Question 1

What does "verified at the counter" actually mean?

Accepted Answer

When you claim a deal, the app gives you a unique code and a QR code of your own. Nothing is final until the shopkeeper scans that QR or types the code in their own app — that is the moment your redemption is confirmed. It is also the moment that unlocks your right to leave a review, or open a dispute if something went wrong.

Question 2

How near is "nearby"?

Accepted Answer

Roughly a 3–5 km walkable radius by default, computed as real geographic distance rather than an area label. You can widen it yourself at any time — anywhere from 1 km up to 25 km — so a quiet neighbourhood never leaves you looking at an empty screen.

Question 3

Do I have to share my location?

Accepted Answer

No. GPS is the primary signal because it gives the best results, but you can set your area manually and everything continues to work.

Question 4

What if a shop refuses to honour a deal?

Accepted Answer

Open a dispute on the completed redemption. It creates a message thread with the merchant and a refund path, and it feeds the merchant's public trust score. Repeated problems trigger the platform's fraud controls, which can suspend an account and hold its payouts.

Question 5

Is Nearmedeals a delivery app?

Accepted Answer

No, and deliberately so. Delivery economics require a fee and a commission that a small neighbourhood shop cannot bear, and they take the customer away from the shop. Nearmedeals is built for the walk-in — you go to the shop, and the shop knows you came because of the offer.

Question 6

What does it cost to list?

Accepted Answer

Nothing to start. Creating a merchant profile auto-assigns a Free plan — no card, no sales call. As your shop grows, you move up to a paid plan for more listing capacity, testing, and reach. There is no commission on redemptions, ever.

Question 7

How does billing work?

Accepted Answer

You are billed for the plan you are on, monthly — never per deal, per click, or per redemption. Upgrade or downgrade any time, and the change takes effect from your next billing cycle. What a customer does or doesn't redeem never changes what you pay that month.

Question 8

Can my staff verify redemptions?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Merchant accounts support owner, manager and staff access, each limited to specific stores. A counter employee can scan and verify without ever seeing payouts, billing, or data from the rest of the business.

Question 9

Can I connect this to my own point-of-sale or CRM system?

Accepted Answer

Yes, two ways. You can set up your own webhooks yourself, right from the app, in a few taps. If you need deeper API access instead, our team reviews and issues that connection - a security step for a still-growing merchant base, not a sales gate. Either way, your deals, redemptions and payouts stay in sync, and you stay in control - you can switch it off yourself, any time.

Question 10

I have several outlets. Is that supported?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Import stores, deals and services from a spreadsheet, assign one deal to several outlets at once, give each outlet its own staff accounts, and watch stock flip to sold out automatically as it is exhausted.

Question 11

Why would I post a deal I found?

Accepted Answer

Because being the person who knows the neighbourhood is worth something. Posts earn you position on the Top Contributors leaderboard, and when a post proves itself an operator can convert it into an official merchant deal — you are notified, and the post keeps a badge saying it became one.

Question 12

How do you stop people posting nonsense?

Accepted Answer

Posts pass through moderation before reaching the feed, content is sanitised before it is rendered, and anything reaching three reports is auto-flagged into an operator queue. Conversion into an official deal is an operator action, never automatic.

Question 13

Is Nearmedeals live yet?

Accepted Answer

Everything is built and working — every part of the app, for shoppers, businesses and our own team. What is left is practical groundwork: getting real payments switched on, finishing our security checks, and making sure our first neighbourhoods are genuinely ready. We would rather say that plainly than pretend we are further along than we are.

Question 14

Where will you launch first?

Accepted Answer

A Tier-2 city, not a metro, and three neighbouring pincodes rather than a whole city. We score every candidate city against the same weighted criteria — things like how many shops are nearby, how ready the area is for digital payments, and how much local competition already exists — and we only launch somewhere that clears our bar.

Question 15

Do you use AI to decide what I see?

Accepted Answer

No. When you type what you need, we match you to results using a clear, transparent set of rules — not an unpredictable algorithm. That means it is fast, and our team can always explain exactly why you saw what you saw. We would only ever consider something smarter if it genuinely served you better than that.

Question 16

What happens to my data?

Accepted Answer

We ask for your consent and only keep your information for as long as we genuinely need it — never indefinitely by default. Every action our own team takes is recorded, so there is always accountability. Being able to download your data or delete your account yourself is already built into the app, not an afterthought.

Question 17

Can I advertise on Nearmedeals today?

Accepted Answer

Not yet, deliberately. Sponsored placement launches only once the feed has earned enough trust to carry it — that is a bar we set for ourselves, not a fixed date. Register interest and we will come to you when the inventory is real.

Question 18

What would advertising actually measure?

Accepted Answer

A merchant confirming someone actually walked in — not an impression or a click nobody can verify. Roughly ₹43,000 crore of Indian MSME digital advertising flows every year to platforms that cannot prove that; this is built to.

Question 19

Do I need to already be a registered merchant to advertise?

Accepted Answer

No. Advertisers who are not already registered merchants go through an identity check instead, and every banner is reviewed before it appears — the same moderation gate a merchant banner goes through.

Question 20

Is there a data room or funding deck?

Accepted Answer

Not published on this site — that happens in a direct conversation, not a download. The contact form has an "I want to invest" option that reaches a person, not a queue, the same as every other route in.

Question 21

Why a Tier-2 city and not a metro first?

Accepted Answer

Metros produce faster vanity numbers and worse economics — higher acquisition cost, entrenched competition, and merchants already tired of being pitched to. Every candidate city is scored against the same weighted criteria before we touch it — the exact model is something we walk through directly with anyone evaluating this seriously, not something we publish.

Question 22

What's the biggest execution risk this depends on?

Accepted Answer

That supply density has to precede demand spend, always. A hyperlocal marketplace fails at the first empty feed — so no pincode gets consumer acquisition spend until it already holds a genuinely useful spread of live, valid, walkable offers across several categories, not a token handful. That rule applies identically to the first pincode and the five hundredth, and it is the one discipline the whole model depends on.

Straight answers,including the awkward ones.

If you are shopping

If you run a shop

If you spot deals

If you want to advertise

If you are evaluating this as an investment

About the platform

Something we have not answered?