daily deal on May 28.<br \/>\nAnd they are not losing time with the rebranding of the service either. As you can see above, the site already received a new logo.<br \/>\nAccording to The Nikkei (Japan&#8217;s biggest business newspaper), Groupon will acquire a majority stake in the Tokyo-based startup for $10 million. Qpod is reportedly ready to issue shares to Groupon via a private placement by the end of this week.<br \/>\nQpod currently has around 60 employees and around 20 competitors on the Japanese market. The company has been set up by direct sales company <a href=\"http:\/\/pakureserve.co.jp\/index.html\">PakuReserve<\/a> and VC firm <a href=\"http:\/\/www.infinityventures.com\/eng\/\">Infinity Venture Partners<\/a>.<br \/>\nMy personal guess is that in Asia, Groupon will buy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ticketmonster.co.kr\/html\/\">TicketMonster<\/a>, a <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2010\/06\/01\/geeksonaplane-in-korea-12-demos-from-local-startups\/\">Korean clone<\/a> that currently generates <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/serkantoto\/status\/21284307573\">$93,000<\/a> daily, next. In China, Groupon has <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2010\/06\/27\/making-sense-of-chinas-100-groupon-clones\/\">hundreds of clones<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone in Japan&#8217;s startup scene has been guessing which of the about 20 local clones Chicago-based Groupon would buy for about 3 months now. And today it came to light that the Americans have chosen to go for Qpod, which offered its first daily deal on May 28. And they are not losing time with&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/groupon-to-buy-majority-stake-in-japanese-clone-qpod\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Groupon To Buy Majority Stake In Japanese Clone Qpod<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[1453,1673,2607,2803,3009],"class_list":["post-9807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","tag-groupon","tag-infinity-venture-partners","tag-nikkei","tag-pakureserve","tag-qpod","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}