After months of negotiations, FreeCharge has been finally acquired by Axis Bank in a deal of $62 Million. Kunal Bahl, founder & CEO of Sanpdeal made this announcement through his twitter handle.
Happy to announce the partnership between Axis Bank and Freecharge. A great institution taking a fantastic business ahead! Kudos to FC team!
— Kunal Bahl (@1kunalbahl) July 27, 2017
According to a report by PTI, the acquisition of FreeCharge business would give Axis Bank access to about 52 million (Paytm has 240 Million users) mobile wallet holders of FreeCharge as well as about 150 to 200 professionals.
As per Office Chai reports, FreeCharge founder Kunal Shah, who’d stepped aside from the daily running of the company, also mused about his choice to sell FreeCharge to Snapdeal in 2015. “27 months ago, team at FreeCharge was neck to neck with top player and had the choice of going solo with $95 Million we had in bank or merge with a larger company to have step function growth. We chose to merge,” he wrote on Facebook. “Most internet exits in India have been due to distress or common investors wanting to cut losses and merge their portfolio companies, but we had none of that situation and we chose this path to become bigger.”
Shah admitted that it might not have been the best decision. “Didn’t work out as planned but super proud of what we achieved as a team and product and wish it great success with Axis.”
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On the other part, Snapdeal is also struggling for an acquisition with Flipkart or Infibeam (in talk with). This acquisition of Freecharge gives some hope to the founders & investors as Axis Bank has deep pockets and they are public company. Rival of Freecharge, Paytm converted itself into bank few days back and growing like anything with approx. 240 Million active users, alarming a tough situation for banks also. Probably, this can be one of the mighty reason why Axis Bank acquired Freecharge, but still its not easy for them to compete Paytm at the times. Paytm Founder Vijay Rajsekhar said, “he is focusing on the customer acquisition and growth of business, profitability will come in its way later.”
