Crown It, a Gurgaon-based local business marketplace has just raised a $5.5 million in Series A round of funding from Accel Partners Helion Venture Partners.
With this freshly infused capital, the company is now planning to expand its services to more cities. It will also upgrade its technologies and will add more categories for retails. It currently operates in Delhi-NCR region only and plans to expand to over 25 cities in India and grow to 20 million users within three years.
The company was founded in July 2014 by Sameer Grover. It lets users find local merchants and drives business to those merchants. After shopping from those merchants, the user can collect cash-back points that can be redeemed for movie tickets, online shopping or talk-time.
It charges merchants a marketing fee for the business it has provided. A part of the fee is shared with users as cash-back points. It provides service in categories like florists, gift shops, local kirana stores, etc.
Sameer Grover, Founder and CEO of the company said,
We charge merchants on the business we actually give them. We help users discover and experience places which are relevant to them and around them, besides getting rewarded for visiting those merchants. We give merchants a measurable RoI marketing channel and charge them on the business we actually give them.
The company is also providing instant cash-back to users’ account. Its working is a bit different. Instead of going through the hassle of gift cards or loyalty cards, the users just have to open the app and upload the photo of bill. After that, the cash-back will be credited to the user’s account instantly.
Crown It is an app-only marketplace. Its mobile application is available on Google Play Store as well as on Apple’s App Store. It claims to provide exclusive cash-back offers at over 2000 restaurants and outlets.
Other app-based local marketplace companies in this market includes Grofers, which recently raised $10 million in funding from Sequoia and Tiger Global and Niffler, which rasied $1 million from SAIF Partners. Grofers though deals more in delivery systems.
