Freecharge, Freshdesk founders invest in O2O platform Crownit

Mumbai, Aug 26 (PTI) Freecharge founders Kunal Shahand Sandeep Tandon, and Freshdesk founder GireeshMathrubootham 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 Chandrasekaranhas also invested in the venture, the company said in astatement. "We are building India’s largest offline deals companyusing app-only cost efficient cash-back approach. We arereplicating the success of Meituan (China’s largest offlinedeals company) in India. We will continue to scale usingproduct innovation without the need of large capital," SameerGrover, founder and CEO, Crownit said. Crownit primarily targets offline merchants’ segmentwith direct consumer discounts and deals category in India. Launched in July-2014, Crownit has seen widespreadgrowth across four cities including Delhi, Mumbai andBangalore. Crownit offers its users cashback at local merchants,and customers can redeem their crowns (cashback) by shoppingonline, book movie tickets, pay their bills and more. Crownit claims it has over 9,00,000 users and has over15,000 merchants listed on the platform. It targets to have 20 million users and drive USD 1.2billion of annual gross merchandise value across 25 cities inIndia by 2019. PTI DSK SR ARS ANUBAS