<div>Crown-it, a restaurant retail cashback app, has raised Rs 34.5 crore in May this year from venture capitalists Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners. The company, which is a marketplace for local businesses, helps consumers discover local merchants and drives business to those merchants.</div><div><br>According to FICCI Grant Thornton survey, the Indian food and beverage sector, which is currently growing at 23 to 24 per cent annually, is likely to touch Rs 3.80 lakh crore by 2017. In an interview with <em>BW | Businessworld's </em><strong>Haider Ali Khan</strong>, Crown-it founder and CEO Sameer Grover talks about the company's future plans and many more things. Edited excerpts:</div><div> </div><div><div><strong>The market has changed a lot since your inception in 2014, where do you stand now?</strong></div><div>We have grown exponentially since our inception in March 2014. Over the period of one year, we now have a presence in 7 cities with over 10,000 listed local merchants, a strong user base of over 300,000 on Android, iPhone and Windows. We are one of the largest curated deals offering company in the market today.</div><div> </div><div><strong>What is the size of your company in terms of capital?</strong></div><div>We had started with angel investments of around half a million dollars. Crown-it then raised series-A funding of $ 5.5 million from Accel Partners and Helion Ventures in May 2015.</div><div> </div><div><strong>What is the response of consumers? How many active users you have?</strong></div><div>The response of the consumers is overwhelming. Customers are having fun collecting and sharing crowns. We have been able to create a habitual set of consumers. We have over 3 lakhs users in Delhi-NCR. Our consumer app metrics are one of the best in the industry today. We have 3 monthly transactions per active user and 9 weekly app opens per active user.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Are you going to increase your chain, with more stores and outlets?</strong></div><div>We have over 10 thousand plus merchants across India and we are definitely going to increase as we enter into new cities and new categories.</div><div> </div><div><strong>There are other players like Payback, Foodpanda etc. Why should a customer prefer Crown-it?</strong></div><div>We provide a curated deal offering to the consumers based on their spending and eating out habits, interests and other social data. The personalized offering is something coupons will never be able to provide. We have a very strong and innovative referral program that is exciting and fun for the consumers. We also provide an avenue for the consumer to spend this saving which is credited to a closed wallet to get mobile talk-time, bill payments, online shopping, movie tickets and charity etc.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Any plan to shift outside F&B sector? And your future expansion plan?</strong></div><div>We have already expanded into the beauty and health segment. We are planning to enter into 7 categories, including weekend getaways, apparels and airlines by the end of 2015.</div><div> </div><div><strong>How is your monthly business right now?</strong></div><div>We are driving a monthly Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of $ 3 million at present. We have a target to achieve a couple of million users and monthly $ 25 million GMV by March 2016 ($300 million annual run rate GMV). The company is on its path to have 20 million users and drive $1.2 billion of annual GMV across 25 cities in India by 2018.</div></div>
