EP49: 5M users, ₹ 150 crore in Cashbacks and Affiliate marketing {Rohan of CashKaro}

Stars & Startups

EP49: {Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder of CashKaro}

I speak with Rohan on building a business offering cashbacks that works with over 1500+ e-commerce websites. Famously, Cashkaro is a Ratan Tata backed startup. Rohan shares why he & his wife Swati gave up lucrative jobs in finance, moved back to India from London in the early days of starting up, how affiliate businesses operate and a lot more on this extremely intriguing conversation!
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As a category leader, CashKaro has made cashbacks an attractive way to save money for online shoppers, while offering marketers a high ROI acquisition and retention channel. Other Cashkaro properties includes Pouring Pounds, one of largest player in the UK, and Earnkaro which enables its users become entrepreneurs to make some additional cash by sharing deals.

CashKaro is India’s largest Cashback & Coupons site. The only venture capital backed Cashback site, funded by Kalaari Capital and Mr. Ratan Tata. More recently received $10 M in a Series B funding round led by Korea Investment Partners (KIP).

Hope you enjoy another S&S special. Have a listen, share feedback and share the episode!

Stay Safe!

- V ( @varunvummidi )

Timeline:

1:00 - Introduction to Cashkaro & starting up

09:07 - The Cashkaro journey

12:45 - Convincing the wife to join the journey

15:40 - Starting off as a B2B service

19:21 - Transitioning Cashkaro to the Indian audience in 2014

23:15 - Raising money for Cashkaro & moving to India from London

26:24 - How has affiliate marketing budgets have changed since 2015

31:15 - Choosing Affiliate marketing vs Performance marketing

34:43 - Does affiliate marketing cannibalise an existing user?

36:00 - Can you build a moat in with cashbacks

41:40 - Launching Earnkaro - enticing entrepreneurs

47:03 - Biggest challenge of building CK

49:20 - What’s the future for deals platforms?