Online marketplace Snapdeal on Wednesday said it has acquired mobile recharge platform Freecharge. The company did not disclose the financial deal, but claimed it as the largest acquisitions in the Indian consumer internet space.
As per sources, the deal is in the range of around $400 million and the buy out is based on a stock and cash deal. Earlier, there were media reports that Snapdeal was planning to acquire Mumbai-based Freecharge for around $450 million. This is the tenth acqusiiton of Snapdeal, the company has earlier acquired smaller companies like RupeePower, GoJavas, Exclusively.in among others.
Till date, the largest e-commer deal in the country was acquisition of Myntra by Flipkart for $300 million deal in May 2014. According to the company, with the closure of the deal Snapdeal will become the largets m-commerce entity in the country.
Speaking on the acquisition, Kunal Bahl, Co-Founder & CEO of Snapdeal said “At Snapdeal, we are building an ecosystem that power billions of digital commerce transactions in the country in the coming years. With this game-changing partnership with FreeCharge, we have significantly enhanced our user base and now offer all our customers access to the widest selection of products and services online.”
FreeCharge will continue to function as an independent platform and all aspects of FreeCharge’s shopping experience will remain intact. FreeCharge was founded in 2010 by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon and has raised over $120 million in funding in the last 4 years. The company is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Ru Net, Sofina, Valiant Capital and Tyborne.
“FreeCharge is at the forefront of the mobile commerce revolution which is taking place in India right now. We have been ahead of the curve and as a result, 85 per cent of our transactions originate from mobile, these transactions have very high repeat customer behavior,” said Kunal Shah, Co-Founder & CEO,FreeCharge.
Delhi-based Jasper Infotech which owns Snapdeal has partnered with several global investors and individuals such as SoftBank, BlackRock, Temasek, eBay Inc., Premji Invest, Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mr. Ratan Tata, among others.
