Axis Bank has acquired popular payment wallet, Freecharge today for Rs. 385 crore. Axis Bank has made an all-cash deal with the Snapdeal owned payment wallet company. It would be interesting to see how Axis Bank integrates FreeCharge as it already has its own mobile wallet called Lime.
Axis Bank’s MD and Chief Executive, Shikha Sharma, told that the agreement was signed earlier today. Kunal Bahl, the Co-founder, and CEO of Snapdeal has also confirmed about the acquisition earlier this morning.
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
It is also to be mentioned that Snapdeal too is going to be acquired by homegrown e-com giant Flipkart. As the earlier has said to be accepted the $950 million acquisition offer last week. So, now this Freecharge and Axis Bank deal is going to second big in the Indian e-com market.
Other companies who had also shown interest in buying out Freecharge included rival Paytm and Amazon, which also made a bid for it last week. Moreover, Bharti Airtel and global digital payments leader PayPal had also been in talks to acquire the company.
The purchase of Freecharge by Axis Bank comes after the Private sector bank posted a 16% decline in net profit to Rs 1,305.6 crore for the quarter ended in June. Acquiring Freecharge would give Axis Bank access to about 52 million mobile wallet holders as well as about 150-200 employees of the company.
Freecharge, e-commerce website headquartered in Mumbai, was started in August 2010 by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon. It provides online recharge services to any prepaid, post-paid mobile network, DTH & Data Cards in India. In April 2015, Snapdeal acquired Freecharge for an estimated amount of $400 million. It was said to be one of the biggest takeovers in the Indian e-commerce sector.
