CRED focuses on revenue with lending play, plans unicorn round

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Editor's note: CRED, serial entrepreneur Kunal Shah’s second fintech venture, has managed to raise $228 million in equity funding in a little over two and a half years. Including $30 million as seed capital six months before it launched in November 2018. The startup, which allows users to pay their credit card bills using its app and earn rewards, focused almost entirely on building its user base of credit-card-using Indians with high credit scores. This is what defined the first 18 months or so of the service, to the point that “What is CRED’s business model?” became a running joke. Starting in mid-2020, though, effort shifted towards monetizing this user base of well-off Indians. The credit card market in India is about 25 million unique users, and CRED's target addressable market (of high credit score individuals) is 10-15 million; it already claims to have 5.9 million users on its platforms, which is about 40%-50%, not quite saturated, but no longer leaving vast room for user growth. According to an industry executive aware of the matter, who asked not to be named, the …