Canadian startup powers latest Groupon feature
A quick piece of Groupon news with a Canadian spin: the group-buying powerhouse purchased a Vancouver startup called OpenCal in Sept. 2011. Last month, Groupon began a pilot test of “Groupon Scheduler”, which the Canadian website TechVibes says is directly based on OpenCal’s software.
Groupon Scheduler is an online appointment service that provides merchants with an easy way to manage their schedules and accept bookings from consumers.
OpenCal launched at the end of 2010, so the acquisition was quick, although probably not overly lucrative. OpenCal was co-founded by Shiva and Simon Vallee, who also helped to found Sitemasher, another Canadian web service, which was acquired by Salesforce.
