CrownIt, a local merchant discovery and privileges platform, has successfully raised an undisclosed funding from FreeCharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, Freshdesk founder Girish Mathrubootham and former Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran.
Commenting on the investment, Sameer Grover, Founder & CEO, Crownit, said,
To be recognised and supported by some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs in the country is a major shot in the arm for us. It gives us tremendous confidence to see such belief in our business model and execution approach. We are building India’s largest offline deals company using app-only cost efficient cash-back approach.
The platform is trying to replicate the success of Meituan (China’s largest offline deals company) in India. They plan to continue to scale using product innovation without the need of large capital.
Kunal Shah, Founder, FreeCharge added,
Crownit is clearly turning into the Meituan of India. Kudos to the team at Crownit which has helped in building such a comprehensive and economical platform!
Crownit is India’s leading O2O platform, connecting consumers with local merchants. Launched in July-2014, Crownit offers its users cashback at local merchants, and customers can redeem their crowns (Cashback) by shopping online, book movie tickets, pay their bills and many more. Anand Chandrasekaran , ex-CPO, Snapdeal, said,
Crownit and Sameer have built a product that’s both fun and beneficial for consumers, and has day-to-day usage relevance. They have focused on the right metrics and levers to drive habit-forming behaviour.
The company is a first of its kind hyper local marketing app, was launched for Delhi-NCR and Mumbai audiences. The concept behind the app was to give customers an innovative shopping experience combined with cashback offers. Through the cashback schemes, customers can redeem their crowns by shopping online, book movie tickets, pay their bills and many more.
Girish Mathrubootham, Founder, FreshDesk, said,
Crownit has razor sharp focus on customer satisfaction. A company at such early stage with so much passion on customer delight is something which awed me. And clearly the business model is disruptive and solving a big problem which local merchants face in India.
The retail program helps attract customers for outlet partners by marketing them through the app. Crownit has over 9,00,000 users and has over 15,000 merchants listed on the O2O platform. Crownit targets to have 20 million users and drive $1.2Bn of annual GMV across 25 cities in India by 2019.
The company’s goal is to reach out to potential customers which will help in the customer base growth and in turn increase their footfall. Since its inception, there are 100x more customers. Targeting the offline merchants’ segment, Crownit has emerged as one of the largest players in the direct consumer discounts and deals category in India.
