CRED is acquiring CreditVidya, a SaaS startup that helps firms underwrite first-time borrowers, in the latest of a series of investments from the Bengaluru-headquartered fintech as it broadens its infrastructure and offerings.
The firms did not disclose the terms of the deal but said it involves both cash and stock. The 10-year-old CreditVidya — headquartered in Hyderabad and backed by Navroz Udwadia, Kalaari Capital and Matrix Partners — had raised $10 million in previous financing rounds and was last valued at about $30 million post-money.
The two firms will continue to operate independently and CRED will extend its employee stock program and other benefits to CreditVidya’s workforce, CRED said in a statement.
“Expanding access to credit is a key driver for financial progress. CreditVidya’s patented tech stack uncovers signals of trust among under-served cohorts. We look forward to supporting them in powering an inclusive credit ecosystem,” said CRED founder and chief executive Kunal Shah in a statement.
CreditVidya offers SDKs to firms that they can integrate into their Android apps and collect consent-driven data from users. The startup then processes the data and helps lenders asses the credit risk of the applicants, many of whom have little to no credit history. CreditVidya’s technology has served over 25 million individuals, the startup says on its website.
“We’ve invested in building category-defining products that bring financial services to credit under-served Indians through our partners, transforming how risk is assessed and trust measured to drive financial inclusion. In our next phase of our growth, as we build brand and scale distribution, we are excited to learn from the CRED team,” said Abhishek Agarwal, co-founder and chief executive of CreditVidya, in a statement.
CreditVidya is the latest in a series of investments that CRED has made in the past year. The startup, which offers users the ability to manage and pay their credit card and scores of other bills on time as well as access to D2C brands and loans, backed peer-to-peer lender Liquiloans two months ago, and invested in lender CredAvenue earlier this year and expense management platform HapPay in December.
CRED, backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia India, Alpha Wave Ventures and Dragoneer and valued at $6.4 billion, also engaged with Amazon-backed Smallcase earlier this year, initially to explore an investment and later for a majority acquisition, TechCrunch reported earlier. The talks didn’t materialize into a deal after Smallcase’s board declined the offer, according to two people familiar with the matter.
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