Freecharge, Freshdesk founders invest in Crownit app

Freecharge founders Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon, and Freshdesk founder Gireesh Mathrubootham have invested in Crownit, an Online to Offline (O2O) local merchants discovery platform. The size of the deal is however not disclosed. Ex-Snapdeal chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran has also invested in the venture, the company said in a statement.

"We are building India's largest offline deals company using app-only cost efficient cash-back approach. We are replicating the success of Meituan (China's largest offline deals company) in India. We will continue to scale using product innovation without the need of large capital," Sameer Grover, founder and CEO, Crownit said. Crownit primarily targets offline merchants' segment with direct consumer discounts and deals category in India.

Launched in July-2014, Crownit has seen widespread growth across four cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. Crownit offers its users cashback at local merchants, and customers can redeem their crowns (cashback) by shopping online, book movie tickets, pay their bills and more.

Crownit claims it has over 9,00,000 users and has over 15,000 merchants listed on the platform. It targets to have 20 million users and drive US $1.2 billion of annual gross merchandise value across 25 cities in India by 2019.