Launch pad: Cashback app to drive business to restaurants

There could be thousands of good restaurants which go unnoticed due to lack of effective marketing. Now, there is an app to help market these eateries and also provide deals for their customers.

Crownit is an offline-to-online app-only merchant discovery and privileges platform. It lists local merchants and attracts customers by offering them curated options for eating, as well as shopping, based on their interests with cashback benefits - known as 'crowns'. One may avail of these 'crowns' for bill payments, online shopping, movie tickets, etc.

Recently, the start-up raised undisclosed amounts from FreeCharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, Freshdesk founder Girish Mathrubootham, and former Snapdeal chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran. Crownit had raised Series-A funding of $5.5 million from Accel partners and Helion ventures in May last year.

Founded in 2014 by Sameer Grover and Ashish Munjal, Crownit charges a commission on the basis of business driven to its merchants, which varies from 10 to 30 per cent. It also charges a commission from its online partners on the 'crowns' redeemed.

"We are replicating the success of Meituan (China's largest offline deals company) in India and will continue to scale using product innovation without the need of large capital," says Sameer Grover, co-founder and chief executive officer of Crownit.

The start-up says it has a user base of 900,000 and 15,000 merchants. Flipkart, BookMyShow, and Amazon are some of its online partners.

Currently, it has presence in the national capital region, Mumbai and Bengaluru, and it aims to be operational in Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune by next year. It is eyeing 20 million users and annual gross merchandise value $1.2 billion across 25 cities by 2019.