Axis Bank acquires payments wallet FreeCharge for $60M
As part of the acquisition, 200 employees from FreeCharge will be joining Axis Bank and subject to regulatory approvals the acquisition is expected to conclude by the end of September this year. In a report, Axis Bank has stated that the decision of merging FreeCharge with the bank’s existing wallet or operating it as a separate entity will be taken post regulatory discussions. However, Gadgets 360 claims that Shikha Sharma, MD and CEO of Axis Bank, who has recently been reappointed, said that the company is excited about FreeCharge’s capabilities, technology, customer base and would like to continue with the brand. FreeCharge claims to have over 50 million wallet customers but had been lagging behind Alibaba and SoftBank backed Paytm, which has over 225 million customers, and another peer in the category, MobiKwik. Last year FreeCharge stated to have revenues worth $12 million and a gross merchandize value of $420 million. “The choice we made didn’t work out as planned for several reasons but super proud of what we achieved as a team and product. We grew 3x on almost all metrics post exit with low capital at hand. Happy about the news and wish FreeCharge a great success with Axis Bank,” said Kunal Shah, Founder, FreeCharge said on his Facebook page..@AxisBank announces the acquisition of @FreeCharge, to offer a world class mobile payments app, backed by the trust of a bank @1kunalbahl pic.twitter.com/svcGwV0VoM
— Axis Bank (@AxisBank) July 27, 2017
27 months ago, team at FreeCharge was neck to neck with top player and had the choice of going solo with 95M dollars we…
Posted by Kunal Shah on Wednesday, 26 July 2017