CashKaro.com, an online portal which claims to be the largest of its kind in the discount coupons and cashback offers, has raised around Rs. 25 crore in its Series A round of funding from Kalaari Capital. The funding will be utilized by the company to expand its operations internationally and to upgrade its technology.
Along with expanding its operations to international markets such as Singapore and other South East Asian countries, the company is also planning to launch an Android and iOS app in 2016.
The company was founded in August 2013 by husband and wife – Swati Bhargava and Rohan Bhargava. It works on an affiliate model with e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Snapdeal and Shopclues where they receive a certain percentage of commission if they drive sales.
Commenting on the raised funding, the co-founders of the company, said,
In Kalaari Capital, we have found the right advisors to scale up our business and build a robust ecosystem. Having been early investors in many successful e-commerce businesses like Snapdeal, Myntra, and Zivame, they have a wealth of experience in this sector which will be extremely valuable.
With the infusion of these funds, we plan to take Cashkaro to new markets and pursue an aggressive customer acquisition strategy while focusing on extending our mobile initiatives, including launching the CashKaro mobile app.
Rajesh Raju, MD at Kalaari Capital, said,
The e-commerce market in India will grow upwards of $100 billion over the next decade. There are billion dollar cashback businesses globally and we believe CashKaro can achieve similar scale in Asia.
It offers discounts for more than 1,000 partner websites and has recently forayed into product search and discovery segments. Since its launch two years ago, the company claims to have credited over Rs. 20 crore as cashback to users on its website. In 2013, CashKaro had raised $750,000 from a group of UK-based investors.
Swati claims that CashKaro.com has driven over Rs. 150 crores of sales to its partners and the business is growing at 30-40% per month. She also claims that at present, more than 1.5 million online shoppers earn cashback every 15 seconds via CashKaro.
As India’s e-commerce market is estimated to close over $12 billion in sales this year, there is a big opportunity for coupons and discount website. Also, the business plan is quite simple and requires little capital to get started. Thus, there are many such websites in India but very few of them have raised funding from investors.
