CashKaro: Building and Growing an Affiliate Business

Swati and Rohan Bhargava started CashKaro in 2013, an affiliate marketing platform offering cashback and coupons to online shoppers in India. Backed by investments from investors like Kalaari Capital and Ratan Tata, CashKaro became India’s largest cashback platform, with over 20 million users by 2022. In its pursuit of growth, CashKaro introduced card-linked offers and the social commerce platform EarnKaro. Despite encountering challenges like digital advertising fraud and regulatory compliance complexities, CashKaro expanded its horizons, venturing into markets like Singapore with ZoBucks.com. Looking forward, CashKaro aspires to scale its user base to 100 million and achieve profitability by prioritizing user acquisition and fostering partnerships with retailers. The company faced the strategic decision of pursuing consumer-driven growth through marketing or retailer-driven growth by expanding its network of online partners, with a vision to attain INR 7 billion in revenue and potentially go public.

As CashKaro closed the festive sales season of October–November in 2023, it looked forward to ending FY 2023–24 on a high note. While profitability was still a few years away, the company looked forward to growing its user base to 100 million in the next three years. The path to profitability could happen with growth in the user base, which required the company to decide whether it wanted to focus on consumer or retailer-driven growth. CashKaro also had to control its marketing expenses to achieve profitability, which was a prerequisite for planning to go public in the future.