Cashify Pockets $12 Mn In Series C Funding From Chinese Investors

Gurugram-based recommerce startup Cashify has raised $12 Mn in a Series C round of funding. The investment was led by CDH Investments and MorningSide Group, with Chinese recommerce company AiHuiShou participating as a strategic investor.

Existing investors, including Bessemer Ventures and Shunwei Capital, also took part in the funding.

Cashify was founded in 2013 by Nakul Kumar and Mandeep Manocha. The company enables its customers to sell their old mobiles online and get instant cash along with free home pick-up.

Inc42 earlier reported the strategic investment by AiHuiShou on June 18 this year. It was also announced that Cashify has onboarded Chinese recommerce giant AiHuiShou as a partner as it looks to expand internationally. However, the deal amount and other details were not disclosed at that time.

With the partnership, Cashify will also expand its offline kiosk model from the current five in Delhi-NCR to 50 by the end of the year.

The startup is also looking to double its transaction volume to 200K by the FY19 end.

Cashify is also looking to launch allied services such as screen repair service for its smartphone segment even as it is on track to scale its warehousing facility both by number and area in 2018.

The company claims that it clocks 100K monthly transactions with an average ticket size of about $59.71 (INR 4000). Further, about 95% of its transaction volume is driven by smartphones and mobiles.

Cashify last raised close to a million dollars in a venture debt funding round from Trifecta Capital to meet its growing working capital requirements. Earlier, it also raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A funding from new and existing investors in July 2017.

The company counts Bessemer Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and M&S Partners as its investors.

Recommerce: China Vs India

According to a report by US-based research firm Persistence Market Research (PMR), global sales of refurbished and used mobile phones are estimated to account for revenues worth $ 19.7 Bn in 2017. By 2025, this number is expected to reach nearly $40 Bn.

The Indian market here is poised to be worth $4 Bn by 2020, according to a Deloitte India report.

China, on the other hand, has a much bigger market. As recommerce startup Budli’s co-founders Rohit Bagaria and Kavita Joshi, Director (Operations) stated, “In China, the ReCommerce (Reverse Commerce) sector of used goods, especially electronic gadgets is much more advanced than in India. As per a 2017 Fung Global Retail & Tech study, the Chinese ReCommerce market is currently $60 Bn. ReCommerce is bigger than ride sharing in China, with some organised players worth over $0.5Bn.”

However, still, the chinese players seem to be attracted to the Indian market. The driving factors behind this is the value consiousness of the Indian buyer along with the increasing adoption of smartphones in the country.

This offers an open opportunity for both the local and the global players. Apart from Cashify, other major recommerce players in India are CredR, Budli, Zoomo, Elanic, GadgetWood, GreenDust among others.

[The development was reported by ET.]