Cashify to Invest Rs 20 Crore in Smartphone Re-commerce Business

The company said that it is looking to expand its offline kiosk model in 20 cities. Cashify has raised $12 million in a Series C round of funding

Cashify is planning to expand its smartphone re-commerce business across 20 Indian cities by the end of 2019. The major part of this investment, as per the company, is dedicated towards hiring manpower and establishing offline kiosks. Cashify said that it has bought 20 lakh (2 million) gadgets till now, disbursed Rs 900 crore in cash to sellers and served more than 15 lakh (1.5 million) happy customers.

Company’s official statement read, “Being the first brand in re-commerce ecosystem in India to start offline kiosk model, Cashify is now looking to expand its offline presence aggressively across different geographies. We aim to reach out to 20 cities via 75 new kiosks.”

Tom Kang, research director at Counterpoint Research, had recently mentioned that India has tremendous growth opportunities in terms of refurbished smartphone market. He said, “The India market grew 14 per cent to almost 14 million refurbished devices. This is an impressive number because the refurbished market ecosystem remains nascent in the country and 72 per cent of devices in India do not go into the secondary market. Therefore, there are tremendous growth opportunities.”

Expanding to More Services

Aseem Goyal, VP, Retail Expansion, Cashify, mentioned that the company was looking to move beyond helping users sell their old smartphones. He mentioned that these kiosks would help Cashify serve customers with its complete pool of services.

He added, “We are looking forward to add a pool of services under brand Cashify. ScreenPro, the instant screen repair service, is one of them, offering quality smartphone accessories to customers is another. With offline kiosks, we want to ensure if somebody would like to sell an old phone, get their broken screen repaired or just want to buy accessories, they can get it all at the Cashify kiosks.”

Cashify has raised $12 million in a Series C round of funding. The investment round was led by CDH Investments and MorningSide Group, with Chinese re-commerce giant, AiHuiShou, participating as a strategic investor.

The company has plans to hire 250 more people to their workforce for their offline model, to help customers sell used phones instantly at these kiosks. It currently operates kiosks in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The company’s first kiosk had opened in January 2018.