Gurgaon-based cashback and coupon portal Cashkaro has raised Rs 25 crore (around USD 3.8 million) in Series A funding from from venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.
Founded in August 2013 by husband-and-wife duo Rohan and Swati Bhargava, CashKaro works on an affiliate model with over 500+ e-commerce sites including Myntra, Snapdeal, Flipkart, Yatra, Makemytrip.
The startup will use the freshly raised funds for international expansion in markets such as Indonesia, Singapore and other nations in southeast Asia and also plans to launch an Android and iOS app in 2016. CashKaro claims to have credited over Rs 20 crore as cashback to users on its site in the last two years.
CashKaro's founders are inspired by the success of Ebates in the U.S. and Fanli.com in China. Both are Rakuten-backed companies - the Japanese Internet giant which bought Ebates for $1 billion last year and invested in Fanli seven months ago. Quidco.com, largest UK cashback site is rumoured to be worth over $500 million.
In 2013, CashKaro had raised $750,000 from a group of UK-based investors working as senior executives in companies such as Paypal, Investec and Goldman Sachs.
CashKaro.com has driven over Rs. 150 crores of sales to its partners and the business is growing at 30-40% per month and at present over 1.5 million online shoppers earn cashback every 15 seconds via CashKaro, claims Swati Bhargava, CEO at CashKaro.
"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," said Rajesh Raju, MD at Kalaari Capital. India's ecommerce market is estimated to close over $12 billion in sales this year.
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