FreeCharge founder in talks to raise $30 million for new business

Kunal Shah is reportedly looking at multiple ideas but there is no formal shape to the company yet.
FreeCharge founder in talks to raise $30 million for new business
FreeCharge founder in talks to raise $30 million for new business
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As the startup ecosystem has started maturing in India, some of the founders are seen selling their venture and going on to promote fresh ones. The latest to join this select group in India is Kunal Shah. Shah had founded FreeCharge which he subsequently sold to online retailer Snapdeal in 2015. The deal was worth $400 million then. But with Snapdeal’s own fortunes nosediving, it parted with FreeCharge for just $60 million to Axis Bank.

Be that as it may, Economic Times reports that Kunal Shah is back in business and may even manage to raise series A funding of $30 million for his new venture and the major investor could be Sequoia Capital. If reports to be trusted, the talks are at an advanced stage and the other key investors in this round would be the Russian funding entity Ru-Net and Ribbit Capital, an Indian investment company that focuses on fintech startups.

Kunal Shah was associated with Sequoia as an advisor and mentor, and that role got over this January. It is now believed that he is floating a startup that could function as an incubator and the areas chosen by Shah to work with would include consumer finance, healthcare and education.

Shah has been active in the startup space making investments as an angel investor and some of the projects he has invested in include Go-Jek, Unacademy, Voonik, TVF and PocketAces.

As mentioned, Shah perhaps is not the first one to follow this path. A startup CureFit, was founded by Mukesh Bansal who was a co-founder of Myntra before opting out and he had as partner in CureFit, Ankit Nagori, who was with Flipkart earlier.

It may be pertinent to make a mention here that both Sequoia and Ru-Net had made investments in FreeCharge as well when it was in Kunal Shah’s hands.

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