Cred (company)

Last updated

Dreamplug Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
CRED
Company type Private
Industry
  • Financial technology
  • Payments
Founded2018;7 years ago (2018)
Founder Kunal Shah
(Founder & CEO)
Headquarters Bangalore, Karnataka,
India
RevenueIncrease2.svg2,473 crore (US$290 million) (FY24) [1]
Increase Negative.svg−1,347 crore (US$−160 million) (FY23) [1]
Number of employees
800
Website cred.club

Dreamplug Technologies Pvt. Ltd. d/b/a CRED is an Indian fintech company, based in Bangalore. [2] [3] [4] Founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, [5] [6] it is a reward-based credit card payments app. [7] CRED also allows users to make house rent payments [8] and provides short-term credit lines. [9]

Contents

As of 2024, the company is valued at around $6.4 billion. [10]

History

Cred was started in 2018 by Kunal Shah. By 2021, the company had grown to 5.9 million users. It became a popular platform for credit card users in India, handling around 20% of all credit card bill payments in the country. [11]

Funding and financial results

Funding

Cred raised funding from DST Global, [12] Sequoia Capital (India), [13] [14] and Tiger Global, [15] among other investors, through the four rounds of private funding so far. [16] Cred posted losses of ₹360.31 crore in the 2020 fiscal year (FY20), [17] caused primarily due to high expenditure on marketing and advertising. [18]

In October 2021, Cred started to seek new investors, reporting a $5.5 billion valuation, up from $2.2 billion recorded in April 2021. [19] [20]

Kunal Shah is also an investor in an AI led adtech influencer marketing platform Kofluence. The company had raised a pre-series funding of $4 Million as of 8 February 2022. [21]

In June 2022, CRED raised $80 million in a Series F funding round led by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, GIC. The Series F funding round will value the company at around $6.4 billion. [22]

InvestorTransaction NameFund Raised [23] Valuation
Sequoia Capital IndiaSeed$30MNot Revealed
Sequoia Capital, RTP Ventures, and 25 othersSeries A$636K
Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and seven othersSeries B$120MIncrease2.svg $450 Million
DST Global, Tiger Global Management, and seven othersSeries C$81MIncrease2.svg $806 Million
Coatue, Insight Partners, and nine othersSeries D$215MIncrease2.svg $2.2 Billion
Tiger Global Management, Marshall Wace, and eight othersSeries E$251MIncrease2.svg $4.01 Billion
GIC Singapore, Tiger Global Management, and three othersSeries F$80MIncrease2.svg $6.4 Billion

Marketing and reception

Cred became the official sponsor for the Indian Premier League for four years from 2020 to 2023. [24] In 2021, Cred's advertising content and videos, made in-house featuring Indian celebrities, [25] [26] [27] generated significant discourse in news and social media [28] [29] [30] [31] due to its peculiarity, which was both criticized [32] and praised. [33] Cred has received criticism for being overvalued and lacking a sound monetization strategy. [34] [35]

Mergers and acquisitions

In 2021, Cred acquired expense management startup Happay in December and a liquor delivery startup HipBar. [36] In November 2024, the company sold Happay to MakeMyTrip for an undisclosed amount. [37]

In December 2022, Cred acquired a 100% stake in CreditVidya that offers lending as a service. This is to allow Cred to expand its customer base and ecosystem as CreditVidya, which caters to customers who do not have a credit score. [36]

In July 2023, Cred acquired savings and investment platform Spenny and expanded in the lending and wealthtech space further. [38]

In February 2024, Cred acquired online wealth management startup Kuvera for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, Cred entered into the mutual funds market. [39]

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References

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