MUMBAI: Online recharge website Freecharge.in, which has launched a new business model for online lead generation and couponing, has received Series A funding of Rs 200 million 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 had earlier received the seed funding from Sequoia Capital in 2011.
Accelyst Solutions Pvt Ltd (the parent company to Freecharge.in) co-founder and CEO Kunal Shah said, "There are over 600 million prepaid 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.”
Sequoia Capital managing director Shailendra Singh 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 localised phenomenon of pre-paid mobile and DTH services, to generate demand for large merchants. Freecharge allows merchants to publicise 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 per cent due to Freecharge alone."
Freecharge has developed a business model by introducing the concept of ‘free recharge‘. Freecharge offers savings to the consumer in the form of coupons from 50+ 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.
Freecharge has currently partnered with over 50 retailers including McDonald‘s, Barista, Café Coffee Day, Fastrack, Puma, Domino‘s, Crossword, Croma, Shoppers Stop, Pizza Hut and a host of e-commerce websites.
