Snapdeal-owned digital payments platform Freecharge has promoted its Chief Operating Officer Govind Rajan as the Chief Executive Officer, while co-founder Kunal Shah has been made Chairman of the company. Snapdeal had acquired Freecharge in 2015, in a $450 million deal. The company offers mobile recharge, bill payments and a digital wallet. Rajan joined Freecharge in August 2015 from Airtel Money (where he was CEO), to look into Snapdeal's payment solutions. FreeCharge, which competes with Paytm and Mobikwik, had started offering mobile wallet service last year. So far Snapdeal is maintaining Freecharge as a separate entity with its own CEO and management team, however, both the e-commerce and mobile payments arms cross-sell each other’s businesses on their websites and apps. Past Developments - Earlier this month, Freecharge had hired former Amazon executive Fareed Jawad as VP of Payments, responsible for building payments technologies. - In March, FreeCharge has signed a deal with CCAvenue where customers of FreeCharge will have access to over one lakh merchants of the payment gateway. - In February, FreeCharge had tied-up with mobile POS solution provider Ezetap to enable Freecharge’s customers to make payments across Ezetap’s service points. - In January, FreeCharge has launched FreeCharge Go, a virtual card which can be used to make payments across all online merchants in India, in association with YES Bank and powered by MasterCard. - In December 2015, FreeCharge has appointed Anshul Kheterpal as its chief financial officer. Kheterpal will be responsible for the digital payments business strategies at FreeCharge and Snapdeal.
