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You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

eChai with Swati Bhargava and Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founders, Cashkaro.com

Our today's guest for "eChai with Husband-Wife entrepreneurs" are Swati Bhargava and Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founders, Cashkaro.com , India's largest Cashbak and Coupon's site.

Swati Bhargava is the CEO and Co-founder of Cashkaro.com, India’s largest Cashback & Coupons site. Through Cashkaro, members can get Extra Cashback on their online shopping with various established brands. In her current role, Swati is leading the marketing team and spearheading the expansion of Cashkaro into different verticals. She has successfully managed to get over 500 e-commerce partners on-board including Snapdeal, Myntra, Yatra. 
An extension of the successful entrepreneurship, Pouring Pounds in the UK, Swati with her spouse Rohan Bhargava decided on playing her trump card in her homeland in April 2013. Swati from Ambala, a small town north of Delhi was offered a scholarship to study in Singapore at a tender age of 16 after which she bagged a scholarship to study at the prestigious London School of Economics (LSE). She graduated from the LSE with an Honours in Mathematics & Economics in 2005. After her summer internship at Goldman Sachs in London, she was offered a full-time role and joined the company immediately after her graduation. Swati worked in the Credit Structuring and Sales team within the Investment Banking Division for 4 years. 
She then moved to the Executive Office where she managed the Client engagements and relationships for the Co-CEOs of Goldman Sachs International, Richard Gnodde & Michael Sherwood. Working closely with the senior management, boosted Swati’s confidence and further enhanced her communication skills besides gaining experience in the field. Swati left Goldman in 2010 to start her own enterprise, Pouring Pounds, B2B Cashback business in the UK in July 2011. Perhaps it’s her leadership quality and grace that has got her many accolades. 

She has consistently been a scholarship holder and was among the top 40 people from all over India who were offered the Singapore Airlines scholarship. She was also shortlisted for the Asian Woman of Achievement Awards in the UK in 2011. A regular speaker at many high profile events in London, she is often invited to the prestigious London Business School Annual Conference. A trained yoga teacher, Swati begins her day with yoga and morning walk. An ardent believer in ‘positive thinking can create life-changing results’; her positivity resonates in Cashkaro’s work culture. No wonder she’s a die-hard fan of ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne. Swati loves to travel and shop. A fashionista by choice, it’s no surprise that she chose to float Cashkaro that helps customers get maximum savings while satiating their desire to shop and shop more! 

Rohan Bhargava is the Co-founder of CashKaro.com, India’s largest Cashback & Coupons site. In his current role, he is leading the online marketing, strategic product development and innovation at the company. Working closely with the Chief Technology Officer, Rohan strategizes on the next big wave for CashKaro and leads all key projects from inception to execution.

Rohan Bhargava finished his studies from the US and the London School of Economics. He started his career with an asset management fund Washington Square right after his college in 2004 where he grew the asset base from $50 million to $750 million injust over a period of 5 years. He then joined Aladdin Capital, a large US based hedge fund company where he led a $1 billion acquisition of Solent Capital there and then ran that fund for 2 years.

Though working at asset management firms, the entrepreneurial bug never left him. Rohan started Pouringpounds.com in the UK along with his wife Swati in July 2011. Today, Pouring Pounds is one of UK’s leading Cashback and Voucher websites and works with 2,500 popular brands like Tesco, Debenhams, M&S, Expedia and Argos. After his successful stint in the UK, they started CashKaro.com.com in India in April 2013 and are one of the fastest growing online businesses in India today. Rohan is also a qualified CFA and traces his roots to Mumbai and Chennai. Rohan loves travelling, reading and trying out new tech and gadgets.

Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Swati & Rohan. Join the conversation to ask any specific questions to Swati & Rohan.   

Early Years: When did it first strike you to begin this venture and why? Your Eureka Moment (the moment you decided to be an entrepreneur).

My husband Rohan and I came across the Cashback idea while we were working in UK and totally loved it. We thought it was so simple, easy... If anyone knew about a Cashback site, why won’t they use it! We felt there was a gap in the market, so we started up and soon were running the Cashback sites for large UK newspapers like the Daily Mail and Metro newspaper. Cashback sites are popular in both the UK and India now and the Affiliate Marketing industry as a whole is one of the fastest growing segments. We started our India Cashback site http://www.CashKaro.com in April 2013 and are now the largest Cashback & Coupons site in India. We work with 500+ brands like Amazon, Snapdeal, Jabong and if you visit any of these via CashKaro you get extra Cashback from us on everything you buy. This is on top of Coupons and discounts so CashKaro.com has fast become the cheapest way to shop online in India. The business is growing really fast and we’ve moved to India now, especially after we raised $750,000 funding from UK investors. We are the ‘Quidco’ and ‘Ebates’ of India so it’s got all our attention!

Business Venture: What is your business model and what problems does it solve? What are market opportunities? How is it different from your competitors? How do you generate revenues?

CashKaro.com is India’s largest & fastest growing Cashback & Coupons site. Through CashKaro, members can get upto 50% Extra Cashback on their online shopping at Snapdeal, Amazon.in, Paytm, Jabong, Myntra, Yatra & 500+ ecommerce partners. All they need to do is visit the site from CashKaro and then shop.

As an affiliate site we benefit our partners by driving traffic to their site and in return we get paid a certain percentage as commission for each transaction. A large part of this commission is then shared with our members as Cashback. The balance that we keep is our revenue. We have direct and great relationships with many of our retailer partners which provides a higher commission rate and hence helps us pay higher Cashback to our members.

Best part is that Cashback is always paid over and above coupons, ongoing discounts and all other deals offered by retailers. Most of our competitors in India are coupon sites who list only the latest coupons of a retailer. We pay Cashback on top hence our value proposition is much more superior to customers as they get cashback and coupons both from us. This ‘Extra’ nature of Cashback is probably what makes CashKaro’s savings truly unique. Given this irresistible combination of “more shopping, more earning”, CashKaro.com drives over 3,000 transactions a day and has so far driven over Rs 150 crores of sales to partner retailers.

Sales : How did you make your first sale and how much time it took you from starting up to closing the first sale ? How long is your sales cycle?

Question not very relevant to us as we don’t have a sale cycle as such, it’s a B2C business mainly

Company Culture: What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

CashKaro is an entrepreneurial, ‘can do’ kind of organisation. We have a young team and they believe in the brand as much as we do. This has somewhat pinned the company’s success to date and has provided the opportunity to expand. Across the organisation, there are pockets of best practices, which are deployed, thereby providing a platform for sustainable growth.

Working at a startup encourages people to take up challenges and provides a conducive environment to work in groups and take up leadership roles. We have a really fun working environment – we all eat lunch together prepared by cooks in-house so it’s a nice sociable kind of place.

We regularly have interactive group sessions where we take feedback and try to incorporate them as much as possible. Our culture is to really give our best in whatever project we undertake and to work with passion! We lead by example, we believe there is no other way to instill this culture!

Hiring - How did you hire your first employee ? And in general what's your hiring policy ? How important have good employees been to your success?

Our first employee was someone who just wanted to do an internship with us and we ended up offering him a job really quickly after he joined. Thereafter, we hire via all channels: on- campus, social media, job portals and through recruitment companies. We credit all our success to our amazing and hard-working employees – we are very lucky to have them with us!

Learning : How did you handle your disappointments and failures?

By just not giving up – entrepreneurship is tough, disappointments happen but we’ve learnt the solution is just to persevere and keep going. We’ve also learnt that a lot of things actually do happen for the best, though it may not seem like when it happens!

Vision: What's your vision for your venture. What do you want to accomplish in your life ? What are your future aspirations?

Over the next year, our efforts will be towards solidifying and cementing our market leading position in India in the Cashback & Coupons space. We are investing in technology to make our product even more user friendly, innovative and a one stop place for all online savings. International expansion and fundraise are also on the cards. Our vision is to be the ultimate destination for savings in India – whenever you want to shop online, whatever you want to buy – you always start your journey at CashKaro.com!

Risks : Which was the boldest decision you ever made to have this venture work?

Leaving my job at Goldman Sachs and coming back to India was perhaps the boldest decision we’ve ever made to have this venture work!

Partnerships: What are your views about having your spouse as the co-founder in your venture ? How do you overcome when you have a difference of opinion on work front ? How do you manage that :-)

Swati: It’s been quite amazing actually. Rohan & I run CashKaro.com.com together and it’s great because we have a very complimentary skill set. We don’t have egos and that’s why its been easy to deal with differences – we go with whoever is actually right! And we are open to experimentation – so if we don’t know which way to go we are open to trying both.

Rohan: Swati is my balancing factor in everything I do. Whether at work or ensuring we have a social life, she balances me perfectly. It’s fair to say that I focus mainly on work and I’ve left everything else to her. Her ability to manage her own work along with all else is incredible and I’m really glad she joined me on this entrepreneurial journey with as much passion as mine!

Work-Life Balance: How do you find a balance between work family and social life? 

Swati & Rohan : Its certainly tough because work takes up SO MUCH of our time! The good part about working together is that we understand work pressures and why we cannot take as much leisure time off as perhaps other people can. Saturday remains a date night so we do something we both enjoy then. Our families have been very supportive so they have made it as easy for us as possible. We love travelling so whenever we can we squeeze in a quick weekend break we do that & come back re-charged!

If you were to give an advise to other husband-wife entrepreneurs starting up together, then what it is ? 

Swati & Rohan : Work hard and really believe in what you have set out to achieve - whether as an entrepreneur or as a working couple! Working with your spouse is not as bad as its made out to be – on the contrary working together has made us respect each other even more and probably strengthened our relationship further. If we had to pick business partners all over again, we’d probably still pick each other! Most importantly have faith in your vision. You’ll only be able to do justice if you really believe in the idea and your ability to execute it!