Cred, an Indian fintech startup is scouting for fresh funding to the extent of $75 to $100 million. The company founded by Kunal Shah seems to have done well for itself and now wants to consolidate its position. While Cred was valued at just $75 million in 2018, there are indications that the startup’s valuation could leapfrog to $300 to $400 million, a four-to-five-fold jump. This must be a record of sorts for a startup that has not even completed a year in operations.
It is also learnt that the funders in this round could be the existing investors like Sequoia Capital and Rabbit Capital while new investors could also take positions, according to reports. For the record, the other investors in Cred include RPT Global, Morningside Venture Capital from China and Apoletto, the investment vehicle of the Israeli-Russian millionaire Yuri Milner. There are a handful of angels as well who have trusted their money with Cred.
Kunal Shah is not new to the fintech business. He had earlier floated FreeCharge but sold it and started Cred. The unique model Cred follows is that credit card users can route their repayments on the credit card dues via the Cred app and they will be rewarded with points redeemable practically anywhere. There are 44 million credit card holders in the country and Shah is hoping that he can tap into a sizeable number of customers from this huge base. Once they are in the ecosystem, Cred can pitch them with additional product offerings like insurance policies and even loans to pay off credit card dues. Shah has gone on record saying that the cost of insurance policies, at least in the car and health insurance categories are pretty high in India and if these could be offered at lower prices, the market could be captured easily.
The developments on the talks for fund raising by Cred are not officially confirmed by the startup.