Jasper Infotech, which now owns and operates FreeCharge, has made an investment of ₹22 crore in the payments company. This is the third such investment by Jasper (also the parent company of homegrown e-tailer, Snapdeal) in the past five odd months.
As per the documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (ROC), FreeCharge Payment Technologies, at its Board meeting held on April 28, allotted 2.2-crore equity shares at a price of ₹10 per share to Jasper Infotech.
Earlier in January, the company had pumped in around ₹390 crore into the Bengaluru-based company. This investment was then followed by a second top-up round of around ₹30 crore in March.
Just like Jasper Infotech’s other property Snapdeal, the payments company FreeCharge is apparently up for sale in the market. Last week, a report suggested that Paytm has signed a non-exclusive agreement to acquire FreeCharge in an all-cash deal.
What’s interesting or rather surprising about the rumored FreeCharge acquisition deal is the company’s valuation. The rumored value of the transaction is said to be way lower than one could’ve expected.
While earlier reports suggested that SoftBank was insistently pushing for the consolidation of the digital wallet platform owned by Snapdeal for as high as $150 million, people aware of the matter said that the company’s value has been slashed by as much as 80 percent as compared to the massive $450 million value Snapdeal acquired it for. This means FreeCharge is being sold for as low as $90 million.
In the year 2015, FreeCharge was acquired by Snapdeal in a cash-and-stock deal estimated at around $450 million in what was then the largest acquisition in the Indian startup M&A landscape.
However, this isn’t the first time we are hearing about the potential sale of FreeCharge. Earlier, the mobile payments platform had possibly held discussions with global payment majors — PayPal, but those talks did not materialize. The company hasn’t even been able to attract investors for a funding round for a long time.
Even as the company has struggled to raise funds, it also faces the issue of top-level management exits. Recently, FreeCharge’s CEO Govind Rajan quit adding to the exodus of senior-level employees at both Snapdeal and the mobile wallets business. Jason Kothari, former CEO of Housing.com, who was hired by Snapdeal as chief strategy and investment officer, has been handed the role of CEO of FreeCharge as well.
