CRED's revenue rises 66% to Rs 2,473 crore in FY24, cuts operating losses by 41%

Kunal Shah-led fintech unicorn CRED has reported significant growth for the financial year (FY) ending in March 2024. The startup's revenue increased by 66%, reaching Rs 2,473 crore compared to Rs 1,484 crore in the previous year. 

The strong growth reflects the increasing engagement of users on the platform and expanding avenues for revenue generation.

Founded by Kunal Shah, CRED started as an invite-only platform for paying credit card bills but has now diversified into various financial services, including lending, payments, and insurance.

Loss reduction and operating costs

Besides strong revenue growth, CRED also reduced its operating losses by 41% during the same period, bringing losses down to Rs 609 crore from Rs 1,024 crore in FY23.

The significant reduction is attributed to a significant drop in marketing expenses, which fell by 36%, and customer acquisition costs, which were reduced by 40%. The startup has focused on organic user growth, cutting costs while increasing the monetized user base by 58%.

However, net loss—after accounting for employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) expenses and taxes—stood at Rs 1,644 crore, reflecting a 22% year-on-year increase.

“Our focus is on creating deepening relationships with our customers and on many things from UPI to Garage and other products that we have launched in the last year. We’ve seen strong traction in revenue and significant improvement in our customer acquisition cost and operating losses,” said Kunal Shah

User growth and transactions

CRED's monthly transacting users (MTU) grew by 34%, and the total payment volume surged by 55%, reaching Rs 6.87 lakh crore. This growth has been driven largely by its payment plugin, CRED Pay, which saw a 254% increase in transactions.

CRED has over 11 million monthly transacting users, with its platform handling various payment services, including UPI, credit card bills, and e-commerce transactions.

“We have been able to demonstrate our ability to cross-sell different products. We only monetize a third of the MTUs, which indicates the potential to grow revenue. Customer monetization in financial services is easier,” said Shah, adding that the company aims to launch new products to accelerate its monetization strategy.

Expansion and new product development

CRED has been gradually expanding its services beyond credit card payments. In FY24, it launched CRED Garage, a vehicle management platform that now has over 6 million registered vehicles.

Additionally, the fintech unicorn is working on launching secured credit products and developing its own non-banking financial company (NBFC) business under Newtap Finance.

Kunal Shah highlighted that the company’s strategy focuses on high-quality, affluent customers. “India’s growth story is helping expand the market of creditworthy and taxpaying individuals, and we are riding on that growth curve,” he said.