CRED | |
Company type | Private |
Industry |
|
Founded | 2018 |
Founder | Kunal Shah (Co-founder & CEO) |
Headquarters | Bangalore, Karnataka, India |
Revenue | ₹1,400 crore (US$170 million) (FY23)[1] |
₹−1,347 crore (US$−160 million) (FY23)[1] | |
Number of employees | 800 |
Website | cred |
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 lets users make house rent payments[8] and provides short-term credit lines.[9] Cred has received criticism for being overvalued and lacking a sound monetization strategy.[10][11]
Cred was founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah. By 2021, the company had onboarded over 5.9 million users and processed about 20% of all credit card bill payments in India.[12]
Cred raised funding from DST Global,[13] Sequoia Capital (India),[14][15] and Tiger Global,[16] among other investors, through the four rounds of private funding so far.[17] Cred posted losses of ₹360.31 crore in the 2020 fiscal year (FY20),[18] caused primarily due to high expenditure on marketing and advertising.[19]
In October 2021, Cred started to seek new investors, reporting a $5.5 billion valuation, up from $2.2 billion recorded in April 2021.[20][21]
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.[22]
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.[23]
Investor | Transaction Name | Fund Raised[24] | Valuation |
---|---|---|---|
Sequoia Capital India | Seed | $30M | Not Revealed |
Sequoia Capital, RTP Ventures, and 25 others | Series A | $636K | |
Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, and seven others | Series B | $120M | $450 Million |
DST Global, Tiger Global Management, and seven others | Series C | $81M | $806 Million |
Coatue, Insight Partners, and nine others | Series D | $215M | $2.2 Billion |
Tiger Global Management, Marshall Wace, and eight others | Series E | $251M | $4.01 Billion |
GIC Singapore, Tiger Global Management, and three others | Series F | $80M | $6.4 Billion |
Cred became the official sponsor for the Indian Premier League for four years from 2020 to 2023.[25] In 2021, Cred's advertising content and videos, made in-house featuring Indian celebrities,[26][27][28] generated significant discourse in news and social media[29][30][31][32] due to its peculiarity, which was both criticized[33] and praised.[34]
In 2021, Cred acquired expense management startup Happay in December and a liquor delivery startup HipBar.[35]
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.[35]
In July 2023, Cred acquihired savings and investment platform Spenny and expanded in the lending and wealthtech space further.[36]
In February 2024, Cred acquired online wealth management startup Kuvera for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, Cred entered the into the mutual funds market.[37]