Three month old startup CashURdrive has attracted a lot of VC attention. VC Hunt and a Delhi based media house are close to investing around Rs 2.5 crore in CashURdrive, a startup
started with a seed capital of Rs 30 lakh. "While VC Hunt would have a majority stake in the startup, the media house would have only a minority stake and would help us in brand building and marketing," Raghu Khanna, CEO, CashURdrive told VC Circle.
CashURdrive focuses on advertising on private vehicles such as cars, and paying the car owners in petrol redemption cards. Out of a database of more than 14000 car drivers registered with CashURdrive.com, cars are selected for advertisements on the basis of the driver's age, profession etc., so that the advertisement on the car reaches the target group. The cars are then wrapped in the advertisement vinyl and the driver is paid in petrol redemption cards worth Rs. 1500 to 5000.
The firm expects a monthly turnover of Rs. 84,00,000 by April 2009 by covering a 10% of the total market share available, making it an annual turnover of Rs.10,08,00,000. Currently cashURdrive earns a monthly turnover of Rs.8,40,000.
At present, cashURdrive team comprises of 6 people, all under the age of 25yrs. Operations such as application of the vinyl and the printing are outsourced. The firm operates in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Bangalore and would be soon launching in Bihar, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurgaon. It’s clients include Virgin mobiles, Tata Indicom, Vodafone and Speed. The campaigns for SBI and The Financial Chronicle are expected to be launched by December.
Raghu admits that the global melt down has had an adverse impact on his business as most of the companies have cut down on advertising costs and campaigns. "Our deal with a T.V giant got dropped because of the slowdown”, added Raghu.