Freecharge.in today announced a fund raising of Rs 20 crore from Sequoia Capital India. The company allows customers online to recharge their mobile phones, DTH services and mobile data cards. In addition, it monetizes by marketing coupons to those customers who have recharged using their platform. Freecharge has active relationships with over 100 merchants, 50-60 of which are always doing coupons with them. Its merchant base is of national brands, and not local stores, unlike daily deals sites. It has under 30 employees, with less than in sales. MediaNama spoke with Kunal Shah, co-Founder and CEO of Freecharge.in about what they plan to do with the funding, how the dynamics have changed with a big-spending competitor, how it gets impacted when telecom operators like Airtel launch their own online recharge services, among other things: MediaNama: Why have you raised funding? Kunal Shah: (We've raised funding) for working on multiple things - getting our product up to a certain level, and to expand to multiple platforms, create mobile apps, and try and bring on board more prepaid services. We're looking to add more couponing partners, and different types of couponing, and try to create a product which can scale to handle tons of transactions. We're looking to increasing our base, and get more users to come on board. MediaNama: How are the margins in the recharge business? Kunal Shah: The problem of this business has always been that it has low margins. We were the first to add couponing, and many other companies have copied that…
