Mukesh Bansal, Amrish Rau, Jitendra Gupta, Alan Mamedi and other angels back Cred

Kunal Shah is undoubtedly one of the top influencers in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. He can often be heard expressing intriguing views around entrepreneurship, philosophy, and life in general over Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

His past track record (Freecharge) and influence helped him to close $30 million in a seed round from Sequoia, RPT Global (formerly RuNet), China’s Morningside VC, and Apoletto.

Besides institutional investors, a string of individual investors including Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta (PayU), Ajit Mittal (Indiabulls) Akshay Kothari (ex India head - LinkedIn), Mukesh Bansal (Curefit), Haresh Chawla (Partner True North), Alan Mamedi (Truecaller) and Sriram Krishnan (Twitter) also invested in Cred.

Rau and Gupta had invested Rs 1.6 crore and Rs 71 lakh respectively while Mamedi poured in Rs 17.3 lakh. Krishnan and Bansal also invested Rs 17.73 lakh each, reveals RoC filings with MCA. Chawla and Mittal purchased preference stock worth Rs 49.46 lakhs.

Importantly, Jack Ma-backed Ganesh Venture also invested Rs 31.92 lakh in April this year.

Backing from such bluechip angels comes at a time when Cred is reportedly negotiating a $100 million round from Hillhouse and existing investor at a post-money valuation of about $400 million.

Read: Doesn’t Kunal Shah’s credit card management app ‘Cred’ reflect Freecharge DNA?

Launched in November 2018, Cred is a members-only app which gives you exclusive rewards for paying credit card bills. It’s essentially meant for the top-tier working professional who has a yearly income of over Rs 15,00,000 and CIBIL score of 700-750.

Last year, in one of the largest seed rounds, Cred had raised $30 million from aforementioned institutional investors.

Shah has been a key startup figure and earned fame through Freecharge that was acquired by horizontal e-commerce major Snapdeal in about $400 million cash and stock deal in April 2015. Later in 2017, Freecharge was acquired by Axis Bank in a stress sale for a mere Rs 385 crore figure.