Indians, being adhered to the archetypal phenomenon of saving, discounts, bargaining, rebate, coupons and cashbacks is not a novel fact for this era. Synchronously these day-to-day transactions are metamorphosing in digital format where 41 million online transactions occur on a daily basis, aggregating to 368.92 million on annual parameter; in accordance with “The Nilson Report of 2020”. These enlarging transactions get enhanced and increased by the benefaction of cashbacks and discounts with direct benefit transfer to the consumer on a real cash basis. Swati and Rohan Bhargava, couple turned entrepreneurs perceived the indispensable potential of an online cashback and discount startup for the first time in India. Despite witnessing numerous vicissitudes they successfully established Cashkaro.com.
Entrepreneurial journey directly gets influenced by personal journey. Similarly it was not a tranquil process for a woman to turn towards Entrepreneurship. Swati Bhargava, the founder of India’s most prominent coupon website was born in the small town of Ambala, Haryana. No one is oblivious regarding orthodox and conservative society of Haryana. Nonetheless, Swati was a flag bearer for all those girls victimized directly or indirectly with customary norms prevailing in the society. Being an awe-inspiring prodigy, Swati, at mere age of 16 got selected for breathtaking erudition in “Singapore Airline Scholarship” as a girl belonging to hillbilly area secured 85% in 12th standard. While appearing for an interview concerning scholarship her all-round attributes emerged as a wow factor where she ended up impressing the judges and got selected.
Swati always dreamt for bigger and her hard work was concomitant with every nightmare related to success. Swati proficiently achieved overarching success in academics portfolio whereby she got scholarship both from London School of Economics (LSE), UK and University of Oxford, UK. Scholarship from LSE was more advantageous, which served as a reason for her to opt for LSE. In 2005, she graduated in the subject of economics and mathematics. During her juvenescence period, Indian Foreign Service (IFS) was the field she dreamt for. Steadily while pursuing graduation, an everlasting interest for marketing and entrepreneurship was born in her heart.
At the very beginning she compromised her love for marketing and the credit for the same goes to the lucrative job in the banking realm offered by Goldman Sachs. Here she worked deliberately in investment banking and the executive office division for 5 years. Her decision to switch for Goldman Sachs cannot be granted negative remarks as she witnessed and learnt several tactics and skills quintessential for entrepreneurs. Rohan Bhargava co-founder and better half of Swati was also an alumni of LSE. Rohan gathered adroitness, expertise and most vital component “experience” while working in reputed companies like Washington Square and Aladdin Capital.
Dyad of two were cognizant of factuality of rebate business and its eclectic benefits. Rebate business and “affiliate marketing” is multi-billion business in countries like USA, China and UK. However, the conceptualization of this idea struck in head when both received Rs 25,000 as cashback after booking flight tickets from a putative airline. On the same front a venture termed “Pouring Pounds” in the UK was started by the pair in 2011. Pouring Pounds is right to be designated as the parent organisation of Cashkaro.com or Cashkaro.com is subsidiary of Pouring Pounds. The venture engrossed all attention to coupons and cashbacks. Pouring Pounds achieved gigantic success in terms of colossal turnover in the UK.
After the subsequent success of Pouring Pounds, the duo decided to extend and contemplate the vast idea for India. In April 2013, the company initiated the task of conceptualization with a small team in India and co-founders staying in the UK. The twain soon realised funding is a prerequisite for operationalization of the business. Collection of fund by crowd sourcing was nearly unattainable because affiliate marketing and cashback providing mechanism were in nascent stage in India. But it failed to startle Swati, eventually she wrote emails and requested letters to great extent. By the day, 20 responded and the sum raised to US $250,000. Great communication skills and the attribute of convincing power helped her to gain US $750,000 in a time bound period of 48 hours. Within two years of its launch Cashkaro became India’s largest cash reward business start up where their working capital reached up to US $5 million from Kalaani Capital, former chairman of Tata Group, Ratan Tata and Angel investors from UK. Swati recalls meeting with Mr. Ratan Tata as the most exhilarating instance of her journey. Couple received a humble and jovial response from him.
Ratan Tata’s Response— “ You are giving free cash to a country that loves saving, who wouldn’t love this idea ”
Ratan Tata went on to invest in his personal capacity in Cashkaro. It’s not only Ratan Tata who envisaged great proliferation and perpetual success in the e-commerce sector in near future. Studies, economists, businessmen, entrepreneurs and philanthropists project that worldwide retail e-commerce will reach to a new high by 2021. An anticipated rate is 256% (growth rate) from US $1.3 trillion in 2014 to US $4.9 trillion in 2021. The founder acknowledges both Kalaani Capital and Ratan Tata for helping, investing and reinforcing Cashkaro’s position as strongest player in the cashback industry.
Funds were released successfully both from inner and overseas sources. Another predicament lying in every possible area was to persuade e-commerce platforms to switch for cashbacks and coupons. Swati’s aphorism never saw it as a stumbling block. With diligence, zeal and indefatigable will she successfully convinced over 500 e-commerce sites to collaborate collectively with Cashkaro.com. Amazon, Myntra, Flipkart, Jabong and so on are readily fraternized with Cashkaro.com in the context of business.
Business mechanism of Cashkaro is unambiguous and free from complexities. In simple terminologies Cashkaro allows every individual to utilise its application to use rebates, coupons, cashbacks to shop more efficiently. In recent years affiliate marketing was a state-of-the-art concept for Indians. On the other hand, Indians possess fondness for deals and bargains which corroborates and confirms potential that can reach up to maximum in the future. Carrying the same stance both aimed for a straightforward website that would certainly help users to save money on online shopping. Hardest aspect in the portfolio of entrepreneurs while establishing a startup is ‘risk bearing factor’. In the ambience of India it was heart to educate and make aware about eternal benefits of affiliate marketing. Creative, innovative and ingenious ways viz. embellishing social media circulation, branding campaigns and extensive digital marketing were used efficiently to increase its reach.
Majorly Cashkaro is a B2C business—Business-to-Consumer, where company promotes and sells its product to individual people or at consumer level. Cashkaro earns money in form of commission for every sale that site drives to any retail partner by means of encouraging its product and a large part of this commission is shared with involved members. At ab initio stage of the venture, discount offering was limited to retail e-commerce platforms and e-banking applications like Flipkart, Amazon, MakeMyTrip and ICICI, HDFC respectively. With the expanding ambiance of e-commerce inclusive of different services, for example Uber and Ola for transportation, Cricbuzz and Cricket Exchange for sports related analysis, Swiggy and Zomato for food delivery, Snapdeal and Ajio.com for merchandise shopping, Survey Auto and Spacemaker in the field of artificial intelligence, Unacademy and Vedantu in education sector and so on has provided numerous opportunities to Cashkaro for developing and modifying new cashback incentives. Cashkaro is developing new categories and formats for the growing core business of selling coupons and discount vouchers with interesting and fascinating changes. The startup also earns commission from OTT— Over The Top platforms and gaming partners.
Serving the success of Pouring Pounds which currently embraces over 1 million users across the UK proves to be one of the trusted saving destinations. Sterling reputation of Pouring Pounds offer choices over 2500 UK’s largest brands like Hotels.com, Booking.com, HQ hair, Debenhams, Marks and Spencer, Mothercare, Viking, Tesco, The Hut and many more. Swati and Rohan increased the cashback community across Singapore also with the name of Zobucks.com. Currently Zobucks.com is Singapore’s leading cashback and promo codes website from more than 250 leading online sites like Lazada, Zalora, Taobao and Agoda.com. However, the success of Cashkaro compared to the both is gargantuan. With over 5 million registered users, the startup serves as one stop destination for saving across more than 1500 diverse e-Commerce sites. Cashkaro is the only site that offers three benefits all together i.e. offering cashback on every purchase, price comparison across top retailers and special coupon codes. Best and worth mentioning feature of Cashkaro is regular upgradation on cashback deals and coupons to ensure customers get the best offer on whatever they buy via Cashkaro.com.
Undoubtedly Cashkaro is becoming and heading towards multilateral leadership in the cashback industry. The Business works in accordance with non-constant aura of e-commerce sites which helped it to increase its revenue by 76% from Rs 22.4 crores in FY 18 to Rs 38.6 crores in March 2019. Cashkaro is currently headquartered at Gurugram, Haryana. It is overwhelmingly receiving great appreciation and members across India. Now it can also be downloaded as application software or App format across various operating systems available in the market. In the present scenario Cashkaro has a membership base of more than 6 million members and expects to flourish continuously beyond the boundaries.
By Simran Bhati, Indore
