This is what Snapdeal shopped for Rs 2800 cr on Wednesday, its most expensive purchase till date!

This spring seems to be the season of merger and acquisitions in India. While we have heard about several of them, the recent buzz was created by one the leading eCommerce companies in the country, Snapdeal. It has acquired the online mobile recharge platform FreeCharge. Soon after taking over fashion website exclusively.com, FreeCharge is the largest buyout so far in the Indian consumer Internet sector history in India.

And this move has confirmed Snapdeal as a fierce competitor in the online retain sector. The Delhi-based company did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction, but as per a news report by The Economic Times, Snapdeal probablt has paid over Rs 2,800 crore ($450 million) in cash and stock.

"We want to target the new tsunami of users who are going to come on to the Internet. This (acquisition) improves our ability to acquire users at a significant velocity at a very low cost," Kunal Bahl, cofounder and CEO of Snapdeal told the ET.As per confirmed sources, Bahl led the negotiations for FreeCharge, which lasted about a month.

Snapdeal, which began by selling printed coupon booklets, has pivoted —or changed its business model — seven times until it hit the right note as an online marketplace. It has since received funding from some of the world's biggest corporations, including eBay and Japan's SoftBank, from which it raised $627 million in October. The deal also marks the entry of Sequoia Capital — a significant shareholder in FreeCharge and the most prolific investor in India last year — into the online retail sector where rival venture capital firm Accel Partners enjoys a head start because of its early bet on market leader Flipkart, according to The Economic Times.

(Images: Reuters)