‘CashKaro’ plans to hit south-east Asian shore soon

Eat India, Splurge India and CashKaro India

From an investment banker to an entrepreneur, Swati Bhargava, (34) owns CashKaro, a Gurgaon-based startup. She takes pride in the fact that Ratan Tata invested into it. Bhargava is herself a BSC honours in Mathematics and Economics from London School of Economics, UK. She considers ‘being persistent’ as the key to her entrepreneurial success. Currently, CashKaro has a broad base of over 1500+ shopping sites as partners and 1.5 million registered users on the site.

In a chat with Baishali Mukherjee, Bhargava speaks about her journey:

The deal for the deal savvy Indian online shopper

My husband Rohan and I came across ‘cashback’ concept while booking our flight to Maldives. We were on our way to honeymoon. Getting Rs 25,000 in cashback via a UK cashback site we loved it totally. Realising that there was a gap in the market. we ventured into the world of entrepreneurship in 2011 with Pouring Pounds. It is a B2B cashback and rewards website in the UK before launching CashKaro.com in India.

The coupon sites and the deal models were doing well in 2013. And we were sure the cashback model could bring value for the deal savvy Indian online shopper. This led us to start CashKaro.com in India in mid-2013. We were also inspired by the success of Ebates.com, the largest US cashback site and Fanli.com in China.

Also, Indian e-commerce was growing really fast. We thought adopting the affiliate route was an effective and less capital-intensive way of partaking in this growth. Indian e-commerce is projected to reach $100 billion by 2020. Affiliate marketing would account for about 20 per cent of these sales, making the market size for CashKaro about $20 billion.

CashKaro is an amalgamation of two words cash- symbolizing ‘Real Cash’ and Karo- a Hindi language formulation for ‘Making Use of Opportunities.’ We liked how the name encourages people to ‘Go Encash it’ and resonates with earning money while shopping online.       

The building exercise

Rohan and I worked together to build this company and promote it. I am more involved in online marketing activities such as email marketing, social media. This also includes customer relations, business development and investor relations, among others. On the other hand, Rohan spearheads strategic product development and innovation while leading departments like SEM, SEO etc. He also works closely with the Chief Technology Officer to strategize and execute our technology development.

Swati Bhargava

Two months after we launched CashKaro, there was a lot of traction in the business. We figured that it was a good time to raise money and scale it up. Discussing it with a few investors in the UK who loved the idea of implementing a tried, tested and proven model of cashback in a country like India that loves to save.

At E100 event, which is an angel investing arm of London Business School, we met some investors. We pitched there for funding for CashKaro.com. We were overwhelmed by the confidence they invested in us. Our presence and success in the UK market for two years as Pouring Pounds did have a positive impact in getting funded in a record time.

We were looking to raise USD 250K and by the end of the evening. I had about 20 responses from people who were interested. After having back-to-back meetings in 48 hours, we closed a round of USD 750,000 from a group of UK-based angel investors working for companies such as PayPal, Investec, Gumtree.com, and so on. To close funding in only 48 hours was totally an incredible and an unforgettable experience.

Success milestones

Like the journey of any startup, a lot of small events are turning points in their own right! From raising funds to partnering with ecommerce giants such as Amazon.in, Alibaba Wholesale to launching price comparison on our site, we’ve enjoyed all these milestones at CashKaro.com. However, one of our major milestones was when Ratan Tata decided to invest in CashKaro.com. Also, recently, we’ve pioneered the concept of card linked offers in India which again is a successful achievement for us.

Recently, CashKaro partnered with YES Bank to become providers of ‘Card Linked Offers’ in India. This is a first for India and this will greatly help us expand our suite of products to include savings on offline retail.

Business growth

Our head office is in Gurgaon, Haryana. We have a branch office in Chennai which takes care of all the tech-related work for the company. We are a team of 80 people that includes 10 senior managers. They are experts in different verticals including technology, digital marketing, operations, customer relations, design & so on.  

In four years, we’ve got 1.5 million registered users and process almost 10,000 transactions daily. We have already paid over Rs 40 crore of real cash as cashback to our members and seen 500 per cent growth over last year.

Challenges

Hiring has been and remains the biggest challenge. For any business, and especially a startup to succeed it is important to find a way to motivate everyone in the team. It is important to induce the same passion in everyone that the Founders have. Similar to other startup ventures, infrastructure issues, talent availability and retention were major hurdles. We took risks and worked with third parties and developers who over-promised and under-delivered but it all worked out in the end!

When we started out with CashKaro.com, we had to ensure that our concept was understood by potential partnering e-retailers first. And only then we could speak to customers. Building partnerships with e-retailers took us roughly six months before we started out. We also had to put in processes that ensured retailers paid commission on time and play fair, so that our customers get paid on time. As we drive a lot of sales & affiliate marketing is growing, these challenges are lessened and the sector is gaining clout!

Future plans

Over the next few years, our efforts will be towards cementing our market leading position in India in the cashback and coupons space. Also, we will be looking at expanding our presence in South-East Asian countries. In the near future, we will primarily be working on extensions and derivatives of our mobile initiatives including launching the CashKaro mobile app. We’ll continue to work in parallel on our recently launched price and product comparison feature which has made CashKaro the smartest and easiest savings destination.

Have you ever used any cashback digital player to avail of discounts and offers? Do share your experience.