A deal for students
Students have limited spending power. However, no platform deals exclusively for students.
BigDeal plans to fill that vacuum and connect students with merchants.
Last week, it raised an undisclosed amount of money in a pre Series-A round from EVC Ventures. The round was led by Anjli Jain, managing partner, EVC Ventures.
It offers deals to students across sectors like food & beverage, travel, mobile recharges and e-commerce platforms. Discounts ranges from five to 40 per cent, depending on segment.
The company makes money by charging its merchants a commission on every transaction, which varies from one to 20 per cent. Currently, it offers deals from about 500 merchants, which includes Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm.
The start-up, founded in October 2015, by Aashish Singh, will use the funding to expand the team and enhance its technology, customer and merchant acquisition.
Recently, the start-up upgraded its I— MADE platform, a government-academic — industry initiative to help educational institutions develop mobile solution for students and faculty. This will help BigDeal widen its user base.
“In India not every college has its own application and it will take time to build a tech-savvy ecosystem,” says Singh and considers this to be a challenge.
Based in Gurgaon, the start-up has 12 employees and is in 25 colleges in India and aims to generate 1,000 transactions a day with 80 per cent repeat users, within three months.