Cashify, a re-commerce marketplace that sells and buys used smartphones and other electronic gadgets, has raised $15 million in a new financing round. New York-based private equity firm Olympus Capital made the investment through Asia Environmental Partners (AEP)- its clean energy and sustainability platform.
The New Delhi-headquartered startup announced that it would use the fresh funds for multiple purposes, including the growth of its newly launched enterprise SaaS (software as a service) business, expansion of its offline retail segment besides hiring, and investments into branding.
Mandeep Manocha, founder and CEO of Cashify, said, “We are looking forward to accelerating our investment in the electronics reuse and recycling sector and thereby enabling OEMs and consumers to materially reduce their carbon footprint.” One can sell used mobile phones on Cashify for instant cash, and it offers free –home pickups. The market the second-hand phone is a lucrative and large one in the country and is expected to grow by 27% in the coming years, with the market size expected to reach $10 billion by 2022.
Manocha said that it was the pandemic of 2020 that gave an impetus to the demand for second-hand smartphones and laptops, spurred by the sudden popularity of the new normal of online learning and working from home. “We plan to grow our offline stores from 60 to 150 over the next one and one-and-a-half years, as people like to touch and feel the phone before buying,” he said.
2020 was a profitable year for the start-up, growing at a rate of 7-8% month-on-month; it made 80,000 devices in September 2020 and currently sells more than 1, 25, 000 devices per month. Cashify claims to have over 2 million customers and is a buyback partner for brands like Apple, Vivo, Samsung, Xiaomi, and Oppo. Manocha said that Cashify was targeting to become profitable over the next six months.
“We are excited to be able to participate in the reuse of the electronic device and recycle sector through investing in Cashify, the clear market leader. The management team at Cashify has an excellent track record in building a strong consumer-facing franchise and building relationships with OEMs, e-commerce companies, and electronic product retailers to be present across all touchpoints for the consumer. We look forward to partnering with the company in the next leg of its growth,” said Pankaj Ghai, Managing Director, AEP.
Cashify’s plans also feature having a distribution network with other retail outlets for phone devices in Tier II and beyond markets. “The refurbished gadget segment is still a very touch-and-feel market where there is still a trust deficit. We will build on our O2O footprint over the next four to six quarters,” Manocha said.
