Cred is the name of the new venture floated by Kunal Shah, who is known to have founded digital payment platform Freecharge. He managed to sell it to ecommerce portal Snapdeal for $400 million in the year 2015. After that, he has been dabbling here and there being advisor to some companies etc. Now, he has again turned entrepreneur by launching Cred.
Cred will be an app through which credit card holders can make payments of their credit card bills and accumulate Cred Coins. These can then be redeemed in multiple ways. But the app is available for only the top-tier among the public; those whose annual income exceeds Rs 15 lakh and they have a CIBIL rating score of 700-750. Interestingly, some of these details have been shared by Kunal Shah via Twitter and Facebook.
It is understood that Cred has set up its head office in Bangalore and has a strength of around 50-60 employees. Many of them were working for Freecharge earlier.
Cred is entering into partnerships with high-end brands for products and services which they will offer to their subscribers in redemption of the Cred Coins.
Shah has raised funds to the extent of $30 million for this venture and among many investors, Sequoia Capital is prominent. It is relevant to note that Sequoia is one of the companies Kunal Shah was advising after selling Freecharge. He continues to be advisor to Bennett and Coleman and Co. Ltd as well as AngelList, an angel syndicate.
Shah has made several investments in the interim and the companies he has picked up for investment include Go-Jek, Zilingo, Unacademy, Shuttl, Tapzo and Runnr. There are some 30 companies in all in his portfolio, indicating that the ticket sizes in individual startups may not be very large. There are rumours that Kunal Shah may even float his own venture capital firm soon.