Indian payments app FreeCharge has received $20m from its parent company Snapdeal.
The Mumbai-based payments service was acquired by the e-commerce giant in April 2015 for $400m and competes with in the region with Alibaba-backed Paytm.
FreeCharge allows users to make bill payments for a range of utilities as well as make online and offline payments across a range of merchants.
The deal follows news of a wave of as many as 600 to 1,500 layoffs across Snapdeal, including at FreeCharge, with CEO Govind Rajan leaving the company.
Snapdeal is now announcing the appointment of Jason Kothari as Freecharge CEO having previously led SoftBank-backed online real estate company Housing.com.
Kothari will continue to hold his positon of chief strategy & investment officer at Snapdeal and will also join FreeCharge’s board of directors.
He said: “The digital payments space in India is forecasted to be over $1 trillion by 2025.
“I’m excited to join the talented team at FreeCharge at such a high-growth and dynamic time in the industry and expect FreeCharge to continue to play a key role in this digital payments revolution.”
It was recently rumoured that Snapdeal intended to sell FreeCharge to PayPal for as much as $500m.
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