India's Snapdeal acquires VC-backed FreeCharge

FreeCharge allows customers to pay bills from most major Indian utilities and recharge their mobile phone accounts online. Users earn coupons from restaurants and retailers each time they use the service. The company claims more than 20 million registered users, and says that transactions grew 60-fold in 2014 alone.

In a blog post, FreeCharge said that the purchase will create India's biggest mobile commerce company. Snapdeal executives said that they hope to attract FreeCharge's customers, who typically do not use other e-commerce platforms, to shop in Snapdeal's stores. Snapdeal is also attracted by the high volume of FreeCharge's transactions that are conducted over mobile phones.

FreeCharge's backers include Sequoia Capital, Valiant Capital and Tybourne Capital, which participated in a Series C round in February that raised $80 million for the company. That brought FreeCharge's total amount raised to $115 million. The company says it plans to raise an additional $100 million by the end of the year.

Snapdeal has also raised more than $1 billion from investors, including $627 million from Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group in 2014.

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