Indians eagerly wait for big discounts and bargains to save money every time they shop. In fact, when it comes to online shopping, they wish to save even more on discounted purchases. To enable smart shopping,
Gopaisa.com is a revolutionary platform offering the highest paying cash back and discount coupons for online shopping consumers. These cashback and discount coupons are available on a wide range of products and services spanning travel, lifestyle, fashion, electronics, books, food, recharge, medicines to name a few.
Based out of Delhi, Gopaisa.com was incorporated in September 2012 by Aman and Ankita Jain to precisely target the basic instinct of an Indian shopper. Being a disruptive force in the marketing space, the company helps in putting the money back in the consumers' pockets by way of "Cashback" across sectors, whether it is eCommerce or travel related or anything which is bought and sold online. Gopaisa.com transfers the 80% to 90% of commission amount from the online brands to the customers in the form of cashback. This gives them an inherent advantage of motivating the consumer to make the transaction by way of customer loyalty and acquire customers at a relatively low cost. To avail the cashback offers, users can sign up at Gopaisa.com, create their account, select the links of retailers, shop from the online retailers and once the retailer confirms the purchase, the cashback amount gets credited to the user's account. To further enhance the shopping experience, Gopaisa.com also launched India’s first Cashback App for helping users gain the advantage of the GoPaisaCashback redemption options like Bank transfer, Recharge on Mobile/DTH, Transfer to Paytm, PayU and Mobikwikwallet and also gift vouchers on 550+ brands through their mobile devices. Focusing purely on simplified savings, the best part about the app is that it is also available on Cash-on-delivery orders.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Ankita Jain, Co-founder - GoPaisa.com And Spoke To Her
How was GoPaisa started? What were the challenges you faced while setting up the business? GoPaisa is now more than 3 years old; and is a bootstrapped and profitable company.
We had set up GoPaisa 3 years back when the concept of Cashback was nonexistent. Everyone believed that Cashback as a concept would never work, however; our strong belief and understanding of the Indian psyche made us invest and be patient towards growing the Cashback ecosystem. We initially faced the challenge in hiring good talent as well. On the business side, tie-ups with brands were a difficult task as we were young and most of the people did not take us seriously. Explaining the benefits of Cashback was also tough because back then, most of them believed in gratifying consumers with coupons and deals because the term CASHBACK was very new and by Cashback all they understood was the credit card Cashback.
The scenario now is very different and the cashback industry has grown in a swift manner with more people understanding the advantages of the concept.
How does the company work? GoPaisa.com is India’s Cashback & coupon Destination. We are purely about simplified savings. GoPaisa helps its users to save money while shopping online. We put money back in the shopper's pocket, through our GoPaisa CASHBACK. GoPaisa with its tie up with over 550+ retailers in all helps users in getting the best deals while shopping online through Cashback, coupons and notifications on various time-bound offers through its deals platform. The best part about GoPaisa Cashback is it is available on Cash-on-delivery orders as well and is on top of all the available discounts We believe we are the disruptive force in the marketing space, and are present in all the sectors be it eCommerce or travel-related or anything which is bought and sold online. This gives us the inherent advantage of giving the customer the motivation to do the transaction and for the partners we help them in initiating the transaction, by way of customer loyalty over a long period of time, and also acquiring customers at a relatively low cost.
For the new Indian online shopper, Mobile is the only way they know how to shop online. According to a Google report, 5 million smartphone users come on board every month. So it is important to tap this new user base entering the market. And for the existing online shoppers, convenience and mobility are the most pivotal criteria. Thus to tap into this market, and widen the saving options for these very shoppers, the medium of an app had become a necessity.
GoPaisa is a one stop saving destination for all online shoppers. Through the app, we wish to make our customers’ lives easy by helping them get the best products at the cheapest possible prices, because you can get GoPaisa Cashback on top of all your existing discounts. All you have to do is just download the GoPaisa APP.
What are the unique key features/ Services? How is it different from the other players in the market? In today’s hyper competitive world, the only differentiator we believe for shoppers is excellent customer service, while also being the leader in terms of best cashback rates and updates on the latest and best offers. We pride ourselves on being the cashback site, which not only has the best and most extensive cashback offers from leading retailers like Amazon, Jabong, Paytm, Snapdeal and 550 others; but also the one where users can find best coupons and time limited deals. Apart from this, technologically we also update transactions the swiftest, and also ensure our users have the maximum possible redemption options for their cashback earnings. We provide cashback by way of Bank transfer, Mobile-DTH recharges, E-Vouchers and Paytm & Mobikwik Wallet transfer.
Key features: 1. Ability to earn Cashback on 550+ brands which includes brands from various categories like shopping, food, travel, home furnishing, recharge and many more on the move
2. The best Cashback redemption options like Bank transfer, Recharge on Mobile/ DTH, Transfer to PayTm wallet and also Gift Vouchers
3. We provide Cashback even on Cash on delivery. GoPaisa Cashback is available 24*7 365 days with no coupon code required.
4. Instant tracking
5. We have recently launched the First Legal Cricket betting platform on GoPaisa
6. The highest Cashback rates and it is on top of all your discounts and wallet Cashback
Our unique point is we have special properties which are GoPaisa Exclusive properties which we keep conceiving for our users from time to time. During Diwali, we organized Rs.11 Deal, where a list of products was available for Rs.11. The customer had to pay full price at the partner website but the remaining amount was credited in the GoPaisa account as Cashback. It included products like hard disks, cosmetics and many other daily essentials.
And this IPL, we have launched GoPaisa Premier League (GPL) – Betting Legally online, which allows users to bet on daily IPL matches totally FREE of cost. The best part is even a person who does not have much knowledge about cricket but is interested in the last 5 critical overs can be a part of this game. This league was a 2 month long initiative.
Funding Status As of now, we are bootstrapped and a profitable company. We believe in growing the business rather than just running after the valuation game.
Like any other online business, our leadership status is of utmost importance, as generally leaders get to reap the maximum benefits. As the saying goes, “Winners take all”. Our dominant position helps us enjoy 70-80% of market share in our category. The launch of our TV campaign is one step in the same direction, and is probably the 1st in affiliate/performance marketing space in India. Our vision is to be a one step saving destination for our users whenever he thinks about spending money. We set long term goals and would like to list the company in public markets in the future.
Revenue model We believe we are the disruptive force in the marketing space, helping put money back in the consumer's pockets by way of “Cashback” across sectors, be it eCommerce or travel related or anything which is bought and sold online. This gives us the inherent advantage of giving the customer the motivation to do the transaction and for the partners, we help them in initiating the transaction, by way of customer loyalty over a long period of time, and also acquire customers at relatively low cost.
On the other hand, with substantial user level transactional data available with us, we plan to capture a large chunk of advertising revenues, by being able to provide advertising on our own platform as well as other related advertising solutions to small and big advertisers alike. We aim to build a substantial cash flow positive business, fuelled by ever increasing digital spends of online and offline advertisers.
Traction details We are a technology platform, where consumers come to earn cashback for their online transactions, and for advertisers, we provide a substantial pool of Online Shoppers.
· We drove a GMV of over Rs.55 crore for the month of December 2015 and the same is growing at the rate of 20-30% month on month. It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the financial year (April 2014), the same figure stood at less than Rs.1 crore. We are hoping to end the current year with sales generation of over Rs.600 crore.
· We see monthly traffic of a million plus visitors (Website+APP).
· Over 140000 Transactions took place in the month of December 2015 itself.
· We provide real time redemption of users’ money by way of Mobile/DTH recharges, payment into Wallets like paytm, mobikwik & payU and e-vouchers, and payment to bank accounts within 24-48 hours, resulting in superlative user experience.
· We have a user base of over a million plus and are adding over 5000-6000 new users every day.
Market size & Opportunity We wish to be the market leader in the Affiliate marketing space in India.
· Strategy for ONLINE:
o Globally, 20% of the eCommerce market sales are driven through affiliate marketing channels. With the market maturing in India too, the number should be more or less in line. GoPaisa aims to be the largest player with at least 30%-40% share of the affiliate marketing pie in India.
o Currently, the eCommerce market is estimated at about USD 10-15 billion. The figure is expected to touch USD 100 billion by the end of 2020 (Google Study, Ref 1)
o The expectation of the addressable market is set to be $20 billion, and hence the expected commission pool would be of $1-1.6 billion. (Based on average commissions expectation of 5-8%)
· Be a substantial player in the non-performance related online advertising space, which would be the 2nd pillar of revenues for us.
o In future, the plan is to become a major data driven advertising platform on the back of substantial first hand segregated user wise transaction behaviour pattern available.
o While the current spend on digital advertising is a shade under 10% of total advertising spends (Ref 2), we believe that with massive adoption of smartphones in India, this spend should move in line with the global average of 25% (Ref 3) in the next couple of years.
· Strategy for Offline:
o Offline has been kept for the 2nd stage of our Growth, given its immense depth horizontally as well as vertically.
o Far deeper investment is required for offline compared to online.
o Because offline spending still controls over 95% of wallet spends, it presents us with far deeper insights than online can.
Future Plans / Marketing Plans 1. Become the one stop destination for Savings.
2. Get into Offline shopping by the end of 2016:
The offline market provides the biggest and deepest possible opportunity for any loyalty based provider. We want to replicate the online affiliate ecosystem to the offline space, whereby we can own the customer, but the delivery/transaction happens at the merchant’s end.
Just like offline, this system would be a Win-Win situation for the retailer as well because while most of the retailers are able to get customers during the sale seasons which typically account for 2-3 months in a year, for the rest of the 9-10 months, retailers are not able to capture customers. By relying on smartphones, we can provide unique advertising solutions to each and every retailer for 365 days, for their sort of catchment customers and the best part is, we would only charge them for Sale.
