As appeared in The Economic Times on 6th January 2016 by Madhav Chanchani.
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Riding on the back of the fast growing Indian etailing market, gifting card solutions provider Qwikcilver sees the value of active cards on its platform reach . 2,000 crore by the end of March.` The company, which counts Amazon among its investors, expects to increase this value further five fold in the next three years.
Qwikcilver has over 150 brands on board, of which 30% are online players. Two years ago, online pla yers accounted for 10% of the brands on its platform. With proliferation of online brands, Qwikcilver also sees the share of digital gift cards increasing to 60% in three years from 20% now.
“We have 1.2-crore active gift cards in circulation, which we expect to increase to 2 crore by March,“ said Pratap TP, chief mar keting officer at Qwikcilver. Pratap cofounded the company along with Kumar Sudarshan in 2008.
Pratap said the weighted average value of cards is `. 2,500. Qwikcilver, which is backed by venture capital firms Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners, charges merchants 1% to 3.5% of the activation value of cards.
While Flipkart was one its first ecommerce clients, the firm also has Cleartrip, Snapdeal, MakeMyTrip, Amazon, Hoopos.com and Yepme among its clients. The firm sells gift cards of Amazon and other brands online.
The gift-cards category has become one of the fastest growing segments for etailers. According to Amazon, the cards retail and corporate businesses has seen a 500% year-on-year growth in India.
For Qwikcilver, growth was not easy in the initial years. “We believe this growth should have happened three years ago,“ said Pratap.
The company raised $10 million in a round led by Amazon in December 2014.
