As the Indian fintech firm CRED competes for millions of clients with excellent credit scores and expands its offers, it is raising $140 million in a new financing round, its fourth in the previous 18 months.
The company, which is based in Bengaluru, said that the Series F fundraising round, which includes secondary transactions, is being led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund.
The funding increased CRED’s valuation from $2.2 billion in April of last year to $6.4 billion in October, with participation from previous backers Tiger Global, Sofina Ventures, Alpha Wave Ventures, and Dragoneer.
CRED is a Bangalore-based fintech business in India. It is a credit card payment app that uses rewards that were established in 2018 by Kunal Shah. Additionally, Cred offers short-term credit lines and allows users to pay their rent on their homes. Cred has come under fire for being overpriced and lacking a reliable monetization plan.
As was already stated, CRED began preliminary conversations for this round with a group of investors last year. The suggested valuation at the time was around $5.5 billion. CRED refuted that assertion.
The funding is being provided as CRED completes the acquisition of Small case, an Amazon-backed firm. According to a story from earlier this year, CRED first considered investing in a Small Case rather than buying it.
Regarding a deal with the Small case, a CRED spokeswoman refrained from comment.
CRED should be able to expand its client services thanks to the acquisition of Small case, which runs a platform for assisting a new generation of investors to participate in the Indian equities markets.
The company, created by fintech industry veteran Kunal Shah, aids and motivates people by providing incentives like cash back to assist them to pay their credit card bills on time in order to enhance their credit scores. CRED’s offers have greatly increased during the past 1.5 years.
The firm now offers its consumers access to a wide range of exclusive direct-to-consumer goods and discounts at high-end hotels. Additionally, it introduced Mint last year, a peer-to-peer lending network that lets users lend money to other users at interest rates that “beat inflation.”
The money comes at a time when, like those worldwide, the startup ecosystem in India is adjusting to a rapid decline in the cost of startups and the frequency of fundraising rounds. The issuing of new checks by venture capital firms has been halted as a result of their growing caution regarding the declining worldwide market circumstances.
Cred should be commended for its creative marketing strategy, which has attracted a diverse range of celebrities to promote its app, including Govinda, Jackie Shroff, Alka Yagnik, and Karishma Kapoor, as well as cricketers Rahul Dravid, Kapil Dev, Venkatesh Prasad, and Ravi Shastri. Cred’s user interface (UI) has also received praise, and several modern Indian apps appear to be significantly influenced by it.
In that order, 50.14 crores, 50 crores, 42.63 crores, and 7.51 crores were the contributions made to the round by Tiger Global, Sofina Ventures SA, Alpha Wave Ventures, and DF International. GIC was in first place with Rs 467 crore. In this round, the company might get further funding.
According to reports, CRED is worth between $6.3 and 6.5 billion. As of today, the company is worth more than 60% more than its Series E investment round projection of $4.01 billion from October 2021.
The business, which is run by Kunal Shah, has raised $626 million since December 2020 and $546 million since 2021. Some of the businesses that support it are Coatue, Tiger, DST Global, Insight Partners, Falcon Edge, and Tiger.
Faq’s
$140M
Series F
GIC
$6.4 B
Bangalore
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