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FreeCharge story: A journey from Kunal Shah to Snapdeal

FreeCharge founded by Kunal Shah is one of the most popular online mobile recharge sites in India with their tag line- #LoDoKhatamKaro

FreeCharge founded by Kunal Shah is one of the most popular online mobile recharge sites in India with their tag line- Lo Do Khatam Karo (Split your bill and pay) started out with recharge only mobiles but has expanded and offers recharge of TV and Data card as well. FreeCharge was the forefront of the ‘Coupon revolution’ that took India by storm.

Mobile telephony has grown up in India from the costly days in 1996 to today when per sec calls cost only ½ paisa. After mobile revolution, recharging became the critical business and it was widely dominated by offline physical stores. This was a great business opportunity which was caught by Founder of Freecharge Kunal Shah. Freecharge is an online portal which provides service of online phone recharging and give the customer discount vouchers of different brands of same recharge value. Recharging your mobile phone was never better than this. It not only eased up out life in mobile recharging but also in expanded its services towards DTH, Data Card and Electricity, Landline, Gas bill payments. Recently it added the service to buy tickets for Mumbai Metro.

Birth of FreeCharge

Freecharge was founded on 15^th August 2010 by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tondon. Earlier than Freecharge, Kunal and Sandeephad been working on Paisaback, which was cash back promotion company for organized retailers, one of whose clients was a store selling mobile phones. One day Kunal found that 95% of invoicing of that mobile store was Recharging. Then they realize that a big amount of traction could be gained by online recharges, especially when it could be make free.

I noticed that 90-95% of the bills were for recharge. My thought was that if this particular product was made free and that was used towards incentivizing a purchase somewhere else, it could result in creating a footfall somewhere else

Said Kunal Shah- Freecharge Founder

He tossed his idea to some retailers with whom he was handling the cash back promotions. Retailers denied him as the margins in mobile recharge business were not too high. This enforces Kunal Shah to pursue his idea on his own and thus Freecharge was born.

Mumbai based FreeCharge is controlled by Accelyst Solutions Pvt. and is backed by U.S. based venture firm Sequio Capital, Belgium‘s Sofina SA and others.

The funding of FreeCharge

Online and mobile commerce platform FreeCharge raised funds to grow through various funding. It first bagged seed funding from Tondon Group of an undisclosed amount to grow the company until it could be able to generate cash from its own business.

In 2011, the company secured Series A funding of INR 200 Million from Sequio Capital. These results in the no bound growth of company; in November 2012, the FreeCharge claimed to be doing online recharge of INR 6 Million on daily basis translating to INR 2.19 billion a year. On the same year in 2011, FreeCharge was named one of the most promising technology startups from India by Pluggd.in.

In September 2014, Freecharge received Series B funding of $33 Million from Sequio Capital, Safina and Ru-net. At that time, it was the biggest fund raised by an Indian Technology Startup. Continuing further, In 2015 FreeCharge raised $80 Million from Hong Kong based fund Tybourne Capital Management and SF based fund Valiant Capital Management and existing. Company utilized these funding on expansion on team size, innovation and added engineered heads to the team.

After FreeCharge’s acquisition by Snapdeal, Snapdeal is tapping Chinese firms to raise money for company, seeking to bulk up its digital payments platform before pitting it against market leader Paytm.

“We are getting a lot of interest from sovereign funds and some Chinese investors” Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl told.

The main agenda of Snapdeal must be to make FreeCharge it’s cornerstone of business as it builds comprehensive online ecosystem of goods and services similar to Alibaba, Chinese e commerce giant. If Snapdeal would success in this formula, it can give a big competition to its rivals Amazon and Flipkart.

The building of Freecharge

In the begining 2011, when Sequio Capital, Shailendra J Singh joined the boards of FreeCharge, the marketing strategies of company were booming leaps and bounds. This was the time when they faced one major challenge. Their technology platform was not matching upto the marketing scale. Users were facing a lot of challenge in accessing the website and payment gateway. Kunal and Sandeep desperately searched for the CTO (Chief Technology Offier) to manage at the technology front. After few months of struggle, Deap Ubhi joined the team. Deap Ubhi was well known to Sequio Group and was the ex founder of Burrp.com.

In the end of 2013, unfortunately, Deap has to return to US with his family. Kunal Shah is a great ideator. He has a great mind full of innovative and mindboggling ideas. But he was well aware of the formula of execution. Being a CEO is more about ‘E’ Rather than ‘C’. So he fulfills his shortcomings and brought the ex googler Alok Goel as CEO of FreeCharge. Earlier than FreeCharge Alok was COO of RedBus.com.

It is rare when a founder cum CEO of an Indian startup steps aside and gives the crown to someone else; but this is what Kunal Shah had done for the sake of his company by bringing Alok Goel as CEO. This is the best quality of Kunal Shah, he always put his company as first priority. After this, Kunal continued to have an operational role in the company.

After joining of Alok Goel, Kunal took responsibility to launch many marketing campaign. It went successful and company gained brand recognition. Alok organized FreeCharge in smaller pods around specific product and engineering issues which paced the progress. From this point onwards, company started aggressively hiring and built a team to focus on m-commerce.

In 2014, Freecharge launched its new append suddenly transactions got increased by 50%. This was the time when FreeCharge raised two quick funds, and they launched their first TV campaign in September 2014. Freecharge became no. one shopping app on Google Play.

Snapdeal Takeovers Freecharge

In 2015, The FreeCharge team was on the 7^th cloud of confidence on what the company could become. The board members have the plan to grow gross merchandise value almost five years in next one year and FreeCharge has $90 Millions in the bank account to get there.

But here comes the largest mergers and acquisitions deal in India; it was the merging of FreeCharge with Snapdeal. It all started when Kunal Bahal, co founder and CEO of Snapdeal contacted, Kunal Shah. The meeting took place in Mumbai along with Rohit Bansal, Co founder and COO of Snapdeal; Alok Goel, CEO of FreeCharge and Sandeep Tandon, Co founder of FreeCharge. They proposed the idea to merge FreeCharge to Snapdeal. Things moved faster and in Feb 2015, the board of FreeCharge agreed to 21 days of exclusivity to put the two companies together. In 22 days, the largest merger and acquisition deal in India was signed and closed.

After the merger, FreeCharge is able to function as an independent platform and all aspects of FreeCharge’s shopping experience are intact.

FreeCharge has more than 20 Million users who use the site to recharge their mobile phone accounts. And pay utility bills. More than 85% of transactions come through mobile phones. Roughly half of its customers have their credit card details stored on the site which makes them attractive as potential customers for Snapdeal.

FreeCharge has some interesting lesson that might be beneficial for upcoming entrepreneurs. The upcoming entrepreneur can learn the biggest lesson of Selflessness and hard work from FreeCharge’s founders, as this quality leads a normal startup into a big company.

Kunal Shah emerged as a selfless entrepreneur who gave up everything for the sake of his company. His talent was realized when he was able to let go and create an institute that could helped him in achieving his goals. Many founders face this challenge as they scale their company but the selflessness and lack of emotional insecurity in Kunal helped him to emerge as a wonderful leader. He did not have the title when Alok joined, but he did not care. He just worked insanely to grow the company at exponential rate. According to me, he is not only talented entrepreneur but also a great leader as well as a brilliant visionary of mobile and internet.

The second co founder of FreeCharge, Sandeep Tondon is also a great example to give. He was a person who was never full time, never drew a salary and yet available for the most important projects. It is impossible to find an individual who brings a founder’s DNA without any agenda. He was the true quarterback for the company and guided the team to achieve some major goals.

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3 Reasons why every entrepreneur needs to invest in their love life

Entrepreneurs tend to focus solely on business in the startup phase. Making your love relationship a priority will bring greater emotional and financial success to your overall life more than anything else you could do for yourself.

Entrepreneurs are serial offenders when it comes to living unbalanced lives.

While the tools have never been more accessible for building massive personal wealth, if you race towards accumulating millions of dollars before you start focusing on your emotional well being then you might arrive at your finish line completely burned out.

The archetype of the overworked business person working 12 hours a day isn’t far from the truth for a lot of entrepreneurs throughout their businesses’ growth.

Lack of sleep doesn’t make you noble. Exhaustion isn’t a badge of honour. Having your default response to “How are you?” be “SO busy!” doesn’t make you a more valuable or interesting person than others.

So why aren’t love and balance commodities that are focused on more often?

Entrepreneurs tend to focus solely on business in the startup phase of any new business venture. The unspoken logic is that the accumulation of wealth will lead to overall fulfillment. If entrepreneurs are lucky (i.e. hard working) enough to achieve this, they sometimes realize that they’ve arrived at their finish line having no one to share the success with.

Making your love relationship a priority will bring greater emotional and financial success to your overall life more than anything else you could do for yourself. Even on a chemical level, the dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins that are released by being part of a thriving relationship will carry you through the tough phases of your businesses growth and give you a shield against that which would normally topple you (and your business).

Here are the three reasons that entrepreneurs need to invest in their intimate relationships for greater financial success and emotional fulfillment.

1. Finding A Balance Between Striving And Contentment

The most common objection to investing in relationships that entrepreneurs tend to give is that they don’t have the time to spare.

Being too busy working to invest in your emotional and romantic life is like saying you’re too busy driving to slow down to fill up your gas tank. Eventually you’re going to run out of fuel and blow a gasket.

If all you do with your life is strive, grow, and achieve in your business and financial life without balancing that with the beauty and comfort that comes from spending the occasional day relaxing with your lover (in or out of bed), you will forever feel deeply unfulfilled. Humans are a social species and we need emotional intimacy and physical contact to thrive.

2. Entrepreneurs Need Someone To Lean On

Entrepreneurship is stressful.

Is your goal to get carpel tunnel syndrome by the time you’re 35 from being on a computer so much? Or is the goal to build a lifestyle business that gives you more freedom?

When your eyeballs are glued to your screen, your neck muscles are tense, and you’re burning the midnight oil (yet again) and your partner comes up behind you to gently encourage you to call it a night, you are thankful for the reality check.

Freedom and independence from being an employee is a challenging and noble mission. But don’t try to make yourself independent from love and intimacy along the way. It’s not an “either/or” situation. You can have a thriving love relationship while you grow your dream business with patience and persistence.

You need someone to listen to you and guide you, and your partner can be the catalyst that reminds you to enjoy yourself in the present moment.

3. Entrepreneurs Need Someone To Remind Them Who They Are

The path to owning and operating a thriving business can be a long one… but it doesn’t have to be a lonely one.

When you are writing that important blog post, about to close that client, or facing a new challenge, you might feel overwhelmed. And while it’s possible to feel like you and your partner can read each other’s minds, it’s unlikely, so open up a little and tell them what you are thinking or how you are feeling. Maybe you can brainstorm ideas or solutions with them. You may not even need advice, but just talking about a concern out loud can help you clarify it for yourself.

Your stress level can go down dramatically with a comforting hug from your romantic partner. But what you need will be different at various times, so if you are needing encouragement, express your self-doubt to your partner. Everyone’s self-confidence dips at times, and your partner will love that you have turned to them for emotional support.

They will remind you of your core mission in life. They will tell you why you do what you do when you feel like momentarily giving up. They will be the voice of reason when you need it the most.

More than just being someone to lean on, your relationship partner will be the calm before, during, and after the storm that you sometimes feel like you live in when trying to run your business.

Entrepreneurs Can Have It All

You can find a balance between your love of the freedom that your revenue affords you, with the love of your relationship partner wrapping their arms around you as you cuddle up for the night.

Can you make a million dollars while being single? Of course you can. But if you can get there even faster by being in a relationship, then why wouldn’t you?

And just like you are most likely to skip the gym when you need it the most (when you’re stressed and overworked), entrepreneurs are prone to ignoring their intimate relationships in search for revenue and societal influence.

So listen to your partner, work on your relationship more than you work on your business and their support and intuition will help guide you.

Your romantic partner will bring the sense of balance and contentment that you so desperately need in order to arrive at your businesses milestones with a smile already firmly plastered across your attractive face.

Investing in your love life is good for your health, and your bottom line will thank you.

This post was originally published in projectlifemastery.com

Image credit: www.businessinsider.com

11 Things to consider before turning entrepreneur

There no better and enticing idea than one that hints at the possibility of being your own boss! Entrepreneurship is a mindset and requires quite a bit of clarity before being embraced.

There no better and enticing idea than one that hints at the possibility of being your own boss! But it pays to run some checks unless you want the startup startling you!

Being an entrepreneur is not just about being a business owner, it’s about knowing life as you knew it… and turning it 180 degrees on its head! Entrepreneurship is a mindset and requires quite a bit of clarity before being embraced.

Come to think of it, unless one is prepared it can be quite scary:

1. You no longer are in the comfort zone of a definite salary figure.

2. Days-off can no longer be arbitrary. Along with valuable time loss, it sends wrong message to your employees or partners.

3. There is so much more responsibility when you become vital for keeping kitchen fires going in several other homes.

5. You will now have to make decisions, sometimes split second ones – this is the boogeyman of grown up world.

6. Money coming in needs to move in a cycle; nothing can be achieved unless you are comfortable with the idea.

7. With technology and global audience, the concept of work-hours and leisure may need to be reworked in the head.

8. Hiring, motivating, firing will be on your plate! Tough conversations are something you need to brace up for.

9. Make time for something you haven’t done before – you will need to make sure you are SEEN and HEARD. Welcome to the game of eyeball grabbing! All this doesn’t matter in a salaried life… Now life will depend on it.

10. Inspiring others is an art. Your motivation led to the startup. Don’t let your or your employees steam fizzle out.

11. New disciplines await you – laws, regulations, accounts, taxation … You will necessarily need to wrap your head around them!

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10 Great ways to generate business ideas

You know it’s time to venture out on your own, but what to do? Find the business of your dreams with these ideas.

Great business ideas are all around you. Just open yourself to the possibilities, and you’re bound to find a winner. To start your search for that drop-dead idea that’s going to set the world on fire, start with the following sources. These can be the first steps in your search for the business of your dreams.

1. Start with family

Tapping family for great business ideas may not seem like an obvious first step. Sure, you’ll hit them up for cash once you’ve developed your idea, but what can your aging father or cousin contribute this early in the process? Plenty. Donald Trump certainly wasn’t bashful about learning the real estate business from his dad, Fred, who ran a thriving real estate development company, says Ries. Trump had the good sense to get some priceless training before going off to become one of the country’s foremost builders and real estate developers. “If his father hadn’t provided the foundation and training [he needed] to create a profitable business, Trump wouldn’t be where he is today,” Ries explains. “Unfortunately, many people insist on [creating a business] themselves without any help from their family. That’s foolish.”

2. Get a little help from your friends

Ries says you are severely limiting yourself if you rely solely on your own ideas–especially when your creative juices run dry. This is reason enough to listen to ideas others may have. If you have 15 or 20 friends, chances are a couple of them have some incredible business ideas.

If it weren’t for Steve Jobs’ good friend Steve Wozniak, there would be no Apple Computer today, Ries points out. “Jobs didn’t know anything about computers,” he says. “Wozniak, on the other hand, was the computer genius who developed the first Apple.” Jobs had an eye for great business ideas and saw the marketing potential for developing a new type of computer. The important lesson is to keep your antenna up at all times so you can retrieve good ideas when you stumble across them. Ries insists you can make more money recognizing someone else’s idea than creating one yourself.

3. Look at all the things that bug you

It may not sound profound, but this is fertile ground for great business ideas. How upset Kemmons Wilson was in the 1950s when a motel owner wanted to charge him an additional price for each of his five children. He was so ticked off, he launched Memphis, Tennessee-based Holiday Inn, today one of the world’s largest hotel chains.

If King C. Gillette hadn’t been fed up with the tedious process of sharpening his straight-edge razor, he wouldn’t have founded the massive disposable razor industry. When he took his idea for a portable razor with a blade that could be used several times to a research university for assistance, engineers questioned his sanity. Gillette followed his instincts and the rest is history.

4. Tap your interests

Thousands of clever people have taken up hobbies and turned them into a successful business. Tim and Nina Zagat, who launched the Zagat Surveys, a publishing empire that sells restaurant guides for many major U.S. and European cities, are great examples. In the early 1970s, the Zagats were high-priced corporate attorneys whose passion was dining out. For fun, they created a newsletter in which they asked their friends to rank popular restaurants in several categories. Each year, the newsletter encompassed more restaurants. Eventually it became such an expensive and time-consuming undertaking that the couple began charging money for it to allay their expenses. That was the meager beginning of the famed Zagat Survey, which is sold in bookstores worldwide.

When you’re doing something you love, it’s never considered work.

5. Travel

Traveling opens your eyes to a plethora of potential business ideas. Leopoldo Fernandez Pujals’ discovery of Domino’s Pizza on a trip to the United States from his native Spain. Pujals was so impressed with the fast-food operation, he went back to Spain and launched his own version, called TelePizza, in 1986. His company now registers $260 million in sales, and employs 13,000 people in eight countries.

6. Keep your eyes open

When you see something that piques your interest, ask yourself, What is it about this situation that’s special? The process of zeroing in on the idea often spawns important niche markets. “Blockbuster Video’s niche is renting videos, and Bulbs Unlimited’s niche is selling light bulbs”.

7. Examine old mousetraps-then build a better one

If a product doesn’t meet your own high standards, create a better one. That’s what put Ben & Jerry’s on the map. Ice cream fanatics Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield felt popular ice creams weren’t rich and tasty enough for their cultivated palates, so they created their own super-premium line of ice cream, which is a bestseller nationwide. Just think: If these ice cream gurus weren’t such picky eaters, there would be no Cherry Garcia, Chubby Hubby or Phish Food to enjoy.

8. Take it to the streets

There’s no better place to lock into up-and-coming trends than city streets. Street culture spawned punk, hip-hop, grunge and a number of other fads that rapidly evolved into multimillion-dollar businesses. Great ideas can often be found by just browsing happening inner-city neighborhoods in virtually any big city.

9. Sleep on it

Many people ignore their dreams, and some don’t remember them at all. But sometimes it pays to listen to those inner messages, no matter how strange or unintelligible they are. You never know, you might just find the germ of a great idea. The tough part is crawling out of bed in the dead of night to jot down those great ideas before they’re forgotten.

10. Check out the Net

Finally, Web surfing is a fun way to log on to potential business ideas. “Virtually every search engine has a ‘What’s New’ or ‘What’s Hot’ section, where it lists new trends, news tidbits and hot new Web sites. “Make it a point to check out various sites daily. It may trigger an idea or concept you never thought of.”

This article was originally published in Entrepreneur.com

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