 "Now, free coupon with every Airtel recharge")
Bharti Airtel, the country's largest cellular operator, has teamed up with Mydala, a Delhi-based coupon provider, to offer free coupons on recharges as part of its move to keep churn under control.
Ever recharges, to start with, will get a free coupon on MyAirtel app that has been redesigned now. It has also added Airtel Surprises coupons on all recharges.
Airtel customers will get free coupons across all merchants who have tie-ups with Mydala across categories such as shopping, food, wellness, entertainment to offer coupons for popular brands like PVR Cinemas, Cafe Coffee Day, Flipkart, Amazon, Ebay, Myntra, Archies, VLCC, Pantaloons.
While this will help Airtel to increase stickiness and reduce churn of its huge pre-paid subscribers, Mydala expects to increase number of transactions with the association.
Over the next few months, said Arjun Basu, co-founder and head of finance, deal provider hopes to reach about five million transactions per day. At present, it does about 6.6 million transactions per month.
The Info Edge-backed coupon provider that started operations in 2009, has turned profitable, and is working on raising funds for a faster growth. "A funding may be closed towards the end of the year," said Basu.
"Every Indian should come to us (mydala.com) before they do (buy) anything. That's the vision we have and we are working towards that," Basu said.
Mydala reported sales of Rs 75 crore in 2013-14, with a profit after tax of Rs 40 lakh, after the adjustments of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Brokerage firm Motilal Oswal Securities, in a report last year, had estimated Mydala would cross $40 million or Rs 250 crore by 2016-17.
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Going forward, Mydala will be focusing on the mobile audience and e-commerce, and might look into payment solutions as a related service vertical that could strengthen its revenue stream.
The founder of Mydala has earlier said that the company may go for tuck-in acquisitions in the mobile applications and mobile technology space over the next one year. Deals, if any, are like to be in the range of $2-5 million in size each.
Mydala is now present across 200 cities which Basu said will be 500 over a period of time. Of its 50 million unique visitors about 80% are on mobile platform.
Info Edge, which invested Rs 27 crore, owns 44% in Mydala. The founding partners own about 40%, and the remaining equity is with others, including employees.