Queen of cashback

From a humble beginning, Swati Bhargava, now is a successful entrepreneur that the world needs to watch out for in the coming future. With her roots in India, her business spreads out in countries like the UK and Singapore with a scope for more expansion in the near future. She has not just showcased her leadership capabilities but also her excellent knowledge of the cashback and affiliate marketing industry when she founded Pouring Pounds in 2011 in the UK, CashKaro in 2013 in India and ZoBucks in 2018 in Singapore. Together with her husband, Rohan Bhargava, she has turned smart ideas and simple beginnings into thriving businesses

Swati Bhargava founded India’s largest and fastest-growing cashback site CashKaro.com along with her husband and business partner, Rohan Bhargava in 2013. Her venture has not only given Indian consumers the option to save on purchases they would have made anyway but also has done a lot in terms of exposing the potential that a woman holds. There were many challenges, starting her business in an era where the cashback industry was in its infancy. Instead of being disheartened, she approached each problem with integrity and as an opportunity to grow and improve.

Education the ticket for success

As a young girl, Swati nurtured dreams of becoming either an Indian Foreign Services Officer or an Indian Administrative Service Officer. She knew education was her ticket to a bright future. So the small-town girl from Ambala in Haryana studied hard and secured more than 85 per cent in her 12th grade. Her high marks gave her a once in a lifetime opportunity to study in Singapore. She was selected for a scholarship programme by the Singapore Airlines.

After completing the programme in Singapore, she left for the London School of Economics (LSE) on another scholarship. She was also offered a scholarship by the University of Oxford, which was a dream come true for Swati. As a child, Swati would look up the Oxford Dictionary every now and then and when she learnt about the university it was named after, she decided to study there. However, when she got the scholarship from the prestigious university of her choice, she declined the offer preferring LSE. “London was far more exciting and LSE gave a higher scholarship, and in those days, it was very expensive to study abroad,” she said.

The road to entrepreneurship

Her penchant for Mathematics and love for numbers saw her graduate from LSE with an Honors in Mathematics and Economics in 2005. Fresh out of college, she started working with Goldman Sachs, London. Her job in investment banking involved managing reports and interpreting analytical data. She learnt how big corporations function and was able to connect academic learning explicitly with the knowledge, skills and approaches needed for her professional work.

Swati worked in the credit structuring and sales team within the investment banking division for the first four years, before moving to the executive office where she managed the client engagements and relationships for the Co- CEOs of Goldman Sachs International, Richard Gnodde and Michael Sherwood. Working closely with the senior management boosted her confidence and enhanced her communication skills, she acknowledges.

Taking risks

An entrepreneur at heart, in a recessionary environment, Swati left Goldman Sachs after five years to start something of her own. She knew to start a business comes with an element of risk and making it successful is another thing altogether. But she wasn’t afraid of facing new challenges daily and putting in long hours. She had the vision, passion, tenacity and her husband, Rohan Bhargava. She married Rohan in 2009, who too is an alumnus of LSE, while she was heading the 3000-member business society at LSE.

Inspired by the success of cashback companies in other countries and the fact that not many people knew about it, she launched Pouring Pounds, a B2B business in the UK in July 2011 along with her husband. The aim of the site was simple-To develop a website that would help users to save as much money as possible on their shopping.

Luck counts

After two years of successfully running Pouring Pounds, the entrepreneurial couple decided to play their trump card in India and launched Cash- Karo.com in 2013. Given that Indians have a fondness for deals and bargains, they both knew the Indian market had great potential for their product.

But they needed funding. So she sent out an email to four of her friends regarding angel funding for CashKaro. She was looking to raise $250K and as luck would have it, by the end of the evening, she had about 20 responses from people who were interested. “After having back-to-back meetings in 48 hours, we closed a round of $750K. It was an incredible and an unforgettable experience to close funding in only 48 hours,” she said.

It is an attractive way for online shoppers to save money, while for its partner retailers CashKaro is a high ROI acquisition channel

Making it happen

Within a few years of its launch, CashKaro became one of India’s largest cash rewards platform. The startup raised $5 million from Kalaari Capital, Ratan Tata and the UK-based angel investors.

She recalls their meeting with Ratan Tata as one of the most exhilarating parts of her journey. When the couple met Ratan Tata to discuss how CashKaro works and how they drive sales to retailers and pay users while retaining a small commission as profit, Ratan Tata’s response was: ‘You are giving away free cash to a country that loves saving. Who wouldn’t love this idea?’ Ratan Tata went on to invest in his personal capacity in CashKaro and his confidence strengthened their resolve to make their ventures a roaring success.

While Pouring Pounds today has become one of the leading cashback sites in the UK and works with 2,500 popular brands like Tesco, Debenhams, M&S, Expedia and Argos.in, ZoBucks has already partnered with over 250+ retailers in Singapore, spread across industries such as travel, fashion, electronics, grocery and more.

How CashKaro works

CashKaro a earns commission for every sale that the site drives to any retailer partner by promoting its product and offers and a large part of this commission is then shared with its registered members as cashback. The site’s 1500+ partner websites include Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm, Myntra, Makemytrip, Yatra, Shopclues, Nykaa and more.

“CashKaro members can get up to 30% extra on their online shopping at these sites. All they need to do is visit the site from CashKaro and then shop. This is in the form of real cash. And the best part is that it is always paid over and above coupons, ongoing discounts and all other deals offered by retailers,” explained Swati.

Win–Win situation

CashKaro.com is primarily a B2C business with retailers and shoppers being the major stakeholders. “It is an attractive way for online shoppers to save money, while for its partner retailers CashKaro is a high ROI acquisition channel,” quipped Swati.

Offering discounts over and above the deals offered by online platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart and MakemyTrip and banks such as ICICI, HDFC and SBI, CashKaro has credited Rs.100 crore in the last six years to the accounts of 3-4 lakh people. CashKaro currently has two million users and about 55 per cent of its users are from tier-1 cities. There are instances of people getting Rs.20,000-Rs.25,000 a year, Swati pointed out. CashKaro has enabled transactions worth $100 million in gross merchandise value annually. In FY18, the company’s revenue grew 35% to Rs.23 crore from Rs.17 crore in FY17 and losses more than halved to Rs.1.6 crore, she added.

Given that Indian e-commerce market is estimated to cross $100 billion mark by 2020, Swati affirmed there’s never been a better time to be in this business in India. "For a growing e-commerce market, the potential for cashback sites is huge because you are in effect, taking a small percentage of the entire e-commerce spend", she adds.

Uphill task, initially

Starting from scratch and laying down the processes both internally and at the retailers’ end was an uphill task for the Bhargavas. “We had to carve our own path and set precedents at every step as there was no one to follow,” she recollected, adding that startups take time, a lot of hard work.

The hardest aspect was to educate the Indian market about the concept as the idea of affiliate marketing was quite new in the country. So, the couple went aggressive on PR, solicited meetings with market leaders and retailers and explained how this concept is the best performance- driven model for marketers globally.

“We had to think of creative ways to explain that CashKaro gives real cashback on all online shopping. We did innovative social media and branding campaigns and extensive digital marketing to further drive this education,” she stated.

Product development, building the right team and helping investors see value in what they were developing were some other challenges they had to overcome on their road to success.

When husband is a business partner

As a woman entrepreneur, she never expected her entrepreneurial journey to be comfortable. There are too many unknowns-sizing the market, projecting revenue, and calculating breakeven points. But working with her husband made things easy. “As a couple, I feel it’s always easier to work together because then you share the same goals and values. Since you are involved at every level, you celebrate successes together also,” she said, adding that Rohan’s the best business partner one can have. “He has an unmatched zeal and passion for the business which has driven us all to success.”

CashKaro members can get up to 30% extra on their online shopping at sites. All they need to do is visit the site from CashKaro and then shop

Achievements

Swati made it to the Fortune 40 under 40 list in June 2019. She is among the few women entrepreneurs to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss India’s Startup Ecosystem. She was also awarded at India’s first Digital Women Award for the Best Service Offering Company in the e-commerce industry and was honored among four women trailblazers in the Indian e-commerce industry by The Economic Times. She is also currently the Co-Chair of H2 India-a global leadership network for the digital industry.

How she inspires

With successful running entities in different countries and being ranked among the top women entrepreneurs in India is definitely a great boost for Swati. But for the trained yoga teacher, who begins her day with yoga and morning walk, success is humbling. "I feel humbled for all the success that God has bestowed on me", she adds.

Swati is a highly sought after guest speaker and media commentator on topics around leadership and entrepreneurship. She believes in inspiring others to aspire for more and has had the opportunity to do so as a keynote speaker at IIT, ISB, ET Women Empowerment Summit, TiECon, TEDx, AdTech, IAMAI Forums, Economic Times Conferences, Niti Aayog initiatives and at the launch of Satya Nadella’s book “Hit Refresh” hosted by Microsoft. She is often invited to the prestigious London Business School Annual Conference.

Her advice to budding woman entrepreneurs would be ‘Believe in yourself’. “Develop a logical and analytical mindset which enables you to break down problems, analyse solutions and optimise, all of which is very handy when you have your own business.”

Prudent with money

Since both the entrepreneurial ventures were started from the couple’s savings, it meant that the stakes were always high and that made them prudent about using the money they had raised.

She believes that it’s better to take time and ensure that their hard-earned money is well invested and is earning dividends.

She reveals a part of her financial mindset comes from what she learnt early on from her father, a successful entrepreneur, who always advised her to be sensible about money.

She, however, confesses with her first paycheque she shopped for business clothes at Massimo Dutti in London

Bitten by the travel bug

Swati loves to splurge on travel and donations. For her, a short holiday refreshes the mind like nothing else. She enjoys new experiences, learning about different cultures. And when she returns to work, “it is with renewed energy and more often than not, with good ideas too.”

What next?

The aim is to grow CashKaro by over 200% in two years and expand the business to various parts of the world.