Cashify raises $90 million in funding led by NewQuest, Prosus

Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Blume Ventures and Olympus Capital also invested in the funding round, with participation from new investor Paramark Ventures.

“The journey over the last seven to eight years translated from us just focusing on buying devices to actually building a full-stack ops, where we buy devices, refurbish them and sell it to the end consumer,” Mandeep Manocha, founder and chief executive of Cashify, told ET.

The company, he said, will use the funds to double down on marketing, open more refurbishment facilities, and expand offline stores.

He declined to comment on the company’s valuation following the funding round.

The valuation has, however, increased 2.5 times from its previous $15 million funding round in March 2021, he added.

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“What we have built over the last seven years is a very recognisable brand,” Manocha said. “People can sell their old handsets to us. We still have a long way to go and that is where a large portion of the fundraise dollars will be spent, which is essentially marketing our brand, and telling people that this is an avenue where you can sell your devices.”

The company is setting up a new refurbishment facility in Noida in addition to the one in Gurugram, he added.

“On offline retail we have 120 stores in 45 cities,” he said. “We will be pushing this number to 250 stores in the top 100 cities by the end of the next 12 months. At the same time, we will spend time, resources and money on building our ecommerce product which essentially is going to bring the majority of the growth 12 months from now.”

Manocha said that 15% of its business comes from offline stores, but these stores are to “a large extent a marketing proxy”. The real growth will come from online channels, he said.

“While there is a large opportunity set in the re-commerce space, Cashify has a clear edge as a category leader with its focus on customer experience and its data and tech-first approach to drive scale and working capital minimization,” said Amit Gupta, partner and head of India and Southeast Asia, NewQuest Capital Partners.

Pandemic windfall

For Cashify, the Covid-19 pandemic boosted its business as more people started using refurbished phones as new ones became expensive following chipset and other supply shortages.

“Phones are getting expensive,” said Manocha. “If you look at Xiaomi Redmi Note 10, it comes at the price of Rs 14-15,000, which used to come at Rs 9,000 at one point. Similarly, if you look at OnePlus, it used to launch at a Rs 35,000 price point, today they are launching at a Rs 60-70,000 price point. So, what that has done is that a lot of people are moving to refurbished phones because newer phones are becoming more expensive.”

Manocha said Cashify doubled its revenue over the last 12 months and expects the business to grow by 2-2.5x in the next one year.

“We are (making) operating profits, we are making money out of every transaction,” he said. “We just now have to cover the fixed expenses of technology costs, people costs, and marketing costs. That is something we are sure we will be able to cover in the next 18 months.”