the season online travel aggregator yatra has rolled out a promotional offer of 100 per cent cashbacks on tickets booked through its app chinese handset maker xiaomi has announced cashback offer during this festive season and if you thought that its only ecommerce players who are dangling the carrot of cashback then heres a reality check last month tata motors launched up to 100 per cent cashback offers on its range of cars including safari storme bolt genx nano and indigo mahindra mahindra too has been running a cashback scheme for its twowheelers however all are not enthused by cashback strategy rahul narvekar chief executive indianroots an online marketplace for indian fashion believes that success stories around cashback promotion are not indicative of business model success for an ecommerce company since it does not imply an increase in revenues but only an increase in the number of transactions cashback works better for horizontal players such as flipkart amazon or paytm where the customer can use the cash thats come back to her to buy a variety of services and products across categories admits narvekar however for a vertical player its success remains dubious indianroots tried a 100 per cent cashback offer in july this year but it did not work as well as expected he concedes a vertical player like indianroots needs to be cognizant of what value we can offer to customers if any through a cashback programme says narvekar ashok reddy grabon too feels that while the biggies like paytm and snapdeal are moving to a cashback model its not going to become the flavour of the season other brands will continue with their business models he avers adding that most of the players wont tweak their businesses just because their competitors are offering cashback tell this to vashishtha of paytm and he would beg to differ so far cashback has struck the right chord with indian audiences he says but to truly leverage its power companies have to ensure that customers get true transparent value he adds discounts and cashbacks that are mere delusions will not only fail to attract customers but will also lead to a loss of trust which can be highly detrimental to the longterm health of any venture he says cashback that offers true valueformoney he concludes with the potential for customer retention is the new gamechanger in indian ecommerce by rajiv singh et bureau published on nov 8 2015 at 1003 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etretail app get realtime updates save