Backing Up Each Other Co-Founders of CashKaro share their journey from friends to lovers to an entreprenuer couple
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Having known to each other for almost three years, becoming friends, lovers and tying the knot six years back, Rohan and Swati Bhargava started a business together four years back. Their compatibility enables them to work together even today. Rohan feels working together is an added advantage as very few couples get to spend as much time together as they do. Both of them started a similar cashback business in the UK, and the opportunity in the Indian market drove them back to India.
First meeting
ROHAN: We were in college together in London School of Economics (LSE). I was a year senior to her. In college, we were more acquaintances. We sort of knew each other through common friends. After me and Swati actually started working, we started hanging out together. Being good friends led us to starting to date.
Initial idea
SWATI: It was Rohan's idea to start because he started using a UK cashback site, which he really liked and he showed it to me. He was like how come nobody knew about it. The awareness was low. That's when we started thinking about cashback. We thought we would take it to India so we waited for e-commerce
economy to mature a bit. We launched in mid 2013. By then companies like Jabong and Amazon were of sizable amount. For businesses like us where we are earning a commission out of e-commerce, it needs to be of certain size.
Division of work
SWATI: Rohan looks at all tech products, SEM and some of the paid marketing. I look at customer relations, investor relations, social media and unpaid marketing channels as well. E-mail marketing comes under
me. We have a balance in work.
Common interests
SWATI: We take out time to meet friends. Our holidays are more of way of getting away. We enjoy traveling. We do yoga, morning walk and go to the gym together.
Biggest challenge
ROHAN: Getting our first angel round was the key milestone. Since then, we have been in a position where we could take a risk. That was a key part. A couple of weeks before we raised the money, I was at a point where I had no money. Getting that hurdle overcome was an important thing. That helped us create a market
lead. When we raised the VC round, there was nobody in the cashback space who raised this much.
Now we are quite comfortable because you know you have got Rs 4 million in the bank. Every transaction is generating revenue. Then there is no point of getting excessive cash burn. Closing the funding rounds was the biggest challenge.
