The Bengaluru-headquartered credit card bill payment platform CRED, has reportedly raised $80 million in a funding round led by existing investor partners of DST Global.
According to a report by TechCrunch, the latest Series C financing round saw participation from the company’s other already existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and Ribbit Capital.
The company’s valuation has now increased to $800 million, which is almost double compared to last year’s valuation of $450 million for the Series B funding round in which the company raised $120 million.
CRED was founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, who also co-founded Freecharge, a fintech company similar to Paytm. CRED is available as an app on both iOS and Android. The credit card payment platform helps users pay their credit card bills on time and receive rewards in return.
CRED members can earn two different kinds of rewards on the platform: CRED coins and gems. The coins are earned by paying credit card bills, and the user will be rewarded with 1 CRED coin for every rupee paid. CRED gems can be earned by referring people to CRED; for every referral who makes a bill payment, the user will receive 10 gems in return.
The rewards can then be used on the platform’s own e-commerce store called CRED Store. The two year old startup already has over 1,300 brands as partners. Some of the company’s partner brands include, Myntra, Puma, Samsung, Cure.Fit, Ajio, and Tata Cliq.
The company’s business model is centered around bringing valuable customers and its partner brands closer. The interface and presentation of the app itself shows that the company is marketing itself as a premium service, targeting a specific demographic.
This becomes even more apparent when one reads the requirements to gain the platform’s membership. CRED is not available to all credit card users in India, as one needs to have an Experian credit score of 750 or above in order to qualify for its membership.
Anmol Maini, a San-Francisco based engineer, says that CRED already has richest Indians as customers. “CRED has a community of the richest and most creditworthy individuals, a thriving marketplace with premium products and services, and their own credit card product & membership with better digital & physical rewards,” wrote Maini, in a blog post containing a detailed analysis of CRED.
The latest funding round results, which almost doubled the valuation of the company, suggest that the investors trust CRED’s ability to grow and sustain in the market. The platform also gained a large number of new members in this IPL season. Shailendra J Singh, VC at Sequoia India, tweeted in September that the CRED received 6-7x increase in daily sign-ups after the launch of their IPL advertising campaigns.
