Tiger Global-backed Cred acqui-hires investment tech firm Spenny

By Aman Rawat

  • 23 Jun 2023
Kunal Shah, founder of Cred | Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah-founded fintech unicorn Cred, which counts Sofina, Tiger Global, FalconEdge and Dragoneer as among its investors, on Friday said it has acqui-hired micro-savings platform Spenny.

The deal will see a few key members of Spenny joining Cred’s product team, a person aware of the development told VCCircle. 

“The work Cred and Kunal Shah have done to inculcate positive financial behaviour has been an inspiration…,” Rathin Shah, co-founder and chief executive officer of Spenny, said in a tweet on Friday. 

Four-year-old Spenny was founded by Rathin Shah and Gaurav Arora. The micro-savings and investment platform helps users save by investing the spare change from their daily digital transactions. The investments are made into a diversified portfolio, automatically. It also let its users directly invest in assets like digital assets and mutual funds with a minimum investment sum of just Rs 10. 

The startup was a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch. It pitted against the likes of fintech app Jar and saving and investment app Gullak. 

Meanwhile, Cred, which was founded by Freecharge co-founder Kunal Shah, has been looking to double down on its lending business. The startup was reported to be in talks with multiple investors, including Singapore’s GIC to bag $70 million for its non-banking financial company (NBFC) Newtap Technologies. 

At present, the company is also looking to better its monetisation efforts in a bid to improve its bottom line. Its net loss widened to Rs 1,279.6 crore in the financial year 2021-22 from Rs 524 crore in the fiscal before. On the other hand, its revenue from operations grew 4.4x to Rs 393.6 crore in FY22. It is yet to file its financial report for FY23 with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). 

The Bengaluru-based company is aiming to improve its monetization from existing users by offering them more products, even as it grows its community. And Spenny’s acquirhire could fasten its product launch timelines. 

In 2021, Cred closed a round of roughly $251 million as a part of its Series E round, co-led by Tiger Global Management and Falcon Edge Capital.