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    Freecharge CEO Govind Rajan eyes 7 million daily transactions

    Synopsis

    Rajan joined Snapdeal in July last year, as its chief strategy officer, but was almost immediately tasked with running the day-to-day operations of Freecharge.

    ET Bureau
    NEW DELHI: Touching seven million daily transactions is on top of the agenda for Freecharge’s new Chief Executive Govind Rajan, as he takes over from Kunal Shah, the founder of the digital payments platform, who stepped aside from the role earlier this week.

    Rajan, who prior to his elevation, held the role of chief operating officer at the Snapdeal-backed digital payments platform, said that the company was seeing a customer repeat rate of 70%, and that he was confident of reaching the gross merchandise transaction of Rs 20,000 crore by the end of the current fiscal.

    “Our deep conviction is, if you make a consumer experience simple and secure, we will succeed in our mission of moving consumers from the habit of using cash, to the habit of using digital payments,” Rajan told ET in an exclusive chat on Wednesday, a day after he took over as CEO.

    Freecharge, which was acquired by Snapdeal in a cash and stock deal estimated at $400-$450 million last year, making it the largest startup acquisition in India till date, is seen as the focal point of ecommerce marketplace’s growth strategy, as it bids to create a complete online ecosystem of goods and services.

    “Our transaction growth at Freecharge has been fundamentally driven by sticky customers, by customers who are doing five transactions a month. Our transaction growth is driven by customers doing more than three different types of transactions a month. It’s also being driven by user experience,” Rajan said.

    Rajan joined Snapdeal in July last year from Bharti Airtel, as its chief strategy officer, but was almost immediately tasked with running the day-to-day operations of Bengaluru-based Freecharge, at a time when it started challenging the acknowledged market leader Paytm, which is backed by Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group, also an investor in Snapdeal.

    He however rubbished claims that Freecharge founder Shah will leave the company to start a new venture.

    “He (Shah) is the chairman of board. His job is to set the strategic direction, approve the direction that the company is moving towards, approve the P&L. Kunal will continue to be associated with us, because he founded this company, has a great sense for consumers. The values of Freecharge - its technology and consumer experience - in many way have been built in Kunal’s image,” Rajan said.

    The new CEO also reiterated that Shah will also act as the chief mentor of the company’s product engineering and design teams.

    “He’s always been part of our ideas generation team and our product team… He has a more free-spirited role now. He doesn't need to bother about revenue generation. It plays to his strengths,” Rajan said.

    Also on the agenda is reaching out to and ensuring greater merchant satisfaction, through building out its payment gateway, enabling discovery and pushing through channels such as chat commerce.

    “India has about 100 million organised and unorganised merchants, and we want to get to at least 5 million of them over the next 18 months… We are now building out the entire payments infrastructure. When we do it that, for a merchant it means 20% more transactions,” Rajan said.
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    The Economic Times

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