Experience FreeCharge, on all platforms: Kunal Shah

Taking a cue from the fast-growing m-commerce market, FreeCharge recently launched a revamped version of its mobile site. The objective behind the revamp is to provide a level playing field for every mobile user in India who might not have a high-end smartphone, latest browser or superb network speed. FreeCharge pioneers the idea of offering native app like experience on all platforms which is a step away from recent “App only” trend in the market.

Talking of the consumer behaviour analysis that led to this change, Kunal Shah, CEO and Founder, FreeCharge, says, “We constantly gauge customer responses through research as well as by digging deep into funnel data - and we found that the speed of transaction is one of the important elements in online transactions. The new 70kb m-site is consumer friendly and empowers easy accessibility. It can be experienced on 2G on low range basic smartphones and on pretty much any browser out there.”

The revamped version of the m-site has become lighter by more than 90%, which makes it amongst the lightest in the country. Shah elaborates, “It works on low RAM smartphones irrespective of the data connection plan. The better and lighter version works on any browser without any complications for the consumers. Recharge and payments are now possible in less than 10 seconds on the revamped FreeCharge m-site.”

Highlighting the key trends in the market, he says, “Out of the total consumers, 60-70% are app users. India is facing technology evolution giving m-commerce enormous space for development. M-commerce is directly linked with smartphone prices and data consumption on handsets.”

Customer centricity, as per Kunal Shah, is at the heart of FreeCharge with its core mission to solve their payment problems, “Our aim is to help consumers migrate from offline experience to an online transaction experience by bringing convenience.”

He also believes that there will be startling developments due to the rise in the internet mobile penetration. He adds further, “Internet acceleration will double the transaction numbers in the coming months. In addition, Start-up India, Stand up India mission by the government will further pace up the growth for every start-up including FreeCharge.”

Talking about the key milestones attained by the company, he states, “We are proud to say that we are the largest mobile commerce entity in India after acquisition by Snapdeal. FreeCharge has established an innovative channel to make the mundane payments invisible. Over the past five years, we have established a chain of more than 27million loyal customers who use FreeCharge for their recharge and utility payments. The mobile and website put together works to 5,00,000+ transaction each day. With the recent revamp of the m-site and launch of electricity bill payment, we are confident to reach the next level of the seamless consumer experience in utility payments.”

FreeCharge plans a rapid pace of growth adding various other elements to its website like the recently launched electricity payment. It will soon have gas and other utility payments on-board. An intent is to add a number of payment sectors to its list.