Kylee McIntyre · · 2 min readThe struggle is real in college. A product discovery portal just raised funding to help
Ah, college life. Years of being stuck in the crack between adolescence and independence. For many students, their time in university means pinching every penny until it squeals and cries. Your average ecommerce deal still might not be enough to alleviate the student struggle.
I’m not crying – my wallet’s crying.
Bangalore-based PaisaWapas tries to tackle that problem from multiple angles. It’s a product discovery platform for students that helps them find courses, success stories, and deals to help them out mentally and financially. The startup, launched in May 2015, offers additional deals when its users shop at its over 300 partner stores, including Flipkart, Amazon, Jabong, MakeMyTrip, and Airbnb. It’s just raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from Vividhity Ventures, a group of IIT-BHU alumni, and executives from Infosys and Dell.
Your average ecommerce deal still might not be enough to alleviate the student struggle.
So far, PaisaWapas, which roughly translates from Hindi as “money back,” is the only startup Vividhity Ventures has invested in by name. The firm’s other investments include an unnamed organic retail startup and a for-profit social enterprise.
The startup plans to put the investment toward increasing team numbers, expanding its university network to over 200 colleges, and continuing to grow its network in education.
Founded by IIT alums Shankar Kotuli (IIT-Rookee) and Ashish Kumar (IIT-Khargapur), PaisaWapas is working with 50 student partners in and around 30 colleges around India. The colleges include IIT-Roorkee, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Delhi, and Manipal University. Shankar previously worked as head of technology at tutoring company Vedantu for four years.
India loves cashback. Besides companies like Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal offering cashback deals within their sites, separate startups like CashKaro, GoPaisa, and Pennyful have arisen just to offer cashback deals and coupons.
Editing by C. Custer
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