India fintech player Cred closes $140m Series F
Cred, an India-based credit card rewards provider, has closed a USD 140m Series F round that includes a secondary component intended to facilitate exits for existing investors.
GIC led the round, with participation from existing backers Tiger Global Management, Sofina Ventures, Alpha Wave Global, and Dragoneer Capital. China-based 5Y Capital - which first invested around the time of Cred's founding in 2018 - confirmed the round has closed but did not say whether it had exited. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.
A number of recent growth-stage rounds in India have seen Chinese investors offload their shares. Most recently, Cashify, a used smart phone reseller, raised a USD 90m Series E that facilitated exits for the likes of 5Y, Shunwei Capital, and CDH Investments.
Secondaries specialist NewQuest Capital Partners, which led Cashify's Series E, has noted an uptick in such transactions amid bilateral tensions between India and China. NewQuest currently attributes about 25% of its deal flow in the country to this phenomenon, compared to 10-20% in the first half of last year.
Cred's new funding round - which values the company at USD 6.4bn - will be used to expand the company's business lines and fuel its future growth. Last October, the company raised a USD 251m Series E, led by Tiger Global and Alpha Wave, at a post-money valuation of $4 billion. At the time of its Series C in January 2021 and its Series D in April 2021, Cred was valued at USD 800m and USD 2.2bn, respectively.
Cred was founded by Kunal Shah, a financial technology veteran who previously served as an advisor at Sequoia Capital India. Sequoia participated in the company's seed round in 2018 alongside RuNet and Ribbit Capital.
Subsequent investors include Greenoaks Capital, General Catalyst, Gemini Investment, Hillhouse Capital, DST Global, Insight Partners, Coatue Management, RTP Global, Marshall Wace, and Steadfast Venture Capital.
The company's core offering is an app that provides cash and product rewards to users when they pay their credit card bills. The idea is to help merchants engage with consumers and allow financial institutions to cross-sell.
The service is offered on a club membership basis, requiring full name and mobile number registration plus a credit score check. At the time of the Series E, the user base included 7.5m members or about 30% of India’s credit card holding population.
Last year, it launched Mint, a peer-to-peer lending service that enables customers to lend to other individuals on the platform at an “inflation-beating” rate. Mint is a partnership with non-bank lender LiquiLoans. It allows individual investors to put in as little as INR100,000 ($1,335) with an option to withdraw at any time and claim returns of up to 9% within one working day.
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