Serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah’s fintech startup Cred said Tuesday it has agreed to buy mutual fund platform Kuvera for a mix of cash and stock.
Cred, last valued at about $6.4 billion, is looking to expand its wealth management offerings with the acquisition, the Tiger Global-backed unicorn said in a statement. It didn’t disclose financial terms of the transaction.
The deal will help Cred compete with the likes of Zerodha and two other Tiger Global-backed fintech unicorns—Groww and Upstox.
Kuvera, including its team led by founders Gaurav Rastogi and Neelabh Sanyal, will continue to operate independently after the deal completes but they will work closely with Cred and its leadership team to scale its network, ecosystem, brand, and distribution.
“Together with Cred we see an exciting opportunity to fast-track building new products and features for our community while also bringing a trusted wealth management solution to millions more," Rastogi said.
Kuvera, run by Bengaluru-based Arevuk Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd, is backed by venture capital firm Eight Roads and US-based asset management firm Fidelity. The company was started in 2016. It says it has over 300,000 users and manages more than Rs 50,000 crore in assets.
“Kuvera is extremely popular among financially savvy Indians; their products and vision are aligned with Cred’s principle of investing for long-term value creation rather than short-term entertainment,” Shah said.
The deal marks Cred’s fifth inorganic transaction since 2021. In June, it acqui-hired micro-savings platform Spenny. In 2022, it bought lending-based big data company CreditVidya for a mix of cash and stock. Previously, it bought a minority stake in its Mumbai-based lending partner LiquiLoan. In 2021, it acquired expense management startup Happay in December and liquor delivery startup HipBar Pvt. Ltd in October.
Founded in 2018, Bengaluru-based Cred started as an app that lets users pay credit card bills and rewards them in the form of “Cred” coins, which can be redeemed across many partner businesses. Since then, the firm has diversified into lending, payments, and e-commerce.
It is backed by marquee investors such as Singapore wealth fund GIC, Tiger Global, Falcon Edge, Sofina Ventures, Insight Partners, Coatue and Dragoneer. Its loss widened to Rs 1,347.4 crore for FY23 on total revenue from operations of Rs 1,400.6 crore.
