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Buying on TimesDeal.com now free of cost
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 TimesDeal experienced over 100,000 transactions, a dramatic increase in deal consumption before the code was withdrawn.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.
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Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
