PaisaWapas raises angel funding from Vividhity Ventures, IIT alumni

Bengaluru-based Nxtify Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs deal discovery and cashback platform PaisaWapas, has secured an undisclosed amount of funding led by Vividhity Ventures, co-founder and chief executive officer Shankar Kotuli told Techcircle.

A group of IIT (BHU), Varanasi alumni and a few executives from Infosys and Dell also participated in the round.

The news was first reported by The Economic Times on Wednesday.

PaisaWapas.com, started in May 2015, is a platform for college students to discover products, courses, success stories and deals, and save money on online transactions. It provides exclusive deals and cashback to students when they shop on its over 300 partner stores.

The startup is also closely associated with several campuses through a network of paid campus ambassadors.

"We work very closely with college students and help them learn about marketing, business development and programming. We are currently working with a team of 50 student partners in around 30 colleges from different parts of India," said Kotuli. Some top colleges where PaisaWapas has seen healthy adoption are IIT Roorkee, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, Manipal University, NIT Jalandhar and NIT Jamshedpur.

"In addition to providing cashbacks and deals specific to students, we also cover student success stories in different fields like academics, music, sports and social work, even YouTubers," Kotuli added.

Kotuli graduated from IIT Roorkee in 2011 and worked for education firm Vedantu before launching PaisaWapas. The other co-founder, Ashish Kumar, is an IIT Kharagpur graduate from the 2016 batch.

"The funds will be used for increasing our team strength, expanding our college network to over 200 colleges, marketing and partnering with various players working in the education space," said Kotuli.

The startup claims that it gets around 2 lakh monthly visits on its website and has around 70,000 registered users. PaisaWapas competes with the likes of GoPaisa and CashKaro. Last November, CashKaro, an online platform for cashback and digital coupons, had raised $4 million (Rs 25 crore) in Series A funding led by venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.