Kunal Shah's CRED Raises $81 Million From DST Global; Launches ESOP Buyback Worth Rs 9 Crore

• The company has also launched an ESOP buyback scheme for its employees.
• The funding round was led by DST Global, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Tiger Global, and Ribbit Capital.
• Last month, It had raised $80 million from DST Global and other existing investors.

Kunal Shah-led fintech company CRED has raised $81 million (or about Rs 592 crore) in a Series C funding round led by DST Global (one of the leading Internet investment firms globally) at a post-valuation of about $806 million.

Investors, including Sequoia Capital and Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst, participated in the funding round. Besides these investors, Sofina Capital, Coatue, and Times Internet’s Satyan Gajwani, also invested in the funding round.

Meanwhile, CRED has also launched an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) buyback scheme worth Rs 9 crore to its employees.

Last month, CRED had raised $80 million in a Series B funding round from DST Global, Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global Management, and Ribbit Capital.

To date, The company has raised over $300 million in a total of six funding rounds, according to the CrunchBase report.

Founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, CRED is an online member-only platform run by Freecharge, offers rewards and cashback to users for paying credit card bills.

"It’s important to acknowledge the role that employees have played in our success. We are committed to enabling wealth-creation opportunities for them and have allocated 10% of our captable allocated for ESOPs even at the Series C stage,” said Kunal Shah, Founder, CRED.

In April 2020, The company had launched two lending products on their platform --- 'RentPay' for users to pay recurring household expenses and monthly rental payments through credit cards. While its second product was CRED Stash that offers a low-interest instant credit line through a pilot with IDFC First Bank.

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Earlier in September 2020, BCCI had onboarded CRED as an official partner for the Indian Premier League (IPL) for three years. The company claims to have 3M+ users on their platform using their services. Additionally, It also claimed to have 5.9+ million customers with a median credit score of 830.

The company revenue model works on charging a fee from companies to list their products on the 'Discover' platform where users can spend CRED coins to avail rewards.

According to the regulatory filings by the company, CRED’s revenue in FY19 was nil and it burned Rs 64 crore. It operated only for five months that financial year.

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