Paisawapas.com - Ashish Kumar

In the era of entrepreneurship and startups, Awaaz, IIT Kharagpur sees it as its duty to share some of the successful startup stories related to IIT Kharagpur. Fourth in the series we present to you the story of Paisawapas.com.

Ashish Kumar is one of the co-founders of the highest and fastest paying cashback platform, known as Paisawapas.com. This website among the top cashback sites in India, serves its users by catering them best deals, discounts and coupons which are tested manually for the ease of the customers to compare and purchase their favorite products on 100+ various websites (e.g. Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Snapdeal, Jabong etc.) along with “EXTRA CASHBACK” on their transactions.

Q&A WITH ASHISH:

Awaaz: There exist some others, these kinds of websites already. How would you say this is different from others?

Ashish: Other websites only cater the best deals and discounts of online shopping websites, but Paisawapas.com along with offers and deals & discounts information, provides an extra cashback to the customers, which is given from the part of Paisawapas revenue itself. So basically, it helps our users save some extra money in addition to the discounts availed at online stores.

Awaaz: What are some of the exclusive features of Paisawapas?

Ashish: As I said, it provides an extra cashback along with the offers given by the shopping websites. Also, the cashback is credited to the bank account directly. Moreover, to provide a sound cashback experience to our users, we have launched our chrome extension, which notifies the cashback amount, deals and discounts on the online shopping websites only.

Awaaz: How did this idea strike in your mind? What was the motivation behind?

Ashish: I used to feel happy even on a small amount of cashback provided on the sites like Paytm, etc. and I used to observe the smiles of people whenever their accounts were credited with extra money, no matter how much it was. That’s when this idea of extra cashback clicked my mind and I along with one of the passouts of IIT Roorkee Mr. Shankar Singh, started developing this idea into reality. Since my childhood, I wanted to do something that would influence society on a big positive level and I am sure I am moving forward in the same direction.

Awaaz: One simple question. Why entrepreneurship?

Ashish: I believe every guy has its own innovations or creations, but converting that creativity into practicality was my passion from the start. And my happiness resides in trying dynamic or random things, completing it, making it big and serving lakhs of people & continuing this cycle with another goal.

Awaaz: What were the challenges faced by you?

Ashish: So many. From convincing my parents to starting off with 500 customers, there were and there are so many challenges yet. We started with only 2 members and worked for 5 months, doing every small and big task on our own was a really tough period for both of us.

Awaaz: How did you convince your family to scrap the idea of sitting in placement and go for this, which is considered to be risky by the parents in India?

Ashish: I said just this line to my parents:

” Ok. I would get my first salary in the month of July itself when placed junta get theirs and that I would get from Paisawapas itself “. I think, my confidence and belief moved them. (Laughs)

Awaaz: Would you like to share initial market strategies you implied for the growth of the budding startup?

Ashish: Yeah, sure! See I knew only one thing ” Bhagwanne paise nahi diye hain, lekin dimag zarur diya hai ” And this was my motivation. We had to make Paisawapas a self-sustainable startup and that too in lack of funding. So we started with innovative tricks for branding. In our initial period, to increase traffic on the website, we improved Search Engine Optimization. The number of customers got kicked to 5,000 in 5 months (website started in March 2015) to 20,000 in 12 months with 90 lakhs total products on the website from all around the online shopping websites.

Awaaz: In what ways did Kgp and its environment help you in your endeavors?

Ashish: Ah! that’s a beautiful question. Being the ctm of Shaurya and Nehru Hall gave me what I couldn’t have achieved otherwise. Even a small activity that you do, matters. It continues to add up in your personality, thinking & attitude.

Awaaz: What are your future plans?

Ashish: We are working on making Paisawapas a common platform for all the online shopping merchandise. Customers won’t have to go to different websites to shop. Paisawapas would work as an aggregator of all. Moreover, we are going to bring personalization on deals n discounts and making Paisawapas as a universal cashback wallet. We are currently planning to expand it in all major cities like Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad etc. We already have our office in Gurgaon.

Awaaz: What message would you like to give to budding entrepreneurs out there and all the bright young minds of Kgp?

Ashish: Start from any small idea, Follow your passion, Fight for your dreams. Time doesn’t matter. Campus life is the best period to try new things. No doubt you would get a good job somewhere but if you think differently & achieve something big, don’t think much, take risk & do it.