Freecharge.in raises INR 20 Cr. Series A round funding from Sequoia Capital

Freecharge.in, the online recharge website that has launched a new business model for online lead generation and couponing, has announced a funding of Rs. 20 crores from Sequoia Capital. The funds will be used to add new products, add merchants who can use Freecharge to target consumers, and to advertise the service to consumers. The company received a seed investment from Sequoia Capital in 2011, followed by a Series A more recently.

Freecharge.in has developed a unique and innovative business model by introducing the concept of "free recharge'. Freecharge.in offers savings to the consumer in the form of coupons from 50+ major merchants, equal to the value of recharge. Since its launch less than 18 months ago, Freecharge.in's customer base has grown to 1.5 million. The company currently has tens of thousands of transactions/day on its website, making it one of the highest transacting websites in India.

"There are over 600mm pre-paid mobile phone users in India, and we're offering them a convenient and easy way to recharge their phones or pay their DTH bills online, and we offer them discounts of equal value at a merchant of their choice. At our end, we are excited about the intelligence we are building around the consumer's preferences and the ability to target better offers to them, and driving hundreds of thousands of transactions to our merchant partners every month." said Kunal Shah, Co-Founder & CEO, Accelyst Solutions Pvt. Ltd., the parent company to Freecharge.in

Shailendra Singh, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital said, "Freecharge has created a new online model, enabled by couponing. We were attracted to Freecharge because it isn't another daily deals site, but one that leverages a very localized phenomenon of pre-paid mobile and DTH services, to generate demand for large merchants. Freecharge allows merchants to publicize offers, that consumers pay a small fee for, thereby establishing very strong intent. Some of the e-commerce merchants that offer coupons on Freecharge have seen their sales grow 50-100% due to Freecharge alone."

Freecharge provides free recharge for a range of services including mobile, DTH TV and data card for internet services. Freecharge.in has currently partnered with over 50 retailers including McDonalds, Barista, Café Coffee Day, Fastrack, Puma, Domino's, Crossword, Croma, Shoppers Stop, Pizza Hut and a host of e-commerce websites.