cred app case study

CRED: Influencing Credit Users with Marketing – A Case Study

By Aditya Shastri

Cred is an Indian startup company that works on making the life of credit card users easy. Currently, the start-up is in its growth stage and is backed by some of the most well-known venture capitalist firms from all over the world. 

Lately, they have been implementing a number of marketing strategies that have helped it gather some great traction. 

That’s why in this case study, we’ll be understanding Cred in greater detail by going through its business model and the marketing strategies that have caught the world’s attention for their quirkiness. 

So, let us begin this case study by first learning more about Cred.

Cred is a fintech unicorn startup founded by Kunal Shah, who was also the founder of FreeCharge. As of today, Cred is based out of Bengaluru, valued at 2.2 Billion US Dollars. 

The motive behind finding this startup was to automate day to day transactions and help start the credit revolution, much like the US credit-dependent economy. With the burgeoning middle class of the nation, Cred came into existence in 2018 as the time was ripe to expand the young credit card user base in India. 

As an organization, Cred, through its app, works on facilitating credit card transactions of its users and rewarding them with Cred Coins which in turn can be used within its app to redeem discounts and cashbacks.

In simple terms, Cred rewards its users for paying credit card bills.

Cred also offers services like Cred Stash which offers a credit line to its users and Cred Rentpay which provides the ability to pay rent with a credit card. 

The vision of its founder is to make India a creditworthy country by paying their credit bills on time and improving their credit score. 

Now that we have a decent knowledge about Cred and its workings, let us now understand its business model in the coming section.

Business Model of Cred

We will be understanding the business model of Cred in three stages. First by understanding its use case. Second by understanding its target audience and finally about its business.

Use Case of Cred

Today in this fast-paced life, there are so many monthly payments to make, especially credit payments such as EMI of that new car or of that new house or maybe for that new mobile phone you purchased using the credit card. 

Such payments are very important and missing such deadlines can lead to very hefty late payments charged by the bank. Believe it or not, a Credit Card Company’s major source of income is the very hefty fines they charge for these late payments. 

This is exactly where Cred kicks in — making it easy and convenient for anyone to pay their credit card bills on time. 

Now that you know the use case of Cred, let’s take a look at its target audience.

Target Audience of Cred

As a business, Cred targets a very particular niche i.e Credit Card Users. 

It initially targeted wealthy individuals and created a community called Cred Club. However, today anyone with a credit score of more than 750 points can get access to the facilities of Cred and be a part of its club.

As of now, it is focusing on targeting Generation Y i.e people between the age of 25 and 40, especially those over the age of 30.

All of the current marketing activities of Cred is curated around seeking the attention of Generation Y. That’s why there is Rahul Dravid, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad in their ads and not Virat Kohli or Hardik Pandya. Likewise, it has Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor and Kumar Sanu and not Alia Bhatt or Varun Dhawan.

Now that you know about its targeting strategy, let’s now understand its actual business.

Business of Cred

Cred’s business model is somewhat speculative. Frankly speaking. 

It currently does not charge any entry fees from its users. Neither has it teased its audience with any kind of membership. However, it has partnered with various brands to whom they charge commission in exchange for giving them a space on the CRED App.  

Recently, it launched CRED Stash in partnership with IDFC First Bank to offer loans to its users.

Cred is currently fully focused on targeting its niche by aggressive marketing tactics and reward offerings such as cash backs, deep discounts etc.  Just like what Jio, Zomato and Paytm did in their growth stage – Giving hefty discounts, cashback initially for getting its audience used to its services and then finally charging for its services. 

Cred’s business model’s success can be gauged once it attains the maturity stage over time as it is the first of its kind in the Indian markets. 

Let us now go through the marketing strategies that generated so much news and talking among the netizens.

Marketing Strategy of Cred

Cred has several different marketing strategies. Some are viral marketing moves while others are as simple as releasing simple finance-related blogs and rewarding users with cashback and discounts. 

But every strategy has two things in common, uniqueness and the ability to create brand awareness & brand recall.

Cred has partnered with the Indian Premier League (IPL) as an associate sponsor for 3 seasons and most of the marketing activities done by Cred are also during the time IPL kicks off. They organize social media contests, marketing campaigns and advertisements. This helps the brand gain more exposure and create trust among the general public.

So let us now go through its marketing strategies in greater detail in the coming sections.

Banking on Viral Marketing Moves

Viral marketing or moment marketing is doing brand related promotional activities by utilizing the latest trends and memes in the zeitgeist to gather instantaneous attention. 

Sending Cakes – A Customer Acquisition Strategy using Existing Users

Imagine it’s a Tuesday and you’re working on your boring day shift job and suddenly out of nowhere, you receive a cake as a reward for paying bills. Delighted, isn’t it? 

Yes, that’s what Cred did. In 2019, Cred attempted this customer acquisition move, targeted towards colleagues of existing users. 

All it did was sending a cake to the user’s workplace, making every colleague eventually ask “who sent you this cake?” to which the user naturally replied, “Cred, it’s an app for paying bills” and thus generating guaranteed app downloads.

Cred Mega Jackpot Week Campaign

Cred rolled out Mega Jackpot during IPL 2021. From winning iPhone’s for a decade to Bitcoin. This campaign had it all.

The concept behind this campaign was to offer its users a chance to participate and win jackpots. As the name suggests, Mega Jackpot Week, Cred gave away seven different rewards such as Gold, Harley Davidson Fat Boys, brand-new iPhones for a decade, free flights for five years, a TATA Safari car, a complete home makeover and a Bitcoin!

This campaign, just like many of Cred’s other campaigns, created a lot of buzzes around on news channels and social media. 

Also, Cred had rightly managed to cash in on the bitcoin trend as the launch of this campaign coincided when Bitcoin was trading at its all-time high and was the hot topic all over the world.

Cred Powerplay Campaign

Just like the Mega Jackpot campaign, Cred came up with the Cred Power Play campaign during the IPL 2021. 

The concept was simple. Pay during the powerplay overs of the IPL game and stand a chance to win assured 100% cashback on the bill payment. The winner also stood a chance to get featured on the virtual fan box. 

Basically, Cred offered to pay one credit card bill for each IPL  game.

Mercedes GLC Coupe Giveaway

In another viral master marketing move, Cred gave away one of the most luxurious cars to one of its lucky winners through its app during Diwali 2020.

Hence the tagline… “ the most rewarding credit card payments app ever”

Advertising Campaigns of Cred

Advertising is a powerful tool for persuasion. Cred uses it to create trust and enthusiasm for their product, then uses it to sell you something they think you need. 

There’s no question that advertising has become more sophisticated over the years given the significant rise of the internet and Cred has managed to utilize the truest potential of advertising. All thanks to its creative takes, subtle quirkiness and heavy spending.

Great for Good – An IPL 2021 Advertising Campaign of Cred

This was the campaign that made the whole of India go crazy on seeing Rahul Dravid as the “Indira Nagar Ka Gunda”. 

Cred had released four different advertising commercials in this campaign. As usual, Cred being Cred, the storylines revolved around portraying celebrities in their extremely absolute abnormal behaviours. Very subtly done and hilarious at the same time.

It revolved around celebrities such as popular former cricketers such as Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Saba Karim, Maninder Singh and Rahul Dravid. Along with artists like Jackie Shroff and Kumar Sanu. 

Cred was trending No.1 on Twitter after the release of this campaign. Netizens and various popular brands and celebrities appreciated this campaign in some or another way.

Not Everyone Gets It – An IPL 2020 Advertising Campaign of Cred

Cred’s first proper foray into television advertising began with this campaign. The concept behind this advertising campaign was to highlight the use case of the Cred app and the rewards that one gets on paying credit card bills.

It released six different commercials which featured Bollywood celebrities such as Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Govinda, Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik. 

This campaign created a huge positive impact for Cred resulting in about a 700% rise in the Cred App downloads.

CRED Escapes – An Advertising Campaign of Cred

CRED had recently ventured into the luxury travel space with CRED escapes. 

To spread the word about its latest venture, it has turned to influencer marketing and has released six short-form videos so far with well-known digital creators like José Covaco, Ashik Aseem, Sharan Nair, Varun Aditya, Soumesh Pandey, and Mansi Ugale.

You can check out the video here – 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpusmPOJz2e/

Kunal Shah: The Personal Brand & CRED

It’s rare that you talk about Cred and not talk about Kunal Shah.

To give you brief information about Kunal Shah. He was the founder of FreeCharge App which was later sold to Snapdeal for a price close to half a billion dollars and later went on to start Cred. 

He is regarded as one of the brightest figures in the Indian Start-Up Ecosystem. 

As a founder of Cred and a  24/7 curious man, he has a maintained an active presence on social media handles like Twitter and Instagram. He uses these mediums to share thought-provoking tweets or something that’s sarcastic as well as indulging in conversation with other entrepreneurs.

This personal branding also had helped Cred in creating trust and market itself when it was in its birth stage back in 2018. 

Today, Cred has kind of become synonymous with Kunal Shah just like how Bitcoin and Tesla are with Elon Musk.  He also actively takes part in various seminars, discussions and podcasts to share his vision and views regarding the startup community and finance in general.

Content Marketing Strategy of Cred

As said, the aim of Cred is to make Indians financially literate and trustworthy credit holders. To achieve this, it works by curating blogs related to Credit cards, General finance and Fintech on its website.

On Youtube, it releases finance-related content under its CRED – On The Money series.

And Kunal Shah, being a curious man, releases podcast like content on topics related to money, startup, trends under its CRED – Curious series by conversing with various experts and entrepreneurs.

CRED Curious

CRED On The Money

With this the case study on Cred comes to an end, let us now go through the final points in the coming section.

Cred is an innovative fintech company that aims to bring about a change in the mindset of Indians with respect to credit cards and personal finance. It is currently focusing on the particular niche of credit benefits and aims to take the first movers advantage in the category. 

As of now, backed by investors in good faith and with its out of the world marketing strategies, the company is doing a great job in acquiring its customers through utilizing cutting edge digital marketing techniques. However only time will tell how Cred’s true business model will be accepted by the users.

Liked our work? Interested in learning digital marketing further? Do check out our Free Digital Marketing Masterclass by Karan Shah, the Founder and CEO of IIDE.

Let us know your thoughts on this case study in the comment section down below. Thank you for reading, and if you liked it, leave a like on the post and share it with your friends and families.

Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs...... [Read full bio]

I really loved how you covered all the topics of the CRED, it is very well organized which helped me find and understand information easily.

Great case study of CRED

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• Startup of the week

Cred Case Study: The Successful Story of a Fintech Startup

| 4 minutes read

An Indian Fintech Startup, Cred, entered the unicorn club on April 6 th, 2021. CRED had shown a strong footprint and became one of the most successful startups in recent times. Bengaluru, India Based Startup, made its name big, but it has its true story starting from Zero to billions. Although the road was not easy, they made the impossible possible and showed the strength of the Indian startup .

The company was established in 2018 and had a valuation of approximately $2.2 billion. Many other startups like Flipkart and OYO took more than ten years to reach a similar valuation level. 

What is their Business model?

The startup is based on the “Hole and hook model”. It is a common problem that many credit card users don’t pay their credit card bill on time. So the business model of Cred encourages holders to complete payments on time by providing some exclusive rewards including 100% cashback.

The company found the ‘hole’ (flaw) in the credit card payment system and provided a ‘hook’ in rewards. They offer attractive rewards to their customers, which makes their product a brag-worthy proposition.

About the founder

Kunal Shah was also the co-founder of ‘freecharge’. Coming from a Gujarati family and a non-tech background, he is currently the founder of two big tech companies. He was motivated to start CRED after research and understanding the loophole in the overall credit card payment system. He is also the current CEO of the company Cred.

Also Read: Startup Case Study: How Byju’s is Disruption the Indian Edu-tech Sector?

What is their marketing strategy.

The marketing campaign of CRED is universal. They have implemented an aggressive marketing strategy to improve the value of their product. Surabhi Capoor is the brand and product marketing head at CRED.

The company’s marketing department came up with unique advertising ideas that made the brand larger than life. For example, the latest ad featured Kapil Dev (Former Cricketer) acting like a Ranveer Singh that pulled viewers because no one had seen him in this avatar before. Apart from this, during IPL (Indian Premier League), Cred starts to increase its awareness before the beginning of the IPL like the way Vodafone used to do by introducing Zoozoo (character).

Further, the company was marketed through various other celebrities on social media platforms . Meme marketing also worked for the company, and thus the awareness of the brand is on the rise.

What services do they provide?

The company started with just credit card payment services, but now it is expanding its reach in different sectors. The CRED app has more than 60 lakh users, and the number is increasing. 

Listing the services provided in the app.

• It allows you to manage all your credit card payments in one place.
• The app notifies your regular payment details and due dates.
• It offers rewards and cashback for new users.
• The company provides CRED points on the completion of payment, and these points can be used to avail various vouchers and cashback.
• The payment method is hassle-free.
• They have started providing services for rent, loans, and insurance.

How Credible are they?

The company assures total privacy to the customers (claimed by the company). They deal with the valuable financial data of the customers, and they offer complete privacy on it. With such attractive rewards and enhanced security, it is trusted by its users. In just 2 years, they have successfully reached a million consumer base, and their number is ever increasing. 

What is their Mission?

The mission of the company is understood by everyone. They want to improve and enhance the credit card payment system. Despite not making any profit in 2019 and 2020, they have eventually gained the trust of their users. They used the “reward and punishment tendency” effectively to attract and establish the customers base.

CRED & their Vision

CRED’s business model is futuristic. They want to develop themselves in diversified sectors like insurance, rent, shopping, loans, and realty payments. The company also focuses on a futuristic revenue model. 

It aims to generate revenue through merchandising, commission and consulting. They can also use this vast customer base for sales pitching and generate good fortune from it.  

How are they Funded?

CRED is one of those legendary startups that got funding right before its execution. This was made possible by the brilliant execution of the founder Kunal Shah. The company has made a loss of 63.90 crores and 378.89 crores in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Despite these losses, the company is trusted by its investors.

The company has around 28 investors and 7 lead investors. The lead investors are listed below:

•         Dragoneer Investment Group.
•         Tiger Global Management.
•         Sofina.
•         DST Global.
•         Coatue.
•         Falcon Edge Capital.
•         Insight Partners.

The company has raised funding of around $471.3 million from investors. The company’s other investors are Ribbit Capital, Gemini investments, Sequoia Capital India, and Rainmatter Capital.

Who are the Brand Partners?

The company offers different rewards and vouchers for customers. It has successfully bagged many reputed brands as its partner. Some of the esteemed brand partners are:

The story behind their Struggle and Success

Kunal Shah faced a serious dilemma before starting the company. He was offered to become an investing partner in Sequoia Capital of India. But the entrepreneur chose to start a company rather than become an investor. 

The company has also registered itself as an IPL sponsor and has started building some revenue. Despite making losses in the first two years, it has continued to provide valuable services to its users. The company has a futuristic revenue model, and thus it is trusted by its investors.

Born in the family of entrepreneurs and have inherited the same. Started building applications in order to pay for my tuition. Later founded a tech company, marketing agency , and media outlets.

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Recent Tweets

Cred Marketing Strategy: A lesson on customer acquisition strategy

Learn about cred's iconic marketing strategy and advertising campaigns. read how cred aces the 4ps of marketing mix - product, price, promotion & placement..

• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="cred">What is Cred?
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="background">Cred's Background
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="business">Cred's Business Model
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="strategies">Cred's Marketing Strategies
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="noteworthy">Noteworthy Marketing Campaigns
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="key">Key Takeaways

As India's purchase power increases, people are looking for apps that offer rewards and discounts to spend more. But loyalty-based platforms are a common business model - so how can a company stand out from the competition and attract this growing wide base of customers?

In this article, we will dive deeper into Cred marketing strategy that enabled them to attract a diffused target audience.

What is Cred app?

Cred is an Indian startup that has launched a mobile app to provide its customers with services facilitating credit card transactions. Cred attempted to create an industry niche for credit card holders. Its tagline is Pay your Credit Card Bill – Receive Rewards. It enables cred users to control credit cards in one place.

Cred app enables its users to pay credit card bills instantly and get reward points as a result. Cred also provides its users with personalized spending insights, credit health advisement, and financial monitoring services. It also allows its customers to save money by tracking debt levels across different cards.

Image source: screenshot from Appstore

The main feature which makes the app stand out from traditional mobile banking services is that it rewards users for timely bill payments. For every bill paid using Cred, you get reward points in the form of cash back or gift vouchers.

Image source: Forbes India

Cred's Background

Cred is an Indian startup company founded by a popular entrepreneur in the startup community - Kunal Shah, a former founder of FreeCharge. He has a strong personal brand - which has also helped with Cred's marketing. Even today, he works on his personal branding via Twitter with content that appeals to Cred's target customers.

Since its inception in 2018, CRED has established itself as a leading provider of financial services for businesses and individuals.

As with the US credit-dependent economy, the goal of finding this startup was to automate day-to-day transactions and start the credit revolution. Cred was launched to expand the number of young credit card users in India due to the nation's burgeoning middle class.

The Cred app exists to facilitate credit card payments for its users and rewards them with Cred Coins, which can then be redeemed for discounts and cashback within the app. For paying credit card bills, Cred rewards its users.

In addition, Cred offers services such as Cred Stash, which gives its users a credit line, and Cred Rentpay, which lets them pay rent with a credit card.

By paying their credit bills on time and improving their credit score, its founder aspires to make India a creditworthy country.

Business model of Cred

Use case of cred app.

In this fast-paced world, there are so many monthly payments to make, especially credit cards or EMI on a new car, house, or maybe a new mobile phone purchased with a credit card.

Missing such deadlines can result in very hefty late payments charges by the bank. Even so, a credit card company's major source of income are those very hefty fines it charges for late payments. That's where Cred comes in - making credit card users easy and convenient to pay their credit card bills.

Target audience of Cred app

Initially, Cred targeted wealthy individuals and created the Cred Club community to serve this niche. Cred is a business that specializes in credit card users. Today, anyone with a credit score over 750 points can benefit from Cred's facilities and become a member of its club.

For now, it is focusing on Generation Y, i.e. people aged 25 to 40, especially those over 30 years old. Cred's marketing efforts are geared towards capturing the attention of Generation Y.

That's why Rahul Dravid, Javagal Srinath and Venkatesh Prasad appear in their ads rather than Virat Kohli or Hardik Pandya. Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor and Kumar Sanu also appear - but not Alia Bhatt or Varun Dhawan.

Cred's Business of credit card bills

The business model of Cred Cred is somewhat speculative. In fact, it does not charge any entry fees to its users. Nor has it teased them with any memberships. In exchange for giving them a space on the CRED App, they have partnered with several brands for whom they charge commissions on sales.

Image source: Cred's app

Cred recently launched Cred Stash with IDFC First Bank to provide loans to customers. It’s currently fully focused on targeting its niche by aggressive marketing tactics and reward offerings such as cash backs and deep discounts.

The success of Cred’s business model can be determined once it reaches maturity over time, just like what Jio, Zomato, and Paytm did in their growth stage. Giving hefty discounts nowadays is how many companies build a loyal customer base.

Cred app marketing strategies

Some of Cred's marketing strategies are viral, while others are as simple as releasing simple finance blogs and rewarding users with cashback and discounts.

However, every strategy has two things in common: uniqueness and the ability to create brand recognition.

We have already covered Cred app as a product and its business model, so let us understand the rest of the marketing strategy via 4P analysis:

Under the new scheme, customers can avail of certain credit card offers at a discounted price. For instance, they can get 5% cashback on all purchases made using their CRED card.

This move is in line with CRED's philosophy of customer centricity. The company hopes to enhance its marketing strategy and create long-term loyalty among its users by offering such discounts.

Cred has conducted many brand-related promotional activities. Let's have a look at them for a better understanding.

The CRED Digital Marketing Strategy

One of its most successful marketing campaigns was the "Rahul Dravid" social media campaign, which featured the Indian cricket legend endorsing the company.

Image source: ForbesIndia

The campaign was very well received by the public and helped Cred increase its customer base significantly.

Content marketing strategy of cred

Despite the fact that few people understand finance topics and how the credit system works, it is a responsible brand that educates Indians about financial topics through content marketing Cred.

To achieve this, Cred curates blogs related to credit cards, personal finance, and fintech on its website to help make Indians financially literate.

With its CRED – On The Money series, it Cred launched finance-related content on YouTube. As a curious man, Kunal Shah interviews experts and entrepreneurs to produce podcast-like content about money, startups, and trends under his CRED–Curious series.

Also, The Cred YouTube channel 'On the Money' explains topics like how IPL earns money.

Sponsorship and Collaboration

The Indian Premier League (IPL) has partnered with Cred for three seasons as an associate sponsor, and Cred's marketing activities are also conducted during the IPL season. In order to gain more exposure and trust among the public, they organize various social media contests, marketing campaigns, and advertisements.

Viral marketing moves

By sending cakes Cred utilizes customer acquisition. For example, of you are a cred user and just sitting on your boring day shift job, you receive a cake out of nowhere.

Yes, this happened in 2019 when Cred practiced this customer acquisition strategy which was in fact focused on colleagues of existing users.

Image source: Twitter

Additionally, Cred offers house rent payment alternatives, short-term credit lines, and Cred Mint, a platform where cred targets lenders to lend their idle money at interest rates of roughly 9% to borrowers with good credit ratings.

Platform marketing strategy of Cred app

As a result of CRED's active social media presence, the brand has been able to reach more consumers through Twitter marketing. There are a number of marketing tactics, including engaging with other brands' tweets after the viral 'Indiranagar Ka Gunda' Ad, using celebrities to share and retweet their ads, etc.

Image source: Youtube

Image source: Hindustan Times

Cred's noteworthy Marketing Campaigns

Cred has conducted several notable advertising campaigns and promotions over the years, including:

The Mega Jackpot Week campaign

During the IPL 2021, Cred launched Mega Jackpot. From iPhones for a decade to Bitcoin, this campaign had it all. Users who participated in this campaign had a chance to win jackpots.

As the name implies, Cred's Mega Jackpot Week offered seven various prizes, including gold, Harley Davidson Fat Boys, iPhones for ten years, five years of free flights, a TATA Safari car, a total home renovation, and a Bitcoin.

image source: Economic Times

Cred's campaign, like many of its other campaigns, generated a lot of buzz on news channels and social media. Cred had also capitalized on the bitcoin trend, as this campaign launched when bitcoin was trading at its all-time high and was all the rage around the world.

Cred Powerplay Campaign

Cred organized the Cred Power Play campaign during the IPL 2021 just like the Mega Jackpot campaign. The winner also stood a chance to be featured on the virtual fan box if they paid during the powerplay overs of the IPL game.

Key Takeaways from Cred marketing strategy for entrepreneurs

Image source: Time of India

Form partnerships

Cred marketing strategy involves partnership with many brands to provide discounts and loans. It embraces partnership marketing strategy to the fullest.

Appeal to target audience

Cred is a brand that is clear about what its target users crave. Cred's marketing strategy focuses on creating a simple and convenient way for cred users to manage and pay credit card bills. And this could be anyone as such. But Cred's target audience is narrowed to Gen-Y and aligns accordingly.

Embrace exclusivity

Cred app is designed on exclusivity terms. It's campaign 'Not everyone gets it' signifies how only credit card holders can access the app.

A similar strategy was used by Clubhouse and Facebook for grabbing early users. But in Cred's case, its a part of the business model, making exclusivity a moat.

Explore gamification

Cred's famous lucky user based games are very popular. It showcases a slot machine where users get various discounts available. It has many 'one lucky user' campaigns running every now and then too in partnership with brands.

Cred's marketing strategy is incredibly successful in India, with the app seeing impressive growth and adoption. The company has effectively tap into the wallets of young, middle-class Indians looking for an easy and convenient way to manage their credit payments.

What has been most impressive about Cred's marketing strategy is its focus on creating a trusted and credible brand to manage such payments. In a country with low financial literacy and many scams, Cred has positioned itself as a reliable and safe option. Today it focuses to generate revenue by exploring lending. This has been achieved through solid Cred's effective marketing strategy which has been backed by positive customer reviews and word-of-mouth.

You can explore more marketing mix case studies for your own business- check out  Costco marketing strategy and  Nintendo marketing strategy .

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How CRED partnered with Pepper Content to scale their product listings that drove app conversions

This case study delves into the collaborative journey of CRED, a prominent fintech and credit card bill payment platform, and Pepper Content, a leading content creation platform.

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In this story

Founded in 2018 by Kunal Shah, Cred has emerged as a leading credit card bill payment platform, offering a range of financial management tools and benefits to its extensive user base of 7.5 million members. The platform not only enables seamless bill payments but also provides users with curated product offerings and access to quick credit options. 

For the past few years, the fintech industry has witnessed remarkable growth, including more people using fintech services, the number of fintech startups, and increased investments. Looking ahead, the global fintech market is poised to hit a staggering $9.24 trillion in revenue by the end of 2027.

India, in particular, has emerged as a leader in the fintech industry. With a market size of $50 billion in 2021, the Indian fintech industry is projected to reach an estimated $150 billion by 2025. A significant part of this surge can be due to the digital payments sector, which is anticipated to see a user base of around 5.48 billion by 2027. 

In this flourishing fintech landscape, CRED has emerged as a leader with their exclusive rewards and experiences from premium brands for timely bill settlements. This robust growth indicates a dynamic and thriving fintech landscape, both globally and within India's rapidly evolving market.

Cred's members have exceptional credit scores, often surpassing 750 according to Experian. This entitles them to exclusive rewards and experiences from premium brands based on their timely credit card bill settlements.

CRED offers the CRED Store, an in-app e-commerce platform where members can explore products from renowned brands like Myntra, Diesel, Cure.fit , Olive Bar and Kitchen, and more. They also have access to enticing offers for domestic and international travel. The CRED Store has partnerships with over 1800 brands, including prestigious direct-to-consumer labels like Starbucks, Neeman's, and Bombay Trooper.

By partnering with Pepper Content, CRED aims to enhance its content creation capabilities. This collaboration will allow CRED to generate high-quality content efficiently, freeing up resources for innovation and strategic growth.

Speaking on the importance of content, Rohan Ralli from the creative team at CRED adds, "Our app is a sort of super-app. It's more than just rewards and payments, and for this reason, the number of creatives required is very high."

Meeting the Demand for Diverse Content Types: As a multifaceted app with a wide array of offerings, CRED needed a versatile range of content types, including blogs, app content, and more. However, sourcing, hiring, and onboarding the right talent for such a diverse content pool proved to be a time-consuming and intricate process.

Catering to a Diverse and Extensive Audience: With a user base spanning both domestic and international audiences, CRED faced the challenge of linguistic barriers. It was necessary to create content that resonated with this diverse demographic, requiring a nuanced approach to language and cultural differences.

Ensuring Optimal Content Management: Before partnering with Pepper Content, CRED's in-house team was heavily involved in the content management process, particularly in quality checks. This time-consuming workflow left little room for focus on other critical tasks.

Necessity for Highly Optimized Product Listings: For a platform like CRED, where user engagement plays a crucial role in conversions, ensuring that product listings are not only abundant but also highly optimized was a significant challenge. 

Addressing Long-Term Growth Opportunities for In-House Writers: Recognizing the importance of sustaining long-term growth opportunities for their in-house writers, CRED's creative team sought a solution to enhance content creation capabilities without the need to expand their internal team continually. This required a strategic partnership with an organization that could consistently deliver quality content, thereby freeing up internal bandwidth for more specialized tasks.

The collaboration with Pepper Content proved to be a game-changer for CRED:

1. Leveraging Pepper Content's Extensive Creator Network

With a network of over 65,000 content creators, Pepper Content offered CRED a seamless solution to meet their ever-growing content needs. This extensive pool of vetted and highly qualified creators ensured a steady flow of high-quality content.

2. Strategic Content Planning and Implementation

CRED adopted a forward-looking approach by planning content requirements in structured sprints for 2-3 months. This proactive strategy allowed them to align content production with their evolving business needs and marketing objectives.

3. Agile Response to Surging Content Demands

After collaborating with Pepper Content, CRED gained the confidence to tackle instances of surging content demands effectively. They could swiftly respond to high-demand scenarios, a feat that would have been challenging to achieve with an in-house team alone.

The partnership with Pepper Content yielded significant outcomes, leaving a notable impact on CRED's content strategy and operational efficiency.

Accelerated Content Production: The strategic partnership with Pepper Content resulted in a 5x increase in content production speed for CRED. This surge in content creation efficiency empowered CRED to meet its content requirements with agility and precision.

Enhanced Confidence in Deliverables: CRED's confidence in the quality and timeliness of content deliverables soared, reaching an impressive 100%. This newfound assurance was a testament to the effectiveness of the partnership in meeting and exceeding content creation expectations.

Elevated Satisfaction Levels: The partnership with Pepper Content led to a 200% surge in satisfaction levels for CRED. 

By collaborating with Pepper Content, CRED not only resolved its content creation challenges but also achieved remarkable results in terms of accelerated content production, heightened confidence in deliverables, and elevated satisfaction levels.

This strategic partnership played a major role in driving CRED's content strategy, ultimately strengthening its foothold in the dynamic fintech market.

In the future, CRED is interested in exploring a deeper partnership where they collaborate with Pepper to improve content performance and explore other cutting-edge elements of the platform, such as the Peppertype AI writing tool, design services, and more.

Through their combined efforts, CRED and Pepper Content are poised to continue setting new benchmarks in the dynamic landscape of fintech and content creation. 

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A Case Study on the Marketing Strategy of CRED

Business has only two functions-Marketing, and Innovation.

While we know how important marketing is for any brand, CRED has proved that through its practices. CRED's marketing strategies not only grabbed users' attention but also helped the firm rise from the ashes.

But let's first get to know what CRED does.

CRED's Business Model

Founded by Kunal Shah in 2018, CRED is India's first platform that rewards its customers for paying bills. It is an Indian Fintech Start-up Company that goes by the tagline. 'Pay your credit card bills and receive rewards.'

CRED monetizes by selling spaces to brands on its mobile application and uses its massive user database to generate revenue.

4 Takeaways From CRED's Marketing Strategy

CRED's marketing strategies were a game changer. The brand's solid yet consistent comeback took the company's status from a loss maker to a unicorn startup. From TV to Twitter, there was a massive buzz about CRED among people. Let's check out what steps CRED followed to reach the current stage.

1. Founder's Personal Branding

With his consistent efforts on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, Kunal Shah has successfully established his image as an inspirational personality. With this, he has gained the public's trust, which helped his fintech startup earn consumer confidence. Curating content around finance topics, sharing views about the startup community and interacting with other Twitter influencers have allowed him to set up a personal brand.

2. Spot-on Platform Marketing

The brand's active presence on various social media platforms has significantly impacted its success. With a hold on Twitter marketing, CRED has increased its reach among consumers. Some marketing tactics include: Engaging with other brands' tweets after the viral 'Indiranagar ka Gunda' Ad, using celebrities to share and retweet their ads adds to the reach and many more.

3. Remarkable Marketing Campaigns

CRED has a purpose behind every move. Each of the marketing strategies helped CRED earn an advantage in the market. Let's talk about a few examples.

Cake from CRED

In 2019, some of the existing customers of CRED received cakes in their offices. Creating a hum, the co-workers asked the customer who had sent this cake. Well, the answer was always CRED. The motive behind his campaign was to regain the existing customer base. This campaign helped CRED revive not only old customers but also acquire new customers.

CRED Missions

These campaigns focused on creating an emotional appeal among the customers. One such campaign was to partner with GiveIndia and Bhumi to plant 500000 trees with the help of CRED users. Here, the customers had to install the app and choose the number of trees they wanted to grow.

4. Master of Integrated Marketing Communication Tools

CRED has left no stone unturned while exploring innovative marketing techniques, which has worked in their favour. The company exploited all the means of marketing, such as social media, personal branding, advertisements, and so on. From TV advertisements to content marketing, CRED went all good in its efforts to become the talk of the town. Let's talk about a few viral CRED Ad Campaigns.

'Indiranagar ka Gunda' Ad

CRED launched The particular Ad during The Great for Good campaign. The ad showcased Rahul Dravid getting stuck in traffic and shouting in public, 'Indiranagar ka Gunda hu main'. The implication was that getting rewards after paying credit card bills through CRED was absurd, just like saying Rahul Dravid has anger issues. The ad was top trending on Twitter.

Celebrity Endorsements

From starring Madhuri Dixit to Anil Kapoor, CRED is famous for endorsing Famous 90's Celebrities in its advertisements. The reason is that CRED's target audience is Gen Y. This move shows innovative solutions to reach its niche.

Here, we come to the end of our case study on CRED's successful marketing strategies. We hope you noted various takeaways from the guide.

If you are a marketing enthusiast, we understand how intriguing it is to be a part of the team behind the brand's creative marketing.

An MBA in Digital Marketing can be a path to gain skills to ideate such viral campaigns and be a part of a company's innovative team. Ranked 2nd Best College in Kolkata, BIBS offers MBA in Digital Marketing with DMI Pro Certification. The program's curriculum is designed in collaboration with Global Industry Advisory Council (GIAC). The students can also explore global opportunities by going for an International Internship.

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Posted on Nov 28, 2022

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CRED Case Study – Business Mode, How CRED APP Works

Aryan jalan.

• May 10, 2024

Introduction

CRED is India’s first application that rewards its users for paying their credit card bills on time. It was founded by Kunal Shah, former founder of Freecharge in April, 2018.

Kunal Shah started CRED with a vision to create an exclusive community for India’s most trustworthy and creditworthy individuals.

It helps to manage and pay all your credit cards in one place. It also reminds us about payments, offers on our credit card, and also monitors your spending’s.

CRED Tagline: pay your credit card bills & earn rewards.

How CRED APP was started?

After selling Freecharge in 2015, Kunal Shah was researching another idea to make people’s life better. While researching, he found that so many things are automated in the developed nations like super markets with no cashiers, petrol pumps with no attendant, etc but there’s no such trustworthy system that helps the individuals to pay the right amount of credit card bills on time with zero additional charges.

According to one Kunal Shah’s interview with Yourstory , There are over 30 hidden charges and exorbitant interest costs that haunt you even if you pay a single rupee less than your full bill. The current model thrives on you making an error. It wants you to faulter. The system has taken the good guys for granted for far too long. Creditworthy individuals deserve better.

But the problem was, why would people pay their credit card bills through their APP, then the idea came to reward the trustworthy credit card users, who pay their credit card bills on time. With this strategy to attract users, CRED was started in April, 2018.

Now, Cred is getting almost 341 thousand traffic per month organically with more than 3 thousand backlinks to their 690+ pages. (As per Ahrefs.com )

Here is the organic traffic growth chart of Cred since January 2019.

Top Performing Pages of Cred in July 2023.

CRED APP Features

CRED offers you to manage all your credit cards at one place.

Whenever you pay your credit card bills you’ll get some CRED Coins that you can use to get discounts on various brands partnered with CRED.

It analyzes your total spending, hidden charges, and tracks credit limits and reminds you about all these to avoid such additional charges.

Apart from all these, few more amazing features of CRED,

CRED Protect – CRED protect is the feature of the app that reads the statements from the email and gives information about- balance, due date, bank charges, and expense bifurcation.

Smart Statements – This feature helps the user to streamline their expenses by analyzing the CREDit card statements.

CRED Powerplay – It is the new feature of CRED after it has become the official partner of IPL 2020. It enables 100% cashback on the entire bill provided the bill is paid in the first six overs of both the innings. Also, the winner gets an exclusive spot in the virtual fan box.

CRED Funding Rounds

CRED APP Business Model

Currently there is no business model of CRED. Currently, CRED is focused on expanding its user base and not focuses on making any profit. Though the primary vision is to create a trustworthy community and company will further build their business model.

Various sources say they’re earning money from listing the brands in their CRED Coin redemption but it’s a conflict but CRED might use this in the future.

There’s a prediction that it will use their data to monetize their business. Currently, the app creates a database of users based on the bank details, bill payment history, rewards used, and interests but not share this data with any 3rd party. Therefore they can do multiple uses of users’ data in the future and can make a profitable business model around it.

Also check out 👉🏻 Khatabook Business Model

How CRED APP Works?

Step 1. Download the CRED App and register with your mobile no.

Step 2. Once the account is set up, the app scans the credit cards linked to the registered phone number.

Step 3. Users get access to the app if the credit score is higher than 750, otherwise the user went to their waitlist.

Step 4. If you get the access, then CRED app requires access to the mail id to read and scan your credit card transactions like due dates, statements from the applicable services, etc.

Step 5. And then you can earn CRED coins after paying your every credit card bill. One CRED coin equals Rs 1. These coins can then be used to claim rewards.

Step 6. Users can also choose to burn the coins to win cashback and then the cashback is directly credited to your credit card.

Most Asked FAQ’s

Q. who is the founder of cred.

Ans. Kunal Shah is the founder of CRED.

Q. How to contact CRED?

Ans. There’s no official contact number. Users can drop a mail on the email id – [email protected]

Q. Is CRED app safe?

Ans. The app is trustworthy as the records of the founder are intact. Also, it does not ask for any critical information such as the date of expiry or CVV.

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A Case Study on Cred Marketing Strategy – Detailed Analysis

Home > Blog > A Case Study on Cred Marketing Strategy – Detailed Analysis

• Last updated on August 28, 2023

Cred is an Indian fintech company. The company gained popularity in India due to its innovative marketing strategies. If you want to know about those strategies then read this cred marketing strategy guide till the end.

Generally, people face trust issues while using fintech apps. To solve these issues, Cred started launching innovative marketing campaigns and by 2021, they have gained 5.9 million users on the app.

Cred has mainly focused on digital marketing over traditional. We have done in-depth research and listed all their marketing strategies. If you are an entrepreneur, you can also apply these strategies to your business.

Kunal Shah is the man behind Cred. But the whole credit goes to the marketing team of Cred. They have done an excellent job in planning & implementing these strategies. So let’s begin our Cred marketing strategy guide.

About the Company

Cred was started in 2018 by a famous entrepreneur Kunal Shah . Before Cred, Kunal founded Freecharge which was a successful startup. In 2018, Cred was started to make the life of credit card users easy.

Cred became a popular name in India because of its outstanding marketing strategies. Their marketing strategies are also an inspiration for other startups as well. Do you want to know how Cred works? Know below.

How Does Cred Work? Business Model of Cred

Cred rewards its members when they pay credit card bills on time. Cred is an RBI-approved app with millions of active downloads. 20% of Indian credit card payments are done through cred. When someone pays a credit card bill on time, Cred gives them rewards.

Now the question arises how does Cred earn money? Cred has multiple sources of income. They earn by selling ad space to businesses. The company has a huge chunk of credit card users’ data, they also generate revenue by selling this data to financial organizations like Banks.

Cred Marketing Strategy

Cred follows various marketing strategies. Below in this article, you will also know about the few popular ad campaigns of Cred.

1) Rahul Dravid’s “Indiranagar Ka Gunda” Ad

This is the most popular ad campaign of Cred. Featuring Rahul Dravid in the ad was a marketing strategy of Cred. They knew that this ad is going to viral. Indiranagar is a crowded place in Bangalore. The head quarter of Cred is also situated in Indiranagar.

People know Rahul Dravid as a very cool & calm personality but in this ad, he seems to be very angry. India is filled with cricket fans and everyone got crazy when they saw this side of Rahul Dravid.

This campaign was a marketing success for Cred. They have gained a lot of users after this ad. Other popular brands like Zomato and Amul also used this moment to share some viral tweets.

2) Old T.V. Commercials

This is another great marketing strategy by Cred where they targeted 90s people. Everybody misses those old ads featuring Annu Kapoor & Renuka Shahne.

Cred recreated these ads where they are playing “Cred Antakshari” . This was a successful ad campaign by Cred. Banking or Finance apps work on trust. These ad build trust among consumers.

Cred marketing doesn’t seem like marketing. People really enjoyed watching these ads. Now let’s move towards another Cred marketing strategy.

3) Free Giveaways

This year, 2022 Cred became the official partner of IPL. They have launched Cred Bounty. Cred was giving free Apple products and travel trips to its Bounty winners. Cred users pay bills on time and earn rewards. Only one person in a day can win a big reward.

This was a successful Cred marketing strategy. It helped their large market share at a small cost.

4) Personal Branding of Kunal Shah

Kunal Shah is a successful Indian entrepreneur. He is also an inspiration for many young entrepreneurs. Kunal is known for its “Delta 4” theory. According to him, if you found a Delta 4 product, you don’t need or need less marketing.

He has 724K followers on Twitter and 173K followers on Instagram. Like Elon Musk, he also follows personal branding strategies for Cred. He regularly uploads content on Instagram and Twitter. You can also watch him in podcasts on YouTube. This is Kunal Shah’s cred marketing strategy.

5) Sending Cakes to Users

Cred marketing strategy involves many innovative & crazy ideas. One idea was sending cakes to the customer’s office who paid the bill on time. When some of his colleagues ask, who sent this cake? The answer will be Cred.

This is a great marketing strategy used by Cred to acquire new customers. This also improves the customer relationship. When a few people got cakes at the office, they shared the photos on social media. This message frequently spreads on the Internet. And again, it has given a boost to Cred users.

Popular Ad Campaigns of Cred

Cred launched many popular ad campaigns so far. We have shortlisted some of the popular ad campaigns below.

Cred PowerPlay Campaign

This campaign was started in IPL 2021. When a user pays a bill during the powerplay over of IPL. They can get 100% cash back on the credit card payment. The winner will also be listed on the virtual T.V. during IPL.

The cost of Cred was very less. As they were paying for just one payment but they are getting enough value from that.

My Two Cents

It is a popular marketing campaign of Cred where they feature some of the top personalities and ask them about their financial management. You can see Sunil Grover, Anand Gandhi, and other big personalities talking about what they think about money. This helps the audience know the financial mindset of their audience.

Great For the Good

This is one of the longest-running ad campaigns of Cred. They have created multiple videos where Jim Sarbh explains why you should pay bills through Cred. Every person who pays a credit card bill through cred earns a Cred coin which can be redeemed to earn rewards.

They have explained this scenario in different situations. People loved it and Cred’s marketing strategy wins the game.

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The modules covered in the Digital marketing mastery course are SEO, PPC, Google Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, and Blogging. In addition, you will also receive 10+ certificates from Facebook, Google, Hubspot, etc. So, join our 4-month Digital marketing mastery course and become job ready.

So here we end the Cred marketing strategy guide. We have shared almost all strategies that Cred uses for its marketing purpose. Cred is an innovative brand. They regularly come up with new marketing strategies. We will update our guide as soon as we found new marketing strategies. Thanks for reading.

Parmveer Singh Sandhu

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Cred Ads: How Cred is Reinventing the Advertising World?

Harshit Verma

Think about this, You met two people, one of them is a normal repetitive behaving human and the other person is wacky or amusing. Who, out of these two people, will you like more and thus befriend them? If your answer is the wacky casual person, then you belong to the majority of people who chose this.

This is normal human behaviour to look out for something that is different than the rest. Something that is unique to the herd. This analogy does not only apply to people but everything. By everything I mean, quite a lot of things.

Speaking of differentiating factors, let us talk about something that we all are always covered with. 'Advertisements'. ‘Go anywhere and you shall find ads’. This is not a movie dialogue, but it can be, who knows the future? Most of the ads we see are generic bull crap. Same repetitive things over and over again. Which most of us of course don't mind at all.

We ignore most ads except a few iconic ones. Those are the ads with wacky traits ! One of the trending examples are for instance Cred ads. They are really turning the air. This is an article about those ads and why Cred has resorted to having these ads.

What is Cred? The Wacky Cred Advertisements Efficacy of the Cred Ads Follow ups and downs of Cred Ads FAQ

What is Cred?

Cred is a 2018 startup. Lead by Kunal Shah and a smart team. It primarily rewards people for paying credit card bills on time. The company is quite making the headlines. From going a unicorn to making funny ads on the internet. Cred is a member only club that entertains only some people with a certain credit score.

In its future, it will become a big club of trustworthy people. Individuals that can be trusted with money. This group once made can be made or converted into many useful permutations. Imagine using it as a dating platform of trustworthy people.

Suppose it is a platform where trustworthy people get more and better discounts than others. This in the long run is expected to make everyone want to be trustworthy. So it rewards people who pay bills on time. Moreover it urges everyone to honor their commitments. This is the end goal of the company according to the charioteer Kunal shah.

Cred was officially announced as official partner for IPL. IPL is one of the most watched sports of all time. With the perfect mix of cricket, Bollywood, and big money, IPL is in a league of its own. Though the franchise is loved for its cricket, it thrives on its profits. Cred paid a huge amount to be the official partner for IPL.

This is a little about the company. Now let's talk about the campaigns it does. If you live online, like most people in the last one and a half years, then you must have come across these. The company is quite famous for its hilarious advertisements.

The Wacky Cred Advertisements

If you notice everyone talking about a funny advertisement, you can safely assume that Cred is stirring the trend. The reel shows celebrities doing weird and funny things. Activities that are not in their set of usual behaviour. We can call it anti behaviour. For instance, Rahul Dravid having anger issues , Kapil Dev the OG, acting like Ranveer Singh. However weird the ad may seem, they are the ones who set the charts now.

Auditioning celebrities

During IPL 2020, videos of celebrities getting auditioned for Cred ads went viral. They were thoughtfully made to propel views. As we told earlier, Cred is a members only app. They kicked “ Not everyone gets it ” as their tagline. The ads showcased celebrities dancing and singing weird dance numbers to get selected. They were not selected because ‘Not everyone gets it’.

Making top celebrities and singers dance on hilarious songs, made the campaign viral. They are shown as if you were watching a funny meme video.

The Concept behind the ' Not everyone gets it' Ad

When we look at these ad campaigns , we become a little perplexed. What is the purpose of these baffling ads ? The answer is, to get as much attention as possibly one could . Or to get as many impressions.

The reason for tickling your funny bone is to make you remember. However if you look at the description of the video, you will see, “We are not in the ad business but in the credit card business", "Our search for the next ad continues, till then voice over has to be done”. This subtly tells the motive behind the company ads.

Generally speaking, the motive of any advertisement is to get the message of the company to the public, In a clear and precise manner. This is exactly what the “celebrity auditions” did. It showed stars not getting selected for Cred ad. This showcases exclusivity . Which is the basis of the credit card reward club.

Great for the good

At the time of IPL 2021, another campaign that was shot and became a hit too. This time the tagline was “ Great for the good ”. Which simply means that Cred is great for the good. Shifting the focus point on rewarding good behaviour. As the company packages itself into a reward generating app. That is exclusive for creditworthy people.

The campaign starred celebrities, yet again in never seen before roles. These went more viral than the previous.

One of the ads showed Rahul Dravid “angry” in a road rage .

Another one had Kumar Sanu selling insurance via singing.

Kapil dev acting like Ranveer Singh.

Neeraj Chopra going frenzy over his own achievement and more.

All these lineups of ads were a hit, instantly. The reason is the ‘a bsurd’ behind these videos.

The Concept

The concepts of these ads are unbelievable . Which lays the foundation of the advertisement itself. It shows how Cred rewards are unbelievable. It shows how the idea of ‘paying your generic credit card bills’ and getting rewards is unbelievable.

This clearly communicates the idea of what the brand has to offer. Cred has to offer rewards to bill payers. The fact that you are getting incentivized for good behaviour is unbelievable. This marks the inception of this campaign.

Efficacy of the Cred Ads

Efficacy means the ability to produce desired or intended results. It is a medical term but we are using it in this context. The ads are doing well. They are quite able to stir the trends here and there.

I mean, if you see Virat Kohli tweeting about an ad or Deepika Padukone posting on IG captioning “ Indiranagar ki gundi hoon main ” or “I am Indiranagar’s gangster”, you know it's a quirky Cred ad.

They are criticized by some for being too much, but the majority just enjoys it. They are quite far successful in creating a stir. Their app as of now has more than a crore installs. The only thing left here is to look at what this startup achieves at this scale.

Follow ups and downs of Cred Ads

So we all read about how Cred is making their own sort of advertisements. It has started a cult of quirky marketing campaigns. For instance, the ad video of Magicpin that follows the exact analogy as that of a Cred ad. The company came into the picture to dig out the point of apps that reward points.

The video had comments, some criticizing the Cred ad and some appreciating the good parody. This clearly shows how the internet janta, is of various views. Some criticize the pointless points that these apps provide. Some frequent users are good with getting better deals with these points.

The video was aired on 16th of April. Here we are quoting Kunal’s tweet that was posted on the same date. It can be related or it cannot be related.

Mocking someone is accepting lower status. — Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) April 16, 2021

Not just tickling ads but Cred is also making a social presence. The startup is also focusing on creating content around the domain of money and investment. They are hosting a YouTube series titled “On the money”. They also hosted a playlist named “Cred curious” in the past.

If you visit their Instagram handle, you will get crazy insights on how money and economy works. Moreover, they also manage a blog of the same nature. So ads are just the upfront to add a pinch of quirk.

These advertisements, due to their peculiar nature are both criticized and praised. If we notice skewness of data, we will find praises more than critiques. With our attention spans getting lower and lower, we want concise information. This is when meme marketing comes to mind. Some people like to follow the trend while companies like Cred like to reinvent the wheel again.

With every advertisement campaign, Cred keeps increasing the bar. whatever they will do in future, “Paying your bills on CRED hits all the right notes”. This far, they are quite successful in clubbing trustworthy people. This is a good view of their goal as well as ongoing efforts on building a brand value. So, next time you see a celebrity acting all frenzy, you know it's a Cred ad.

Why Cred is advertising so much?

Cred is investing in advertising campaigns to highlight the use of the Cred app and the rewards that one gets on paying credit card bills.

Who are the competitors of Cred?

CRED's primary competitors are MobiKwik, PhonePe & Paytm.

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How Does CRED Make Money? Dissecting Its Business Model

Executive Summary:

CRED is a FinTech company that rewards users for timely credit card bill payments by providing them with exclusive offers.

CRED makes money from transaction fees, affiliate commissions, advertising, as well as referral fees from the loans it issues in cooperation with other credit institutions.

Founded in 2018, CRED has become one of India’s fastest-growing startups to date. It is now valued at more than $4 billion.

What Is CRED?

Users get rewarded in CRED coins, the native currency of its platform. One coin is given for every rupee paid off on a bill, which includes rent payments or phone bills, amongst others.  

Coins can then be redeemed in a variety of ways. This entails redeeming coins for actual cash (via the ‘Kill the Bill’ section), making donations to charitable causes, entering a lottery event, or receiving discounts at partnered merchant stores.

CRED works together with close to 2,000 brands, including Starbucks, Puma, Samsung, Myntra, and plenty more. And because CRED is connected to a user’s credit card, its app can also be used to make payments at selected partner stores.

Apart from its various cashback and other rewards, CRED also actively helps users to improve their financial literacy.

They can not only check their credit score within the app (for reference, one needs a minimum score of 750 to join) but also provides users with category-based analysis regarding their spending habits and even detect hidden charges.

CRED’s platform can be accessed by downloading its mobile app, which is available on Android and iOS devices.

CRED Company History

CRED, which is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, was founded in 2018 by serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah.

His claim to fame is somehow atypical in that Shah does not, unlike many other Indian elites, possess a degree from IIT-IIM (Indian Institute of Technology-Indian Institute of Management).

Instead, he began working at age 16, doing mundane data entry work while trying his hand at various side hustles such as teaching computer science to local school kids or selling CDs online.

Around the same time, his father fell ill and thus wasn’t able to run his small pharmaceutical distribution business, which forced Shah and his two older brothers to provide for their family.

He, therefore, enrolled at Mumbai’s Wilson College to study philosophy, simply because this was the only program that enabled him to attend college in the morning and work part-time jobs the rest of the day.

Several years later, he enrolled for a part-time MBA course at the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai but ultimately decided to drop out.

The success of one of his businesses, an outsourcing company, essentially forced him out of university.

However, his short MBA stint would prove to be valuable later on. Five years after dropping out, in 2009, Shah launched PaisaBack, a cashback promotions company that would help retailers do cashback rewards in their stores.

The inspiration for launching the business came from ‘Consumer Behaviour and Marketing’, one of the courses taught during his MBA tenure.

Unfortunately, PaisaBack never really took off due to how fragmented the Indian market is, namely that there are too many stores and not enough footfalls in each of those stores.

Shah and his team, therefore, decided to pivot and, in 2010, launched FreeCharge. FreeCharge initially allowed customers to recharge their prepaid mobile phones and earn different rewards in the process.

The business took off like a literal wildfire. Just months after the launch, FreeCharge was already processing up to 15,000 transactions – per day. For the next five years, Shah grew FreeCharge into one of India’s fastest-growing startups.

In 2015, he successfully sold the company to Snapdeal for a whopping $450 million. A year later, after overseeing the integration, he departed from FreeCharge to refill his batteries by investing in other Indian startups, acting as a part-time advisor to Y Combinator, and being an advisor to Sequoia Capital.

Eventually, his entrepreneurial senses started to tingle again. The idea for CRED simply arose from the months of research he was doing as well as hundreds of people he was talking to.

During his tenure at FreeCharge, he would ultimately realize that it was nearly impossible to monetize the majority of Indian customers due to the low average income as well as propensity to fraud.

Instead, he wanted to build a product that was focused on the ‘right customer’, which proved to be India’s most affluent people.

It certainly helped that investors, such as Sequoia (also a previous backer of FreeCharge) or Ribbit Capital, were willing to provide $30 million in seed funding right before CRED’s launch in November 2018. Shah himself had previously poured $1 million of his own wealth into building the prototype and hiring the first few employees.

The business, fuelled by the nationwide press about Shah’s return, took off like a wildfire. That growth earned the team a second round of funding in just six months. In April 2019, CRED raised another ~ $24 million in Series A funding from investors such as Alibaba Group-backed investment fund Ganesh Ventures or Swiggy co-founder Sriharsha Majety.

Amazingly, this was not the last time CRED raised money in 2019. Later that year, in August, it was able to attract a stellar $120 million in Series B funding while being valued at $450 million – less than a year after its launch.

The money was primarily used to further its growth within India’s most affluent people. Interestingly enough, up until that point CRED wasn’t making any money (more on that later) and was able to garner its astonishing valuation based on its rapid growth as well as its founder’s reputation.

Despite the lack of moneymaking, CRED ended the year with close to three million registered users. Keep in mind that CRED runs some minor background checks to validate one’s credit score, which means that its user numbers are not boosted by fake accounts and such.

2020 continued to just be as positive as the year prior. The coronavirus pandemic led to heightened adoption of new FinTech offerings, with CRED being one of them. CRED also launched various new products, such as the ability to pay one’s rent directly from the app, a bulked-up e-commerce store, as well as the ability to donate coins to frontline workers.

The stellar growth was rewarded with yet another funding round in November. This time, CRED raised $81 million while being valued at $800 million. Throughout 2020, CRED was able to double its user base from 3 to almost 6 million. At that point, the platform was processing over 20 percent of all credit card bill payments in India.

The cash injection also allowed CRED to promote its service through a variety of TV commercials as well as by becoming a sponsor of the Indian Premier League. Additionally, it was attracting users through gameplay-like mechanisms such as its lottery in which people used their coins to win various prizes, including iPhones and even a Bitcoin.

As a result, CRED, in April 2021, became the youngest Indian startup to be valued at $2 billion or higher and effectively more than doubled its valuation from its last funding round. That month, it raised $215 million in its Series D round.

Yet again, that money was put to good use, primarily through the launch of additional services. In August, with now 7.5 million registered users, CRED introduced a peer-to-peer lending platform that allowed people on its platform to borrow money from each other.

Unsurprisingly at this point, it was time for yet another funding announcement. This time, in October, CRED was able to raise $251 million at a valuation of $4.01 billion. For most of its funding rounds, its existing backers largely returned, which often serves as a positive indicator for companies in growth mode (i.e., investors believe in the company and its business model and want to continue participating as they believe its value will rise even more).

The funding allowed CRED to make its first two acquisitions. In October, it first bought HipBar for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition granted CRED a prepaid payment instrument license (PPI), which essentially allows them to create its own wallet and thus issue its own prepaid cards, cash vouchers, and more.

Then, in December, CRED purchased Happay, a business expense management startup, for $180 million. The acquisition allowed CRED to enter the enterprise space, which offers clients that a) tend to spend more and b) are less likely to default. Happay, however, continues to operate as a separate business.

How Does CRED Make Money?

The business model of CRED is centered around building an ecosystem of products for its highly affluent user base.

Much like other FinTechs such as Robinhood , the company started out with one simple premise: helping people to manage their various credit card bills and get rewarded for paying on time.

Once it managed to build up a loyal user base around this use case, it began to expand into other revenue-generating avenues. This includes providing loans to users or allowing them to make payments right out of the app.

Additionally, it reduces risk and thus costs by only targeting users with high credit scores (namely above 750) who are less likely to default or commit fraud. Going forward, CRED could grow by launching new products or expanding into new markets.

Additionally, India’s middle and higher class also continues to expand every year, which does provide CRED with plenty of legroom in its own home market.

Let’s now take a closer look at each of the company’s revenue streams in the section below. The analysis excludes income generated from Happay, which is a business CRED acquired in December 2021.

Transaction Fees

Users on CRED can use the app to pay their rent bills. Dubbed CRED RentPay, the service imposes a transaction fee of 1 percent to 1.5 percent, on the user’s credit card network.

CRED, in all likeliness, does not get to keep the whole amount. Instead, it shares a portion of the transaction fee with the credit card network that provides the underlying payment infrastructure.

CRED works together with dozens of banks, including HSBC, RBL, Union Bank of India, and many more to enable those payments.

Users are incentivized to use the product by being able to earn one CRED Coin for every rupee that is being used.

Advertising & Affiliate Fees

As previously stated, CRED allows users to purchase products from hundreds of brands within its own store.

Most of the brands it works together with are Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) startups that are seeking distribution and want to be discovered.

CRED’s platform, with its millions of registered users, acts as the perfect avenue. If a user, therefore, purchases a product through the store, CRED charges them an affiliate fee of around 10 to 20 percent.

Additionally, brands can also advertise their products on CRED’s platform. They then pay a listing fee, which is dependent on the time that a campaign runs as well as the overall exposure provided.

Loan Referral Fees

Another line of business that CRED launched is CRED Stash, a lending facility provided to its members.

Through the product, CRED offers loans to individuals directly within the app. The loans themselves are issued by IDFC FIRST Bank and not CRED itself.

As a result, CRED does not generate revenue through interest paid on those loans but receives a referral fee from its banking partner for facilitating the loan.

IDFC FIRST Bank is then able to access one of India’s most affluent user bases, a group that would be extremely unlikely to default on their loans.

On top of that, CRED knows about a user’s creditworthiness as well as his/her spending habits, which acts as another data point to determine risk.

CRED Funding, Revenue & Valuation

CRED, according to Crunchbase , has raised a total of $722.2 million across eight rounds of venture capital funding.

Notable investors include Sequoia Capital India, DST Global, Coatue, Tiger Global Management, Ribbit Capital, and many others.

CRED is currently being valued at $4 billion after raising $251 million in Series E funding in October 2021.

For the fiscal year 2020, CRED posted annual revenues of about $68 million, which it expects to double for the fiscal year 2021.

Does CRED Sell Your Data?

CRED mentions in its privacy policy that it does not user data to third parties. However, CRED does use the data internally to display targeted ads on its platform.

For that, though, now personally identifiable information is shared with any third-party online advertiser or app.

In the future, CRED may also use that data to power some of its own services. For instance, its lending product is, in all likeliness, already informed by a user’s spending habits and other data points.

Viktor Hendelmann

Hi folks, Viktor checking in! Years of experience in various tech-related roles have led me to start this blog, which I hope provides you with as much enjoyment to read as I have writing the content.

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Last Updated on December 17, 2022 by Viktor Hendelmann

How CRED Business Model Could Change Indian Fintech Industry?

CRED is a Bangalore-based fintech startup launched in 2018 that rewards you for paying your credit card bills on time through the CRED app which appears to be a major part of the CRED Business Model . It is a place where all the credible people in India are rewarded for their creditworthiness.

The Founder of CRED is Kunal Shah , an MBA dropout from NMIMS Mumbai who has successfully fueled startups to multi-million dollar valuations in the past. One of them is Freecharge which he founded in 2010 with Sandeep Tandon.

Freecharge was valued at $400 million in 2015 and was acquired by Snapdeal , the company continued to operate as a separate entity under  Kunal Shah until 2016.

Kunal Shah left the helm of Freecharge in 2016 to work on other startups he had invested in and later went on to launch another Fintech startup in 2018 that scaled to a valuation of $2.2 billion in less than 2 years.

So, what is CRED doing that made CRED one of the innovative startups in India ?

Well just like any other great startup, the idea was to solve a problem. A problem that existed but was not recognized.

Kunal Shah always had an inherent interest in finance and startups which helped him identify a problem that no one in the industry was batting an eye for. 

He realized that nobody was ever rewarded for paying the money back on time and he wanted to change that through CRED , an incentive-based credit card bill payment platform for a selected group of people that have a credit score of more than 750.

CRED offers its users CREDcoins for every successful bill payment on the platform and also manages the credit cards of users by reminding them of the deadlines for payments as well as making them aware of any hidden charges. 

Come on then!

Hop in the backseat as we take you around on a journey to explore one of the best startup ideas in the country CRED.

Table of Contents:

• The business model of CRED
• The revenue model of CRED
• Future outlook

Table of Contents

CRED Business Model: Details

Wait, hold on a minute. We know this is interesting but before we get into the CRED Business Model, let us first understand what a Business Model is .

Okay so there are two ways to go about this, the first one is the Definition of a Business Model from the Penguin Dictionary of Economics, and trust me it’s not something we would call interesting. 

So the second way is what we are considering to get you acquainted with the term. 

We will use a general meaning and an analogy to explain the term Business model so let’s get into it….

A Business Model is essentially a detailed outline of the business that contains all the information regarding the products and services the company is going to offer, the type of consumers it is going to target, the distribution mechanism, the costs and expenses, and pricing of the products, etc. 

Just like before building a house, you need a map to get an exact idea of how the house will look once it’s done, you need a Business Model to plan and implement the business on the ground.

Although the Revenue Model of a company is a part of the Business Model itself , the Revenue Model of CRED is amazing and interesting , hence it is discussed separately in this article.

Now let’s get down to the CRED Business Model

The CRED Business Model has 5 main components and we will address them as the 5 pillars of CRED . All the five components of the CRED Business Model are discussed in detail below-

The CRED app is the central pillar of the entire CRED Business Model structure because every other service or product that the brand offers is either provided through the app or is a by-product of the app. 

The app has an amazing user interface and users can log into the app by simply entering and verifying their phone number, the app automatically detects and adds all the credit cards linked to the number.

If the user has a credit score of more than 750 points then they can use the app and if it is lower than 750 points, the users are put on a waiting list until their score hits the mark.

To utilize the functionalities provided by the app, the user needs to give their Email access to the app so that it can keep track of all the credit transactions the user makes and remind them of their due dates.

The app provides the users with various benefits including exclusive prizes and offers from the partner brands that they can avail of, using CREDcoins that are awarded to the users for making their bill payments on the app.

Partner Brands and Platforms

CRED has also partnered with brands like Cure. fit, ixigo, Fresh Menu, Air BnB Bookmyshow, Ajio , CR7 , Wrogn , Lakme , and some 400 odd brands to provide its users exclusive benefits and offers.

These brands are an integral part of the CRED Business Model and contribute to the revenues of the company.

This arrangement is mutually beneficial for both CRED and the partner brands as it allows CRED to offer exclusive benefits to its users and the partner brands to enjoy exposure to a customer base that possesses a significant amount of disposable income as well as an incentive to buy products from these brands.

The Users themselves are a huge asset to the company not only as consumers but also as a service that the brand can offer to other brands or platforms.

This strategy is effective for CRED only because CRED does not target the masses but a smaller group of individuals that are creditworthy and also have a high disposable income and as a result, are a much more valuable set of individuals for brands as they are more likely to buy a product from them.

It makes CRED an ideal space to advertise products and services . It is really interesting how CRED uses its elite set of customers not only as customers but also as a service to other brands generating opportunities at multiple fronts and driving revenues into the pool.

This innovative approach and out-of-the-box ideas make CRED a cut above the rest.

CRED pay is a relatively new service launched by CRED in partnership with Razorpay and Visa that offers its users access to a convenient payment gateway that allows them to buy products from partner brands and pay using the CRED app itself.

It allows you to pay for your purchase using the credit cards saved in the CRED app and the users can also use the CRED coins to unlock offers on products that effectively provide CREDpay an edge over other payment methods.

Did you notice how CRED uses one aspect of its business to penetrate through other segments and make space for itself, it also uses interesting techniques to incentivize the use of its products over the existing players in the market.

Although CRED pay is not perfect as a payment gateway as it only allows users to pay through the credit cards available in the app and does not provide any other alternatives.

But CRED pay is new and will surely improve with time.

CRED mint and CRED cash

CRED mint is the latest venture by CRED that allows the consumers that are sitting on surplus funds to lend it at the rate of up to 9% per annum and earn interest on their money. CRED partnered with Liquiloans, an RBI-approved peer-to-peer lending Non-Banking Financial Institution (NBFC) . 

CRED mint is secure as the lenders can withdraw their money at any moment without any penalties with the interest they have accumulated over the period and the recipients of the loan are creditworthy individuals just like them.

CRED cash is another service available to CRED users where they can avail of credit-line loans of up to Rs 5,00,000 once they are approved by CRED.

Credit-line loans are flexible loans that allow the borrower to avail a fixed amount of money whenever required that can be repaid immediately or over some time . The interest is charged from the moment the fund is borrowed.

The approved users can access the pre-defined amount at any time of the day and the amount is directly credited to their bank accounts. 

CRED cash has a default rate of less than 1% and the total amount disbursed through CRED cash is above Rs. 2000 crore.

Fun fact : Kunal Shah is an avid investor in startups and his startup portfolio includes more than 160 startups . Razorpay and Unacademy are a few examples that turned out to be Lucrative bets .

Kunal Shah as an investor has funded job-creating startups and in the process, has accumulated resources that allow him to explore the different sectors and come up with strategies and ideas that provide some value to the consumers.

As an entrepreneur, he has perfected the art of networking and resource management, which reflects in the extraordinary success of his startups and their incredible valuations.

CRED Revenue Model: Details

The Revenue Model of CRED is one of the most interesting aspects of the startup because CRED is a loss-making company , and is accumulating losses with every passing year.

In 2019, the total loss stood at Rs.60.87 crore which inflated to Rs. 360.3 crores in 2020. 

So does that mean the Revenue Model of CRED is not good?

No, that’s not true at all. The Revenue Model of CRED is immaculate and is generating revenues for the startup consistently.

The company is incurring losses because the expenses are way too high . For every Rupee earned in 2019, CRED spent Rs.720 . And a pretty big chunk of these expenses goes into advertising and marketing.

CRED’s Business Model is descriptive  and to make its way to the top of the credit card payment business and establish a monopoly in the market, CRED used a majority of its funds to capture the customers and position itself at the center of the conversation whenever credit card bills pop up.

And the strategy has worked well for CRED as it captured almost 25% of the business with 5.9 million active users. 

You see every startup in its initial days has expenses greater than the revenues and it turns into a business the day revenues surpass the expenses, CRED is no different.

And the fact that investors are still investing in the idea from around the world and are fighting to get a piece of the business shows how good of a startup CRED is. It’s just a matter of time until the fundamentals of the company start complimenting the billion-dollar valuations.

So now let’s take a look at the Revenue Model of CRED and find out how the company makes money-

So CRED essentially makes money in 3 ways-

Charging Brands to list offers on CRED

CRED charges a listing fee from brands to feature on the app and provides exclusive offers to its users. And the brands are willing to pay the fee because CRED does not target the masses but an elite group of individuals with access to money and a need to consume.

Which makes them a perfect consumers. Some of the brands listed on CRED are Dineout , Ixigo , Gap , Levi’s , The Man Company , The Moja Club , The Mom’s Company , and others.

This is one of the primary sources of revenue for CRED and therefore an integral part of its Revenue Model.

Leveraging User data

To take the benefits that the app offers, the user has to give access to his/her financial details to CRED so that the app can keep track of all the purchases made through credit cards and generate reminders for the bills.

So CRED has access to a lot of financial data of the most creditworthy group of people in the country and Financial Institutions are willing to pay a good amount of money to either have direct access to the data for profiling the individuals or to show ads to them.

Interest earned through Investments

Do you remember CRED cash ?

The service where users can get access to Credit-line loans

Where do you think all the interest that is accumulated on the loans goes?

Yup, you got it!

That is another source of revenue for CRED, interest accumulated through investments. 

Well, these are the ways CRED makes money and we hope you realize that the real asset of CRED is not the actual business of credit card bill payment but the users and their financial data. 

CRED does not earn a single penny when a credit card bill is cleared through their portal but instead draws value from the data they have access to and monetize it to earn money. 

As you are already aware that CRED burns a lot of cash in advertising and marketing hence, it needs a lot of money to continue its operations until it can generate enough revenues to make the startup self-sustainable.

Fortunately, CRED has enjoyed a healthy inflow of funds from various avenues of investors which is one of the reasons why it achieved such high valuations in just 2 years of its inception.

So let’s look at how CRED was funded as a startup idea-

• CRED has raised over $470 million from 7 rounds of funding , of which the first 2 were seed rounds.
• The First-ever funding that the company received was back in 2018 from Sequoia Capital India. The company invested $30 million in CRED.
• The Biggest round of funding for CRED was its latest series D round of funding on April 6, 2021, when the company raised a total of $220 million from a group of nine investors at a valuation of $2.2 billion . The major participants were Coatue and Falcon Edge Capital.
• The second biggest round of funding was the series B round of funding including 10 investors, where the company raised a total of $120 million, the major participants were Ribbit capital, Gemini Investments, and Sequoia Capital India.

If you want to know more about the funding of CRED then follow the link below to see a table of all 7 funding rounds-

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/cred-6ab0/company_financial

There were speculations around a new round of overseas funding at a valuation of $4 billion which was denied by Kunal Shah himself in an interview where he said that CRED is not looking for fresh funds at the moment.

Future Outlook

This section of the article will introduce you to some mind-numbing facts and statistics that will make it easier for you to cope with the fact that the future of CRED as a startup is very positive.

Apart from the fact that the business model of CRED is one of the best in the startup space and it enjoys a monopoly in its segment, the numbers reveal the immeasurable potential CRED has as a startup to scale to unimaginable heights due to its innovation in the Fintech industry.

Let’s have a look at the numbers-

The total number of credit card users in India as of April 2021 is 57.4 million and the number of debit cards in use is 829 million.  

What these numbers tell you is that only 0.0069% of the total potential customers use credit cards in India. 

What if this number goes to 1%?

What will happen is that CRED will become 40% bigger than it currently is and that is when the company itself does not increase its market share and keeps operating at its current capacity, which is very unlikely as CRED does not have any major competitors in the market.

Just for reference, the USA has almost 70% of its population using credit cards.

If that happens in India someday, the valuations of CRED will shoot through the sky into space.

We are pretty sure you would have realized the infinite potential of CRED as a startup in India. But there are some variables to keep in mind before we jump to any conclusions-

• The majority of the population does not recognize the benefits of credit cards in India and they prefer to pay for goods out of their own pockets rather than using a credit line.
• The Financial institutions in India are not willing to take the risk when it comes to issuing new credit cards and hence there is also the problem of supply.

But this will change in the coming decade as more financially aware and young people join the workforce in India and break into credit payments , as they realize the underlying benefits.

Credit card usage in India is already growing in double digits every year and is only going to increase in the coming years . So the only thing that is going against CRED is its expenses and once they manage to minimize its expenses and increase its revenue, the Company is all set to rule.

What do you think about the future of CRED?

Do let us know in the comments below!

Conclusion:

We hope that you enjoyed this detailed analysis of the CRED Business Model . This article is an in-depth review of all the aspects of business , revenue , funding , and growth potential of the company in the future.

We as a startup recognize the genius behind CRED and are inspired by the achievements and work ethics of the company.

What did you love most about CRED ?

I am a creative content writer for Promotedigitally and I also work as a Freelance content writer. You can connect with me on LinkedIn through this link: www.linkedin.com/in/kunalmishracontent

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Kunal Mishra

Is Unacademy Really Profitable? Exposing the Reality....

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• > Startups

The Success Story of CRED

• Mallika Rangaiah
• Nov 18, 2020
• Updated on: Dec 14, 2021

Think about the earlier days where purchasing anything was based on a barter system, in which for every good or service to be gained, another good or service of some value would have to be exchanged. The system was both cumbersome, as well as lopsided. As fiat currency emerged, plenty of these issues began to be steadily resolved yet the problem remained that often, people don’t possess enough money to manage their expenses. In such scenarios, the magic of credit cards makes its place, i.e, the art of purchasing in advance and paying for it later.  

We all love to splurge and we love to use credit cards to do it! These cards hold an integral place in our lives and the one criteria we prioritize is to be able to perform these credit card payments in a simple and easy manner. This becomes difficult in a scenario where we possess a collection of credit cards across different banks, each one of them having a separate billing cycle. Now imagine their being an app which gathers all this information, sends you reminders to carry out timely payments and even offers you rewards for it. This is exactly where CRED steps in.  Recently occupying the status of a unicorn in April, 2021, this app becomes a single platform to handle all our credit cards.

 "Our goal was very simple. Can we create a platform where we actually make life better and systematically allow more and more privileges and benefits to come to people for having good credit scores and therefore, creating a flywheel effect for more people wanting to improve their scores? " - Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED, in an interview by Bloomberg

About CRED  

Established in 2018, CRED is a members-only application which facilitates its users with exclusive rewards for paying their credit card bills.  

The platform has been established with the purpose of making credit card bill payments easier and to offer the users rewards upon timely payments. The application functions in a simple manner. It requires them to give their phone number to inspect their credit score through Cibil, CRIF and Experian.

“For too long, startups and governments have focussed on the masses, We want to focus on the others, the ones who pay taxes. Nobody has been solving their problems.” - Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED, in an interview by Forbes India

If a user’s credit score is 750 or higher, they are granted access to the CRED app or else they are put on the waitlist. The app examines all the credit cards linked to the user’s phone number and adds them to the app. 

Every time the user pays their credit card bills they are credited with CRED coins which can be burned in exchange for exclusive partner deals across a variety of lifestyle categories. These coins can then be adopted for claiming rewards via vendors like Ixigo and FreshMenu, as well as others.

CRED Ecosystem

“We empower members with visibility into their credit cards, helping them avoid the debt trap and use the credit they have earned in a responsible manner,” 

The members are also rewarded with offers like vouchers at more than 1,000 retail outlets from Levi’s or Gap or various online stores like Amazon and Flipkart, and offers on platforms like Zomato and Cult. For every penny extended towards payment through credit cards, the members are rewarded with CRED coins that can be adopted for purchasing vouchers. 

“If you look at history, nobody has been rewarded for paying back on time. We want to fix that.”  - Kunal Shah, CRED’s Founder

The Founder of CRED

CRED was established by Kunal Shah , who interestingly is a philosophy graduate from Mumbai’s Wilson college and does not have any engineering background. He dropped out of his MBA from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

He has been an advisor to the board of Bennett Coleman & Co Limited, Y Combinator, and Sequoia Capital India and was also the Chairman of the Internet and Mobile Association of India from 2015-2017.

He is also an active angel investor and has essayed the role of a mentor for many of Asia’s popular startups which include Unacademy, RazorPay, Go-Jek, and Zilingo as well as others.

Kunal’s initial established venture had been PaisaBack , which was a cashback and promotional platform for organized retailers. He later closed down the platform to establish FreeCharge in August 2010 alongside Sandeep Tandon, which was later in 2015, acquired by Snapdeal although the platform continued to operate as an independent entity under his leadership. After he exited the platform in October 2016 it was later acquired by Axis Bank in the month of July, 2017. Finally in 2018, Kunal announced the establishment of CRED. 

The Origin of CRED

As highlighted in a Your Story article, after Kunal’s first venture FreeCharge had been sold to Snapdeal back in 2015, he spent a great deal of time traveling and in learning about developed nations. One common point that he noticed, in particular, was that in these nations there was a high degree of trust extended by the system upon the public. For instance, they had petrol pumps without any attendants or self-checkout counters in supermarkets, without any cashiers. 

This resulted in him acknowledging the advantages of a frictionless environment i.e an environment in which all costs and restraints relating to transactions are absent. In a LinkedIn post, he had emphasized how the system was trusted by the public as it constantly rewarded them for being dependable and respectable individuals. 

Yet here, in the Indian nation, the segment of the public which was dependable, had to pay the price for the acts of others and the absence of transparency and irregularity of information led to a lack of trust. He stated how the present model is stringent and left a great degree of scope for confusion and errors which the trustworthy segment of the public does not deserve. This led to the establishment of CRED. 

"I felt the need to create a system that rewards trustworthy and creditworthy individuals of India and inspires others to be like them." - Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED

Revenue Sources of CRED

Till now, CRED’s main focus has been on expanding its user base rather than on making profits. Yet there are a number of possible sources of revenue for the platform which it can capitalize on in the coming future. 

One of the primary sources of revenue can be via the monetization of data. Although CRED emphasizes its privacy policy over its pledge to never sell data to external parties, this data can be adopted for enhancing and personalizing the user experience.

"At this point of time, the company is going to be solely focused on growing both revenue as well as scale of the company and prioritise profit once we have managed to get a significant market share of these customers." - Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED

CRED Recent Growth

As confirmed in a recent Business Standard article, the platform has finally been heading towards monetizing its platform after 21 months of its establishment.  

The platform has been aiming to use four products that it had launched amidst the lockdown, for managing its tasks during the COVID19 pandemic, as their source of revenue.

In April 2020, the platform had set up two lending products, namely “Rent Pay” as well as a credit line . “Rent Pay” had been set up with the purpose of allowing users to pay regular and repeating household expenses and rent payments per month via credit cards. Meanwhile, the credit line has been set up to offer credit at one-third of the existing interest rates in the market in association with banks. A brand discovery platform named “Discover”, was also set up around the same time.

The platform is hoping to gain revenue by charging a fee for leveraging Rentpay aside from the revenue share gained from its credit line offering. It also plans to charge a fee from brands for listing their products on the 'Discover' platform where the users can spend CRED coins to avail of discounts.

The growth of CRED’s platform has also largely been propelled by its marketing campaign amidst the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament. 

As per an article by TechStory , the company has reported an increase in both its user base as well as on the fundings it is receiving. The platform’s board director, Shailendra Singh tweeted that it has been registering a 6-7 times increase in new users since IPL began.  The massive audience of the cricket tournament has definitely helped boost the popularity of the application. 

“IPL 2020 is kicking off the festive season this year, and at CRED we wanted to make the extra party special for millions of cricket lovers tuning in. As much as cricket is about discipline and strategy, it’s also a rewarding experience for players and viewers. By making credit card bill payments equally delightful, we are incentivizing every credit card-holder watching the matches to make digital payments, clear debt and improve their credit scores.” The offers provided by the app and promotion in the IPL is actually helping the startup’s promotion. - Kunal Shah, Founder of CRED

CRED Funding

As confirmed by TechStory the platform is presently in talks to hoist around $100 million at a valuation ranging between $700 million and $800 million

The platform had raised $120 million in a Series A funding round back in August 2019. A number of top technology investors participated in the round included Ribbit Capital, General Catalyst, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group as well as Apoletto Asia.

After this funding, the company also raised $4 million from Sequoia Capital India. 

Prior to this, in its first funding round, in late 2018, the platform had raised $30 million , from a group of investors headed by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. 

Cred raised $80 million in a round-headed by DST Global towards the end of 2020.   

The platform raised  $81 million in a  Series C round i n January 2021.

In April 2021 CRED raised $215 million in a series D funding, which valued the Indian startup at $2.2 billion, giving it the status of a unicorn. 

Cred then raised $251 million  in Oct 2021 in a Series E funding round co-led by Tiger Global and Falcon Edge at a valuation of $4.01 billion.

"The best way to visualise what CRED is going to become is a large gated community or club, with chosen customers who are creditworthy. It will be a large gated community for a select audience, and will never be the app that caters to hundreds of millions of customers. It will have top 20-30 million families using products and services, creating interesting experiences.. Once we create a community of trust and like mindedness, we will remove the line between fintech and lifestyle and serve their needs. " - Kunal Shah, in an interview with Times Now  

Despite not making any money currently and aiming at facilitating personal loans in collaboration with banks and non-banking firms (NBFCs), CRED has been a buzzing phenomenon in the past recent couple of months, largely owing to the IPL,  and has intrigued and sparked the interest of many of the audience. 

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Hazardous high-energy seismic event discrimination method based on region division and identification of main impact factors: a case study.

1. Introduction

2. overview of the research site, 2.1. geotechnical conditions and seismic monitoring, 2.2. the case study panel, 3. methodology, 3.1. framework of the methodology, 3.2. method for identification of main impact factors, 3.3. method for high-energy seismic events discrimination, 4. a case study of the lw7434, 4.1. relationship between main impact factors and the seismic events, 4.2. identification and weighting of main impact factors, 4.2.1. regional division, 4.2.2. quantification of the weights of the factors in each region of lw7434.

• Calculated results for region A: CI = 0.047, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.047, CR = 0.007 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.099, 0.099, 0.099, 0.274, 0.429] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.
• Calculated results for region B: CI = 0.011, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.011, CR = 0.011 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.076, 0.076, 0.220, 0.220, 0.409] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.
• Calculated results for region C: CI = 0.025, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.025, CR = 0.006 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.076, 0.076, 0.076, 0.288, 0.484] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.
• Calculated results for region D: CI = 0.006, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.006, CR = 0.001 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.071, 0.071, 0.071, 0.277, 0.510] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.
• Calculated results for region E: CI = 0.021, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.021, CR = 0.005 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.058, 0.058, 0.106, 0.377, 0.401] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.
• Calculated results for region F: CI = 0.024, RI = 1.12, λ max = 5.024, CR = 0.005 < 0.1, which satisfies the consistency test, and the weight matrix W = [0.071, 0.071, 0.141, 0.268, 0.449] is calculated to obtain the weights of the depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip, mining speed, and fault.

4.2.3. Determination of the Degree of Dynamic Hazard in Each Area of LW7434

4.3. high-energy seismic events identification results, 5. discussion, 6. conclusions.

• In the case study, the coal depth, coal seam thickness, coal dip and mining speed are the overall factors. The influence of mining speed covers the whole mining stage of the longwall, while the influence of fault structure is only prominent in the local area.
• Through the linear logarithmic fitting of seismic energy and other source parameters, it is found that there are different degrees of positive logarithmic correlations between seismic source energy and other source parameters, and this positive correlation is more obvious for the hazardous high-energy seismic events.
• The correlation coefficients between seismic source energy and other source parameters show that seismic moment, stress drop, and apparent stress have a medium correlation with seismic energy, while seismic radius and apparent volume have a weak correlation with seismic energy. Based on the correlation coefficients of each source parameter, the weights of the influence of each parameter on the risk of high-energy seismic events were determined.
• An evaluation method for high-energy seismic events called the comprehensive energy index method is proposed based on the linear logarithmic relationship between seismic energy and other source parameters and the influence weights of dynamic risk. It is found that the comprehensive energy index identification method is more accurate by comparing it to the high-energy seismic events based on the energy criterion. The advantages, limitations and improvements of this method are also systematically synthesized.

Author Contributions

Institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Liu, Y.; Cao, A.; Wang, Q.; Li, G.; Yang, X.; Wang, C. Hazardous High-Energy Seismic Event Discrimination Method Based on Region Division and Identification of Main Impact Factors: A Case Study. Appl. Sci. 2024 , 14 , 6154. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14146154

Liu Y, Cao A, Wang Q, Li G, Yang X, Wang C. Hazardous High-Energy Seismic Event Discrimination Method Based on Region Division and Identification of Main Impact Factors: A Case Study. Applied Sciences . 2024; 14(14):6154. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14146154

Liu, Yaoqi, Anye Cao, Qiang Wang, Geng Li, Xu Yang, and Changbin Wang. 2024. "Hazardous High-Energy Seismic Event Discrimination Method Based on Region Division and Identification of Main Impact Factors: A Case Study" Applied Sciences 14, no. 14: 6154. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14146154

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After Supreme Court ruling, judge considers Trump's immunity claim in classified docs case

Donald Trump is seeking to build on his Supreme Court victory, which provided immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president, by asking judges in his federal classified documents case and in his New York hush money conviction to throw out all of those charges.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon postponed deadlines Saturday to debate evidence in the classified documents case and instead asked for written arguments about Trump’s immunity in the next two weeks.

Trump’s lawyers asked Cannon on Friday to halt all action in the classified documents case until she rules whether the charges are valid.

New York Judge Juan Merchan postponed sentencing Trump for his hush-money conviction of 34 counts of falsifying business records, which had been scheduled for Thursday, until September.

When the Supreme Court formally returns the election-interference case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, she must weigh which charges are still valid to prosecute.

Neither Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith nor Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has responded to the Supreme Court’s decision yet.

Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Christopher Kise, have argued the high court’s ruling means each of the judges will have to determine which conduct is official or unofficial – and not use any official conduct as evidence for charges against unofficial conduct.

Here is where the cases stand:

Supreme Court orders 'close analysis' of whether Trump conduct was unofficial

The reason for uncertainty about criminal charges against Trump is because no former president has ever been charged before and the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled on whether they could be.

Until July 1. That’s when Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority that former presidents can’t be tried for their official acts, but could potentially be charged for unofficial acts.

The ruling said presidents discussing policy with executive agencies can’t even be questioned about their motives. This ruled out charges involving Trump urging his acting attorney general to pursue allegations of election fraud with officials in swing states.

But the ruling left open the possibility of charges dealing with Trump’s recruitment of fake presidential electors to support him in states President Joe Biden won. Roberts wrote that determining whether Trump's pressure on then-Vice President Mike Pence "requires a close analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations."

“The President is not above the law,” Roberts wrote. “But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts."

Trial judges must now determine whether Trump’s conduct for the various charges was official or unofficial.

Judge postpones filings in classified documents case to study Trump's immunity claim

Trump was charged with retaining national defense records and conspiring to hide them from government authorities until FBI agents seized them during a search of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, in August 2022.

Prosecutors have noted the entire case involves conduct after Trump left the White House in January 2021. Smith's team office said Trump did not have legal authority to designate secret national security documents as personal records and send them to his private home. But Trump’s lawyers have argued his decision to ship the documents to Mar-a-Lago was an official act.

In an order Saturday, Cannon scrapped a Monday deadline for Trump to disclose his experts and Wednesday deadlines for prosecutors and defense lawyers to share more evidence in the case.

Instead, Cannon set a deadline July 18 for Smith to respond to Trump’s request for immunity. Trump will have until July 21 to respond.

Cannon hasn’t set a date for a hearing, but said she could still collect more evidence.

Trump’s lawyers want Cannon to only move forward on two issues in the case: Smith's request for a gag order preventing Trump from making comments that could incite threats against FBI agents working the case, and whether Smith was properly appointed to his job as special counsel.

In the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity, Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote  a concurrence  questioning Smith's appointment, even though that wasn't at issue in the case and many special counsels have been previously appointed under similar circumstances.

Judge in federal election interference must also determine unofficial conduct

The Supreme Court hasn’t formally returned Trump’s election-interference case to Chutkan, under what is called a “mandate,” which might not happen until Aug. 2.

“The judgment or mandate of this Court will not issue for at least thirty-two days,” Supreme Court clerk Scott Harris wrote July 1 to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Chutkan will have to review which charges – if any – can go to trial once she gets the case back.

New York sentencing postponed because of potential immunity

Merchan previously postponed sentencing Trump in the hush-money case, which had been scheduled Thursday, until Sept. 18.

But that’s only if necessary. Merchan plans to decide Sept. 6 whether Trump is immune from the charges, even though his case involves state charges and the Supreme Court was reviewing federal charges.

Trump was convicted May 30 of falsifying records to hide his reimbursement to private lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid $130,000 to silence porn actress Stormy Daniels about alleged sex with Trump before the 2016 election.

The financial arrangements between Cohen and Daniels happened before Trump was elected president. But his series of 11 payments to Cohen – through his private company – happened the first year of his presidency.

Merchan previously ruled that Trump filed an immunity argument in the case too late to be considered.

US Justice Department to appeal ruling dismissing Trump documents case

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Sarah N. Lynch is the lead reporter for Reuters covering the U.S. Justice Department out of Washington, D.C. During her time on the beat, she has covered everything from the Mueller report and the use of federal agents to quell protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in prisons and the department's prosecutions following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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