The funds will be used by the company to build an advertising platform that captures online and offline purchase behaviour and brand preferences of consumers, by offering incentives and coupons to users to transact on its platform.
FreeCharge is an online mobile recharge site which provides prepaid mobile recharge for almost all Indian telecom service providers including Vodafone, Airtel, Loop, Reliance, Idea, DOCOMO, Tata Indicom, S-Tel, Aircel, BSNL and more.
Alok Goel, CEO of FreeCharge said, "We have been able to assemble one of the best start-up teams in the country and are leading the mobile internet revolution in India. About 70% of our transactions come from mobile platforms and we are growing more than 400% year-on-year."
The company claimed that it is witnessing rapid growth, and mobile transactions on Freecharge app have grown around 30x since the beginning of 2014. The company said it has more than 10 million registered users. FreeCharge also recently acquired Preburn, in addition to Wishberg, its first acquisition.
FreeCharge was founded in 2010, and had raised Rs 20 crore from Sequoia in 2012 and had also participated in the firm's seed capital raising.
Shailendra Singh, Managing Director of Sequoia Capital India Advisors said, "Freecharge is creating a unique new category, an advertising platform with the 'consumption graph' for the most valuable online consumers. We are very impressed with the team's execution and the rapid growth and engagement of users on the platform."
Galina Chifina, Investment Officer at ruNet, speaking about the funding, said, "Freecharge is one of the most exciting companies in our Indian portfolio with a highly innovative business model that has global appeal and scalability."
The company has added Gokul Rajaram, Koh Boon Hwee, Dhiraj Rajaram to its board of advisors. Each of these advisors are visionaries and industry leaders.
