Cashback and coupons provider CashKaro raises $10 mn Series B capital

Gurugram-based Pouring Pounds India, which operates cashback and coupon site CashKaro, has announced raising $10 million in a Series B funding round.

Led by Korea Investment Partners (KIP), the round also witnessed participation from returning investor Kalaari Capital, a statement said. 

The company said it will use the fresh funds to expand its presence, acquire talent and grow its social cashback app EarnKaro. 

Excluding the current investment, it has raised $4.57 million across multiple rounds till date, from investors such as Kalaari Capital, Ratan Tata and London-based angel investors, according to data sourced from VCCEdge. The firm’s last fundraising announcement was in 2016, when it raised an undisclosed amount from Tata.

“We felt that it was the right time to raise money and use it to tactically scale up marketing, open up new brand building avenues, (and for) user acquisition, product development and hiring new talent,” Rohan Bhargava, co-founder of CashKaro, said in a statement. 

“Our new social cashback app EarnKaro was launched about a year ago and seeing its fast growth, we are all very excited to deploy more funds towards its expansion,” he added.

He founded the company in 2013 with Swati Bhargava. CashKaro offers cashback coupons across 1,500 ecommerce sites across verticals including fashion, electronics, food, medicines and groceries. 

The platform works on an affiliate model with ecommerce firms -- it shares with them any commission earned for enabling a sale. The platform offers price comparison and coupons on the platform, apart from enabling social commerce for students, homemakers and resellers through EarnKaro. 

The platform claims to process over 10 lakh monthly transactions and has close to 50 lakh users.

“India is a growing market for us and CashKaro is a great way for us to participate in the Indian ecommerce industry. We believe this is a highly scalable opportunity and both Swati & Rohan have set it on a truly exciting growth trajectory,” Hudson Kyung-sik Ho, managing partner of KIP, said in the statement.

CashKaro’s rivals in the space include Times Internet-backed CouponDunia as well as GrabOn. The couponing and cashback space has hit a plateau after ecommerce platforms launched wallets and incentivised users through them, while cutting down on affiliate commissions.