CashKaro Eyes Rs 375 Crore Revenue In FY24 Amid Festive Boom—BQ Exclusive

Entrepreneurial couple Rohan and Swati Bhargava, co-founders of Gurugram-based CashKaro, said they're targeting revenue in the range of Rs 350–375 crore for the current fiscal, a growth of about 30–40% from its Rs 250 crore top line in FY23.

CashKaro, backed by Ratan Tata and Kalaari Capital, among others, earns its money from the transactions it enables on its e-commerce site partners. It incentivises users via cashback offers and earns margins on the products sold through their links.

It also operates several apps, such as EarnKaro, CashKaro Stores and BankKaro, that offer coupons, price comparisons, and deals to consumers.

"We have a partnership with all the top e-commerce sites in India; we're their largest affiliate and source of customer acquisition on a performance basis. We drive their sales, and we get paid for every transaction that we drive. We don't charge for traffic or clicks; we charge for transactions, which is why it makes sense for them," Swati told BQ Prime in an interaction.

Even with Rs 250 crore in revenues for an asset-light business, the company is set to report a loss of about Rs 10 crore for FY23. However, Rohan isn't too bothered, despite quicker paths to profitability becoming the norm amid the current funding scenario.

"We're in a very unique position where we're able to scale revenue while actually shrinking our losses. Fundamentally, there are two parts to our costs—marketing and human capital. We don't have any other fixed costs now ... In some sense, we're already profitable," he said.

"There's a marketing expense, and there is a lot of money that we're deploying towards new ideas and initiatives. Earnkaro was also a new business initiative four years ago. We've invested in that business now that business is profitable," he said.

CashKaro's current lifetime users stand at 2.3 crore, according to Swati, which have grown 350% over the last three years, in line with its revenue.

"Our business is driving traffic to our partners; this number is actually at its highest ever before. In this festive period, we are going to be sending one billion clicks to our partners. Just to put it in context, if all the e-commerce sites were to try and get these many clicks from Google, they would pay much more, about Rs 4 per click, which would equal Rs 4 billion or Rs 400 crore. That's not anywhere near the cost that we're getting paid, so that is how cost-efficient it is," she said.

According to Rohan, CashKaro has also diversified from pure e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart to other segments.

"In the last three years, multiple segments like insurance, edtech and financial services have started to digitise. At the time, we were not really doing a lot in these segments. Today, financial services have become almost 20–25% of our business, and I think that's probably one of the biggest growth levers for us," he shared. "There's a lot of work that we're doing on the direct-to-consumer side, which is a very high margin category."

Till date, CashKaro has raised over Rs 255 crore, or $31 million. "It is the most that anybody in our space has raised in India, and actually, because we were able to raise money soon, it helped us establish a lead in the market. At this point, we don't need more money; however, we're always open to talks," Swati said.

Entrepreneurial couple Rohan and Swati Bhargava, co-founders of Gurugram-based CashKaro, said they're targeting revenue in the range of Rs 350–375 crore for the current fiscal, a growth of about 30–40% from its Rs 250 crore top line in FY23.

CashKaro, backed by Ratan Tata and Kalaari Capital, among others, earns its money from the transactions it enables on its e-commerce site partners. It incentivises users via cashback offers and earns margins on the products sold through their links.

It also operates several apps, such as EarnKaro, CashKaro Stores and BankKaro, that offer coupons, price comparisons, and deals to consumers.

"We have a partnership with all the top e-commerce sites in India; we're their largest affiliate and source of customer acquisition on a performance basis. We drive their sales, and we get paid for every transaction that we drive. We don't charge for traffic or clicks; we charge for transactions, which is why it makes sense for them," Swati told BQ Prime in an interaction.

Even with Rs 250 crore in revenues for an asset-light business, the company is set to report a loss of about Rs 10 crore for FY23. However, Rohan isn't too bothered, despite quicker paths to profitability becoming the norm amid the current funding scenario.

"We're in a very unique position where we're able to scale revenue while actually shrinking our losses. Fundamentally, there are two parts to our costs—marketing and human capital. We don't have any other fixed costs now ... In some sense, we're already profitable," he said.

"There's a marketing expense, and there is a lot of money that we're deploying towards new ideas and initiatives. Earnkaro was also a new business initiative four years ago. We've invested in that business now that business is profitable," he said.

CashKaro's current lifetime users stand at 2.3 crore, according to Swati, which have grown 350% over the last three years, in line with its revenue.

"Our business is driving traffic to our partners; this number is actually at its highest ever before. In this festive period, we are going to be sending one billion clicks to our partners. Just to put it in context, if all the e-commerce sites were to try and get these many clicks from Google, they would pay much more, about Rs 4 per click, which would equal Rs 4 billion or Rs 400 crore. That's not anywhere near the cost that we're getting paid, so that is how cost-efficient it is," she said.

According to Rohan, CashKaro has also diversified from pure e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart to other segments.

"In the last three years, multiple segments like insurance, edtech and financial services have started to digitise. At the time, we were not really doing a lot in these segments. Today, financial services have become almost 20–25% of our business, and I think that's probably one of the biggest growth levers for us," he shared. "There's a lot of work that we're doing on the direct-to-consumer side, which is a very high margin category."

Till date, CashKaro has raised over Rs 255 crore, or $31 million. "It is the most that anybody in our space has raised in India, and actually, because we were able to raise money soon, it helped us establish a lead in the market. At this point, we don't need more money; however, we're always open to talks," Swati said.