Nothing Grey About It: For Cashify, The Future Is Circular

There is a particular kind of audacity required to walk into a market already owned by everyone and no one at once. India’s used smartphone trade, worth tens of thousands of crores and touching millions of lives, had for decades operated in the comfortable shadows of the grey market. 

Transactions happened often on street corners in Nehru Place, in cramped shops in Palika Bazaar, between strangers on WhatsApp groups and across counters where neither receipt nor warranty was ever a part of the deal. Nobody regulated it. Nobody trusted it completely. And yet, it worked in the way that all informal economies work, by filling a void that the formal world had neglected.

This was the world, a decade ago, into which walked Cashify. 

Founded by Mandeep Manocha, Nakul Kumar and Amit Sethi in 2013, Cashify started out with a simple but radical idea: what if buying a used smartphone could feel like buying a new one? 

At the time, this space was dominated by murky, trust-deficient second-hand sellers, but the startup wanted to replace this with something transparent, standardised, and backed by a warranty.

The idea was not new globally. Companies like Back Market in Europe, Swappa in the US have been pioneers in the electronic ‘recommerce’ space, but executing the model in India, with its sprawling informal supply chains, price-sensitive consumers, and deep-rooted distrust of “used” goods, was a different challenge entirely.

Today, Cashify stands on the cusp of proving that the bet was right.

With revenue crossing ₹1,000 Cr and the company claiming profitability in FY26, Cashify is planning to file for an IPO that could value it between ₹1,500 Cr and ₹1,800 Cr. 

The market itself has changed over the past 13 years. In fact, Manocha claims that the maturity in just the last three years is staggering. 

The average selling price for used smartphones on Cashify has more than doubled from ₹10,000 in 2023 to ₹23,000 today. Apple iPhones now account for nearly two-thirds of its refurbished smartphone sales.

Notably, it has managed to grow revenue by 20% YoY even as the broader organised refurbished smartphone category saw a slowdown.

“The refurbished market in India has always been large — what’s changing now is the shift from informal to organised. A significant share of transactions already happen in the secondary market, but through unstructured channels. With trust, certification, and better consumer experience coming in, this is rapidly formalising,” Manocha told Inc42.

He says that while the organised refurbished market is still in single digits as a share of total smartphone sales, it will grow by double digits over the next 3–5 years, driven by premiumisation and rising comfort with quality-certified refurbished devices. 

Solving The Grey Market Problem 

A decade ago, Cashify was the sole player in India’s huge used electronics gray market.

It was a market defined by a large volume of transactions with narrow margins comprising wholesalers, local traders, street-level resellers, and informal aggregators.

For the consumer entering this world, the experience has always been a gamble. The device was often not what it appeared to be. 

“A replaced aftermarket component was being passed off as an original part, a battery depleted to 60% health was being presented as new, or a device with an unknown past, even stolen phones, were being hawked in the market,” the founder recalled. 

There was no warranty. There was often no bill. And once money changed hands, there was rarely any recourse.

The grey market’s greatest asset was also its greatest liability. It ran entirely on personal relationships and localised trust rather than systemic guarantees. This worked at scale because the volume of transactions was enormous.

For the record, India is the third largest second-hand smartphone market in the world with yearly growth at 10% recorded in 2024, surpassing the sales growth of new smartphones. 

Cashify recognised this early. Instead of trying to displace the grey market, it built on top of it.

The Three Key Steps

As Manocha puts it, the philosophy was about elevation, not replacement: “Even though the grey market is the competition, we see it as the foundation this category has been built on. For years, it has enabled access, affordability, and device circulation at scale. What we’re doing is building on that base by adding structure, trust, and consistency through transparent pricing, and standardisation.” 

As optimistic as this sounds, executing in a crowded used smartphone market is challenging.

The first challenge is sourcing. The grey market had access to supply because it had built relationships over decades with everyone from individual consumers looking to sell old devices to large-scale aggregators who channelled devices from corporate buybacks, overseas, and OEM returns. 

Cashify had to build a parallel sourcing pipeline, one that was cleaner, more auditable, and more consistent in quality. This meant investing in a network for consumer buybacks and trade-ins, and over time, building institutional sourcing channels through OEM exchange programmes.

The second problem is quality assurance.

Building the diagnostic tech, grading infrastructure and refurbishment processes was a multi-year investment.

Manocha notes that over the years return rates and defect rates have declined consistently as the company invested in its quality stack.

The third, and perhaps most decisive structural shift was the move away from a marketplace model entirely.

“A key inflection point was our move from a pure marketplace to a full-stack model. Today, we own the journey end-to-end, from sourcing devices to refurbishment and direct-to-consumer sales through our franchisee stores and B2B vendors. This allows us to unlock significantly more value across the lifecycle,” he said.

This move also helped Cashify strengthen its balance sheet by earning better margins and, more importantly, building a reliable supply chain and thereby customer trust.

Cashify’s full-stack model meant owning every channel, including sourcing, refurbishment, grading, pricing, and last-mile delivery through franchise stores and B2B channels. 

However, this also implies heavy capital deployment 

“We’re no longer earning a thin commission, we’re capturing the maximum value across sourcing, refurbishment, and sale. More importantly, the economics improves with scale. As output increases, refurbishment becomes more efficient through standardisation and bulk sourcing, pricing becomes sharper with better data, and return rates drop because we control quality. What looks like a heavier model upfront actually becomes more efficient over time. Marketplace economics stays linear. Ours compounds,” the CEO added.

The grey market, despite operating on scale, could never compound in this way. It is, by nature, fragmented by hundreds of small operators each running their own margin economics, none of them investing in the shared infrastructure that would lift the category. 

Cashify, on the other hand, is building that infrastructure.

This structural clarity is visible in Cashify’s performance even during the overall category slowdown. 

While the broader organised refurbished market growth slowed down in 2025 (4-9%), Cashify grew 17–20%. The reason, Manocha explains, is precisely this control:

“We are not a reseller of someone else’s inventory — we are the category. We control sourcing at scale through OEM exchange programs, we control quality, and we control the consumer relationship. Competitors who relied purely on aggregating grey-market supply struggled when the market tightened. We didn’t, because we own every node of the chain.” Cashify’s CEO told us.

The OEM Partnership Playbook 

While moving to an inventory-based full-stack model gave the first mover advantage to Cashify, it aimed to solve for the trust challenge by forging stronger OEM partnerships.

The refurbished electronics market, globally, has a credibility problem that no amount of consumer marketing can solve alone.  

A brand-new device carries the manufacturer’s assurance like a warranty, authorised service centres, and guaranteed specifications. Refurbished devices, however well-tested and quality-checked by a third party, have historically carried none of that. 

This market was based on implicit trust, but it resulted in an imbalance. Cashify wanted to upend this with OEM partnerships. 

The most prominent example of this is its partnership with tech giant Google for certified refurbished Pixel smartphones. 

Under this programme, Pixel devices are renewed using Google-authorised spares and quality checks, and backed by a one-year warranty.  The Pixel brand in India has a specific, quality-conscious consumer base, and the certification programme converts what would otherwise be a grey-market Pixel into something that carries Google’s implicit endorsement.

“Devices refurbished through our OEM partnerships, like with Google for certified Google Pixel smartphones, are renewed with Google-authorised spares and quality checks, and backed by a one-year warranty. That level of certification is what moves this category from grey market to organised commerce.” Manocha told us.

Besides, higher-quality devices secured through official exchange programmes are more reliable, authentic, better documented and less likely to carry hidden defects, versus devices sourced from informal aggregators. They reduce the risk of counterfeit or cloned devices entering the supply chain, a persistent problem in grey markets. 

This also creates a competitive advantage for Cashify against competitors like horizontal marketplaces, which cannot offer OEM-certified refurbishment because they don’t not own the refurbishment process. A grey-market operator cannot access OEM partnerships because it operates outside the manufacturer’s authorised ecosystem. 

Cashify, by building the infrastructure of a full-stack refurbisher, becomes the natural partner for OEMs who want to participate responsibly in the secondary market of their own devices.

This is a global trend accelerating rapidly. In Europe, the Right to Repair movement and sustainability regulations are pushing manufacturers to build official recommerce programmes. 

The Apple Certified Refurbished programme, for example, has long been a template. Samsung, Google, and others are also expanding their own refurbishment and trade-in initiatives.

In India, where the scale of the secondary market and the complexity of the supply chain make manufacturer-led recommerce harder to execute independently, Cashify right now appears to be a leading partner for these OEMs.

The Premiumisation Engine 

After dominating supply channels and winning customer trust, the company is now witnessing a strong demand for premium products.

“We’re seeing a clear shift on the average selling price (ASP) side, led by premium devices, especially iPhones. The average selling price of refurbished phones has more than doubled from ₹10,000 to ₹23,000 over the last three years. iPhones are at the centre of this trend, accounting for 64.5% of our refurbished sales in 2024.” Manocha said.

A new cohort of buyers, including students, first-jobbers, and aspirational urban consumers, has emerged who want premium smartphones but cannot afford flagship prices. 

For them, a new flagship phone may be out of reach, but a certified refurbished iPhone that can be purchased with no-cost EMI is a valid proposition. “This trend isn’t limited to iPhones. We can see a similar momentum across flagship Android devices,” he added. 

While higher ASPs will subsequently translate into higher margins per transaction, this is also likely to transform into post-sales services for Cashify, which is otherwise unavailable in grey markets. The premiumisation trend and warranty can also lead to a virtuous cycle of repeated purchases. “The consumer who bought a refurbished phone two years ago and had a good experience is now our best salesperson,” the founder exclaimed.

Cashify’s journey reflects a broader shift underway in India’s electronics consumption patterns from ownership to lifecycle optimisation.

What began as an attempt to organise the used smartphone market is now evolving into something far more ambitious: a full-stack circular commerce platform.

“If you look at where we’re heading, we’re building a full-stack circular economy company. This is about rethinking how electronics are consumed,” Manocha emphasised.

The road to its IPO will test Cashify and Manocha’s conviction. 

Questions around working capital efficiency, margin sustainability, and competitive intensity remain, even if the underlying thesis appears strong. In a market historically defined by informality, trust is the ultimate differentiator. And accumulating trust is not a one-time proposition. 

Edited by Shishir Parasher

The post Nothing Grey About It: For Cashify, The Future Is Circular appeared first on Inc42 Media.