FreeCharge’s marketing pays off as app crosses 6 million downloads

Mobile recharge app FreeCharge has recently crossed six million downloads for its app across all platforms, according to CEO Alok Goel. Their Android app accounts for over five million downloads making it the No. 1 shopping app on Google’s Play Store.

Freecharge has a stated goal of 1 million transactions per day and has been deploying considerable funds towards marketing and promotional activities, which may have helped the company reach this milestone.

“I believe we truly are leading the mobile commerce story in this country with as much as 80% transactions happening everyday on mobile,” Alok said. Among all commerce apps on Play Store, this has been the shortest time taken to reach this milestone, according to Freecharge.

Here is a look at how FreeCharge has grown in the last eight months:

CHARTS

“Every day, over 80% of all transactions on FreeCharge happen on the mobile apps, at times even crossing 90%,” said Alok.

FreeCharge has selectively started rolling out a new and improved product for its Android users and are now collecting feedback on that.

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Here’s what we think drove Freecharge’s growth to this milestone:

Incentives for everyone

While FreeCharge offers recharging services for prepaid and postpaid mobiles, direct-to-home (DTH) subscriptions and data cards, it also has coupons which serve as an incentive to many customers. Both are effective draws for customers.

Effective advertising and campaigns:

FreeCharge’s advertisements are unique, quirky and appeal to their target audience. A case in point is their “Recharge nahin Free Charge,”ad.

Another was the “FreeCharge - Delivering Small Joys” campaign where the company identified a few people in Delhi, who were staying away from their loved ones and could not afford to call them on a daily basis. Each of them were gifted INR 3000 recharge on their phones so that they could call their family and friends whenever they wanted. One could see the impact that this small gesture had on the faces of the lucky recipients.

Do you have any other thoughts on how FreeCharge achieved this growth? Do share it with us in the comments below.