There has been talk of the new Groupon copy cats in the net with USA, Europe and even South Africa leading in the cloning business. Our own boys have gone down to cloning and they are now buying scripts which are available online, branding them with colours they like and then installing them.
I doubted if either rupu or Zetu were serious work done by local developers because since 2000, I have been in this market. I can look at an online work and tell you that it smells Kenyan. But there are ones which when you look, you see that it doesn’t look Kenyan. Not that my brothers are not good designers, NO. We just have peculiar habits in our works.
We went to similar schools and studied ICT. Few of us who went to US and Europe are still stuck in the the respective countries because they believe that Kenya is not mature technologically or they simply dont think they can make more cheddar working in Kenya.
I checked on scripts online and I strongly believe that Zetu and Rupu are off the shelf clone scripts bought from Contussupport which has very many great designs of Groupon clones. Not much work was done to hide the similarities and with USD 499, you get your clone designed and installed for you.
I dont think that it is wrong for them to clone the very successful Groupon which even rejected a $6 Billion offer from Google, I just think that when we are being introduced to the product, we need to know if it is original work or just an idea they have invested small amount of money on.
I think that of the two, Zetu looked to have invested more time to change the whole look unlike Rupu which didn’t do much to personalise the product. I though like the idea of getting daily or periodic deals very much. I would like to get a deal on those Sony products at Anisuma or some geeky stuff at Micro-City.
PS Dr Ndemo recently has been talking much of entrepreneurship as opposed to innovation. I think that Rupu and Zetu are focusing much more on the business of making money from the least possible investment as opposed to re-inventing the wheel.