A visit to the FreeCharge office is what it took for us to realize how rapidly SnapDeal acquired company is growing. FreeCharge has been processing a million transactions a day and is seeing a 15% growth in monthly transactions since then, FreeCharge CEO Govind Rajan told.
I was amazed with the cool office setup they had with colorful walls and quotes all around. All teams sat in groups on the same floor without any cabin walls between them.
The coolest place to sit in the office is the hanging chairs they had.
Followed by the office visit, we got a chance to exchange words with FreeCharge CEO Govind Rajan who told us about what the company aims to do and what were their future plans.
Beginning with security, FreeCharge sad that they have zeroed down on almost all fraudulent cases. They way they have tackled that is by getting data points from banks and their own past history which has helped them prevent phishing and vishing attacks. They have a team dedicated to rule out such users who have been trying to abuse the system and a check at 10 AM everyday is done to see the statistics of the same.
To expand their reach, they have also introduced electricity bill payments in Daman and Diu, Tripura and other less developed regions of the country. FreeCharge also lets you pay for your metro train fares though that is limited to Mumbai alone for now.
FreeCharge introduced their wallet system last year and plans to expand its partnerships with merchants to enable more usage of the wallet and hence replace cash system. FreeCharge has partnered with McDonald’s, OYO, ClearTrip, Cafe Coffee Day and Redbus. Their wallet system is also accept at SnapDeal. McDonald’s partnership was one of the most successful ones for FreeCharge as it helped them gain traction when they had just started. A burger for a recharge is something that everyone would love and thereafter the company has grown its portfolio of merchants.
Competing with other players in the market is tough and FreeCharge looks to strive in this competition not by doing what their competitors do but instead they aim in easing out the way we make payments today. The level of easing out is so high that they do not want their users even to open their app to make a payment.
With that level of simplicity, FreeCharge also aims at making payments possible offline. You can scan a QR code that a merchant gives you and make the payment or you can show your QR code to the merchant to get the payment done. The latter works flawlessly if you are not connected to the internet as the merchant’s data connection would be sufficient for the transaction to complete.
FreeCharge also lets you integrate their service with WhatsApp to send an receive money. You can also use their Chat & Pay feature to do the same.
With one million transactions a day and growing FreeCharge surely seems to be one of the fast growing startups in the country.