The Cure For The Not-So Common Coupon

Coupons have become game changers in India.

Yes, the ordinary coupon.

While loyalty programs often deliver disappointing results when it comes to driving profitable consumer acquisition and engagement, India-based FreeCharge has found a way to make it click.

FreeCharge users earn a coupon when they pay their bills online or when they add money to a prepaid phone plan.

You’d have to really understand the pain and suffering associated with bill payment in India to really get why this is a big deal.

India is a cash-based economy, and paying bills is done in cash. It is not uncommon for people in India to spend hours over the course of several days standing in line at utility companies and other service providers paying their bills – four or five of them each and every month. It is a situation wrought with friction and a way of life that most have resigned themselves to be a part of their life.

But then along came FreeCharge and an innovation that would provide an incentive for consumers to use prepaid products and online bill payment and eliminate that friction from their lives. Each time a consumer pays a bill online or loads a prepaid phone plan, they are rewarded with a coupon.

In addition to getting Indian consumers used to a very new way of paying for bills, e-coupons are earning green for FreeCharge by helping the company compile a list of products users consume. So when users click online and buy products using the coupons on a merchant’s website, FreeCharge gathers transaction data from that purchase. That allows the company to compile a list of specific consumer habits, which in turn benefits the consumer by giving them the most targeted ads possible. And that gives FreeCharge a competitive edge over larger competitors like Google and Facebook.

Consumers and investors alike are simply loving these targeted ads.

Currently, the app, which is only available to consumers in India, has been downloaded 10 million times and is used by over 20 million consumers. Investors are plowing money into the company which just raised a $80 million Series C fundraising round, following a $33 million Series B round back in September, bringing the total amount raised to roughly $115 million in a little less than 6 months.

So, how did FreeCharge figure out the secret sauce to developing consumer engagement and ignite this ecosystem? (Don’t forget that the virtuous circle here also includes billers who, also, want to get in on the act, CPGs and other retailers who now have the ability to target consumers who were otherwise invisible to them.)

FreeCharge Founder and CEO Kunal Shah will help answer the question as he joins a discussion of the role of data in moving consumers from acquisition to engagement panel. Fellow discussants include Marc Freed-Finnegan, the co-founder and CEO of Index and Steve Allocca, the GM Global Credit of PayPal, led by moderator Nir Eyal, the author of “Hooked” at The Innovation Project 2015 panel “From Acquisition to Engagement.”

Click here to listen in on this off-the-record discussion, only at The Innovation Project 2015.