Exclusive: CRED’s competitor CheQ secures $4.5 Mn

B2C credit management platform CheQ has raised Rs 35 crore or $4.2 million in its extended seed round from new and existing investors. The funding for the Bengaluru-based firm came after a gap of 18 months.

The board at CheQ has passed a special resolution to issue 12,952 Seed1 cumulative convertible preference shares at an issue price of Rs 26,989 each to raise Rs 35 crore, its regulatory filing accessed from the Registrar of Companies (RoC) shows.

3one4 Capital invested Rs 12.49 crore while Venture Highway Fund and Multiply Ventures pumped in Rs 6.24 crore and Rs 2.08 crore, respectively. Individual investors including Lloyd Dizon Balajadia, Madhav Prakash Sehth, Vishal Gupta, and Deepk Tuli have collectively put in Rs 14.2 crore.

As per filings, the company will use these funds for growth, expansion, marketing, and general corporate purposes as decided by the board.

Following the fresh proceeds, 3one4 Capital holds 10.95% of the company while Venture Highway and Multiply Ventures command 11.45% and 2.49% respectively. It’s worth noting that these holdings exclude employee stock options and the firm’s cap table when we factor in the ESOP pool component.

According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, the company has been valued at around Rs 451 crore or $55 million (post-money) in the new funding round.

Founded in 2022 by Aditya Soni, CheQ helps customers simplify the discovery and management of all credit products and allows you to pay your credit card bill, and EMI on a single platform.

The startup has raised $15 million to date including its $10 million seed round led by Venture Highway and 3one4 Capital in June 2022. CheQ remained a pre-revenue stage firm with a revenue of only Rs 2 crore during the fiscal year ended March 2023. However, the losses for the three-year-old firm stood at Rs 19.4 crore in the same period.

CheQ competes with fintech unicorn CRED which has secured around $1 billion to date and was valued at $6.4 billion in its last fundraise. According to the startup data intelligence platform TheKredible, it posted Rs 1,400 crore in revenue with a loss of Rs 1,347 crore during FY23.