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Mumbai-based payment app FreeCharge has received $57.2 Mn (INR 390 Cr) from Snapdeal’s parent company, Jasper Infotech, as per documents filed in the last week of December, 2016 at the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
A mail sent to FreeCharge seeking queries about the investment awaited response at the time of publishing.
Founded in 2010 by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, FreeCharge is a payment wallet that allows the online facility of recharging any prepaid mobile phone, postpaid mobile, DTH, and data cards in India.
In April 2015, Snapdeal acquired Freecharge for nearly $450 Mn. Before its acquisition, FreeCharge had secured funding from Sequoia Capital, Tybourne Capital Management, and San Francisco-based fund Valiant Capital Management.
The investment follows reports of May 2016, that Snapdeal was looking to raise about $300 Mn for FreeCharge, and many Chinese firms and sovereign funds showed investment interests to gain outsized returns. Recently FreeCharge claimed that the average wallet balance on its platform increased 12 times since demonetisation.
In December, 2016 there was a buzz that Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba was in talks to buy Snapdeal. Earlier in December 2016, it was reported that PayPal too was looking to buy a 25% stake in FreeCharge. However a day later, FreeCharge dismissed the reports.
Other players in the online recharge space include iReff, Paytm, MobiKwik and more.
(This development was reported by ET.)
