Qwikcilver Secures Funding From Sistema, Accel India & Others

Bangalore-based gift card technology startup Qwikcilver has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Sistema Asia Fund, the proprietary fund of Russian conglomerate Sistema.

Its existing investors, Amazon Asia-Pacific, Accel India and Helion Venture Partners, also participated in the round.

Qwikcilver was founded in 2008 by Kumar Sudarsan, TP Pratap and Bhaskar Vasudevan. The startup provides end-to-end stored-value-card solutions to retail and corporate customers. It enables the retail customers to enhance their sales, brand and loyalty through card-based interventions, such as Gift Cards, Loyalty Cards, Discount Cards, Frequency Cards, Credit Cards and more. Qwikcilver also enables its corporate customers to derive operational efficiencies through multi-purpose corporate campus card programs, employee incentives, and benefits card programs.

The startup claims to provide its cloud hosted SAAS technology for gift cards in more than 500 cities and towns in over 10,000 premium brand stores, ecommerce portals and mobile apps.

The startup has a pioneered prepaid & gift card category in the country. It plans to utilise the funding to further invest in scaling the Gift Card category through innovations, invest in R&D and expand into international markets like Middle east and Southeast Asia.

Some Facts

• Qwikcilver has established and reinforced the Prepaid & Gift Card network in Indian retail, with close to 90% share of the customer engagements.
• It has laid the network in across 150+ leading brands & retailers in 25 consumption categories.
• It has grown its network by 300% year-on-year for the last 4 years and currently processes over 50 Mn transactions across physical cards, digital cards and mobile-based engagements across card transactions annually.

Kumar Sudarsan, Director & founder of Qwikcilver, said, “We see this as testimony & validation of our pioneering presence and leadership in the Gift Card category with our SAAS Technology Product business in  India.”

Back in 2013, Qwikcilver had secured a five year semi-closed wallet license from RBI. While in 2014, Amazon picked up a minority stake in the startup and provided wallet in the form of gift cards to its Indian consumers. Also, in August last year, Qwikcilver launched a fully integrated mobile responsive online gifting superstore, Woohoo.In.

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