Founders of Swiggy, Truecaller, and Citrus Pay are among the new, high-profile backers of Kunal Shah’s Cred

Cred, the fintech startup founded by Kunal Shah late last year, continues to attract investor interest from high-profile individuals with participation by founders of companies such as Swiggy, Truecaller, and Citrus Pay to name a few.

Cred has till now raised approximately Rs 177 crore as part of its ongoing Series A round.  

This Series A round saw participation from a host of digital payment veterans in Cred as angel investors. Earlier this month, Amrish Rau, Co-founder of Citrus Pay and ex-PayU India CEO, invested close to Rs 1.6 crore; Truecaller CEO and Co-founderAlan Mamedi, invested around Rs 17.27 lakh, while Indiabulls Group President Ajit Mittal invested Rs 14 lakh, RoC documents reveal.

This month, Swiggy Co-founder Sriharsha Majety invested close to Rs 71 lakh in Cred.

In January, this year, True North’s Haresh Chawla invested Rs 35.46 lakh, Zerodha’s Rainmatter Capital and Nithin Kamath invested Rs 1.6 crore, product leader at Twitter Sriram Krishnan invested Rs 17.73 lakh, and Myntra and Curefit Co-founder Mukesh Bansal put in Rs 17.73 lakh in the startup, the RoC reveals.    

Citrus Pay Co-founder Jitendra Gupta invested close to Rs 71 lakh in Cred, in February this year. In the same month, Truecaller Co-founder Nami Zarringhalam, through Zarringhalam Ventures, and LinkedIn’s Akshay Kothari invested Rs 17.73 lakh each in the startup. 

Also read: After 3 years 'on the sidelines', Kunal Shah finally reveals his new venture, Cred

Apart from these prominent individual investors, Cred has also received funding from corporate house and global investment firms. These include Alibaba Group-backed investment fund Ganesh Ventures, US-based investment firm Future Shape, Mumbai-based early stage investor Whiteboard Capital and Hong Kong-based investment company Strategic Asset Management. 

The company has been raising funds since September 2018 as part of its Series A round. The seed-stage investment into Cred was led by Sequoia Capital and financial technology-focused fund Ribbit Capital. Other backers included RPT Global (formerly RuNet), China’s Morningside Venture Capital, and Yuri Milner’s Apoletto, along with other individual investors.

In September last year, Cred raised Rs 134.75 crore as a part of its Series A round. Ru-Net Investments invested Rs 17.7 crore in October last year while Hong Kong-based M Vision invested Rs 7.09 crore in November 2018.  

Also read: [App Fridays]: Kill the bill with Kunal Shah’s CRED and earn on credit card payments

If media reports are to be believed, Cred is presently in negotiation with multiple investors to raise around $100 million.

Launched in November 2018, CRED is a mobile platform that lets a user can pay credit card bills, get ‘cred coins’ for doing so, and redeem these coins for rewards from a wide collection of brands.

Cred is Kunal Shah’s second entrepreneurial venture. He previously co-founded FreeCharge, which he sold to Snapdeal in 2015 for $450 million in one of the biggest consumer internet M&As of the time. Subsequently, he served as Chairman for the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and later as an advisor to Sequoia Capital.

Also read: What makes CRED a stunningly designed app? The secret to building inspiring products revealed