CashKaro's Swati Bhargava on creativity, cashbacks, and continuously engaging customers

CashKaro, a leading cashback and coupons firm, generated INR 300 crore in revenues in the financial year 2024. Co-founded by Swati Bhargava (alongside Rohan Bhargava) who brings a wealth of experience in the financial and marketing sectors, the company has been on a journey of constant evolution to engage consumers effectively, particularly with the influential Gen Z demographic in the mix. 

In an exclusive sit-down with Campaign, Bhargava delves into a number of topics from the marketing budget, to consumer engagement to the Tatas and more, sharing that the company is currently focusing on consolidation, opting to delay profitability to allow for aggressive growth and marketing efforts.

“We are aiming to consolidate our products, having diversified with EarnKaro and BankKaro. Our goal is to drive substantial growth,” Bhargava tells Campaign.

CashKaro has also ramped up its marketing spend by 25% for FY25, emphasising the need for innovative engagement strategies.

“It’s in our hands to become profitable but we are pushing for more aggressive growth. We are investing in marketing and expanding teams in areas where we will expand our business,” Bhargava explained.

Last year, CashKaro launched a 360-degree advertising campaign featuring actor Genelia Deshmukh as their brand ambassador. Although Bhargava views mainline advertising as an experiment rather than a long-term strategy, the campaign aimed to explore its impact on brand awareness.

“Generally, we don’t do ATL, BTL but we executed Genelia’s campaign as an experiment to understand the mainline advertising space and learn what change it brings to the brand."

“There’s no ROI on these campaigns. Such campaigns are more for brand awareness and are hard to measure. There’s no instant recovery and I don’t recommend it to startups because usually unit metrics is the focus,” she added.

Watch the free-wheeling chat above to find out more on this, and how CashKaro is spreading awareness about cashback through “smart online strategies”, why it's banking on the India story, and possibly contemplating an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the next couple of years.