You know what is every girl's dream?
Well there are two:
1. To never get fat.
2. To shop and earn money. YES. You heard
it right. SHOP AND EARN!
Meet Swati
Bhargava, the small town girl from Ambala, who, along with her husband Rohan Bhargava, has made your dream
come true.
“I did my schooling till Grade 10 in Ambala
and for my high school got a scholarship to study in Singapore. After my schooling
I bagged a scholarship to London School
of Economics (LSE) and studied Economics and Mathematics there. While I
come from a small town, I have managed to learn a fair bit from the 3 different
countries I have studied in. It has given me experience like no other. While
studying in LSE, I did an internship with Goldman Sachs and soon after
graduating I joined the firm in a full time position. I worked at Goldman Sachs
for 5 years while my husband Rohan, who too attended LSE
worked with a hedge-fund firm,” shares Swati.
“As students in LSE, we both aspired to be
entrepreneurs, and after working for 5 years, I decided the time to incept my
own business had come. Rohan and I started exploring the world of e-commerce
and zeroed down on venturing into the domain of cashback and couponing. That is
when we started our business in UK, by launching a website called Pouring Pounds. Later we went on to
launch 6 other partner sites, again based in the UK, post which we decided to
delve into the Indian market and that is when Cashkaro.com was born,” she adds.
On delving into details, we got to know
that Cashkaro.com was actually Rohan’s idea. “When Groupon made it big in the
UK, Rohan and I started digging deeper into the field and found e-commerce to
have a lot of potential. We thought why not extend the model. Groupon works on to include deals not
only on luxurious items and massage therapies, but also on daily purchases like
clothes, mobile recharge, mobiles, home décor, electronics, etc. With this idea
in the backdrop, we explored further and found the Cashback model to be very
lucrative indeed,” she elaborates.
Cashkaro started in mid-April 2013 and
since then they have seen a good growth. Cashkaro
is now India’s No. 1 Cashback & Coupons website and is witnessing a decent
amount of people joining every day. Initially their team was working out of
Gurgaon and Chennai in India, while Rohan and Swati were managing UK operations
from London itself. After seeing Cashkaro doing well over the few months, they
decided to shift their base to India and work together with the team.
“Coming to work every day is very exciting
now and us being here motivates the team more and we all learn from each other.
While our temporary move from London has marked many changes, I feel the move
is something that is going to translate into something big. I feel it’s been a
journey worth undertaking,” she says.
“While the best part about my job is the
fact that I enjoy doing what I do, what feels even better is when Cashkaro receives appreciation from its
members. That’s when you know that your venture is helpful for the general
public and there could be no better feeling than that for an entrepreneur like
me. While my role is quite wide, I focus a lot on getting PR for Cashkaro and establishing
the brand. I also look over Social Media channels like Facebook, Twitter,
Google+ and the like. Within 7 months of inception, Cashkaro has garnered over
4.8 lakh Facebook fans and is attracting almost 40% of its traffic from this
channel,” Swati shares.
On asking about her future plans, she adds,
“Speaking of Cashkaro, there are a lot of things that I believe we could
experiment with, like we are yet to venture into the offline student world
marketing. Having received lots of proposals and propositions for the same, we
have narrowed down on a few opportunities, and this year, are planning to roll
out some of our offline promotion plans. As for me, all I can say is that I
wish my day had more than 24 hours. The day gets over so fast one doesn’t even
realize it. As for my venture, I see great potential in Cashkaro. Seeing Quidco making great success in the UK, we
plan to make Cashkaro, the Quidco of India.
Given that, the Indian population at large is always on the lookout for
discounts and great deals of sorts, and I think a website like Cashkaro is the next
best thing for avid shoppers.”
Ask her about her the high point in her
journey up till now, and she immediately responds, “It has to be when we got
funding worth $750,000 from UK based angel investors. The funding was mainly
for the growth of our company, and over the last few months we have grown from
a team of 14 odd people to a team of 25 plus. The growth has been great too,
our user-base is increasing by the day and overall Cashkaro is on the right
track to be India’s best money saving website!”
If you wish to know more about Cashkaro, their
social media case studies can be seen at:
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