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Journalism of Courage
E-recharge portal Freecharge.in today said it has raised Rs 20 crore from venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
The funds will be used to add new products,add merchants who can use Freecharge to target consumers and advertise the service to consumers,Freecharge.in said in a statement.
Sequoia last year made a seed investment of an undisclosed sum in Freecharge.in.
“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,” Sequoia Capital Managing Director Shailendra Singh said.
“Some of the e-commerce merchants that offer coupons on Freecharge have seen their sales grow 50-100 per cent due to Freecharge alone,” he added.
Using Freecharge.in,consumers can recharge their mobiles,DTH TVs and data cards for internet services online and in turn,get discount coupons equal to the value of the recharge from over 50 merchants.
“There are over 600 million 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,” Kunal Shah,the Co-Founder and CEO of Accelyst Solutions,the parent company of Freecharge.in,said.
The portal has a customer base of 1.5 million,the statement said.
