Bill Payment Service FreeCharge bought by Snap Deal
Snap Deal is an Indian e-commerce giant and has made one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of the internet industry in India. Snap Deal has not disclosed a price but the Economic times gave a number that the deal was valued at $450 million. If this number is correct than this is largest acquisition in the history of the internet industry in India.
Freecharge will continue to work as usual, said Snap Deal. They will keep functioning as a platform and everything will stay as it is. They further said that they have plans of expansion.
Freecharge rewards their customers with coupons which they can use to pay utility bills or to top up their phone credit. Freecharge have more than 15 million users in India and a high percentage of business comes from mobile devices.
For Snap Deal the focus on the mobile sector is a key area, while this is a good opportunity for Snap Deal, they will also be competing with e-commerce giants like Amazon and Flipkart. The company has goals of taking these customers to a number of 500 million users and the majority of these users will be on mobile devices.
The market is promising, now Snap Deal is trying to raise funds so that they can expand their services. Their goal is to capture a large segment of the market and intend to position themselves as the market leaders in a growing market which has a lot of promise.