Decoding CRED’s Series C funding round

In January, Credit card bill payment app CRED announced its Series C round led by DST Global. While the company didn’t disclose much details of the financing round, Fintrackr has decoded the numbers from its regulatory filings.

CRED has passed a special resolution to allot 2,52,305 Series C preference shares at an issue price of Rs 223,791.52 each to raise Rs 600.3 crore or $82.74 million ($1= Rs 72.55) from eight investors. DST Global spearheaded the round with an infusion of Rs 258.76 crore whereas Tiger Global has put in Rs 98.66 crore.

New York-based investment management company Coatue has invested Rs 72.09 crore and Sofina Venture participated with Rs 56.91 crore. CRED’s early backers Sequoia Capital and Ribbit have poured in Rs 39.84 crore each. 

American venture capital firm General Catalyst has invested Rs 18.97 crore whereas Stak3 International contributed Rs 15.17 crore. Fintrackr’s estimates show that CRED has been valued in the range of Rs 5,732- 5,840.3 crore ($790-805 million) in the round. 

Launched in late 2018, CRED lets users pay credit card bills and earn coins that can be redeemed via offerings from the company’s partners on its platform. It claims to have a customer base of 5.9 million and cornered 20% of all credit card bill payments in India. 

The platform has over 1,300 brands as its partners. In January, CRED also bought back $1.2 million worth of employee stock options (ESOPs). Employees who hold vested stocks were eligible to sell up to 50% of their vested ESOP shares in the company.

Since CRED is currently pre-revenue, it posted an operating revenue of Rs 52 lakh with a loss of Rs 396 crore during FY20. It’s worth noting that the company floated two subsidiaries - Dreamplug Advisory Solutions and Dreamplug AA Tech Solutions - to venture into investment advisory and account aggregation business in what appears to be a step to generate revenue in FY21.