E-commerce aggregators gaining traction

Inflation pressure, high interest rates, taxes means a serious squeeze on your pocket. Even otherwise, who does not want a good deal on purchases by way of discounts or cashback. Now fetching a good deals has become easier and on anything be it holiday package, restaurant bill or clothes, spas and so on. Internet sites offering discounts on everything under the sun have been mushrooming. And these are only getting popular.

These sites are similar to goibibo.com that gives coupon codes for hotel / train / bus / air ticket booking. But, goibibo also sells tickets, which these sites don't hence are called also called e-commerce aggregator.

This is how it works. “A consumer comes to our site and as per his/her requirement is redirected to a e-tailer site, say Flipkart. In the meantime, our backend tracks the consumer and notes that you went to Flipkart and the Flipkart backend does the same. Once he/she makes a purchase on Flipkart, we get a commission for it as the consumer went to Flipkart's site through our site. From the commission, we keep some and pay the rest to the consumer's account with us as cashback,” explains Rauf Saiyed, Founder of Cazbak.in, based in Vadodara.

Of course, you need to make an account with the aggregator, in which the cash is paid back and after you've crossed a certain threshold will you be paid. For instance, Cazbak pays you once you've collected Rs 300 or more in your account and another firm Pennyful.in allows this after you've accumulated Rs 150.

These firms have tie-up with 100-plus online stores across offering such as travel, health, insurance, telecom, apparel, jewellery, entertainment, electronics and others, that is, e-commerce companies like Myntra, Jabong, Yatra.com, MakeMyTrip.com, Experia.com, Ferns & Petals and so on.

How much can you earn back? “Depends on the item being purchased. For instance, on electronics and computer accessories a buyer can earn back 1-2% of the purchase amount and on flower / gifts he/she can earn 10-15%,” says Ravitej Yadalam, MD of Pennyful.in. Cazback as a practice retains 20% of the commission it gets from e-tailers and gives back the rest as cashback.

On books these firms get 2-3% of the purchase amount as commission per transaction and up to 7.5% on Rs 1,000 worth of purchase of flowers/gifts.

Pennyful.in also offers discount coupons or coupon codes or discount coupons, that you need to generate on the site and furnish at the time of making payment at an e-commerce site for instant discounts.

Cazbak sees 600-650 new visitors every day and 60-65% return ratio for registered users. That is, if the firm sees 10,000 visitors a day, 6000 of them are repeat.

Yadalam says his company has made sales revenues worth $1.75 million in 2012. And over the next one year, Cazbak aims to see 2,500-3,000 transaction a day taking its revenues to Rs 50-60 lakh from Rs 8-10 lakh now.