The fintech startup switched to a lowball offer amid a downturn in investor sentiment and questions over Smallcase’s business model.
Last year, CRED founder Kunal Shah came up with an ambitious plan to expand the fintech company’s wealth management offerings. He wanted CRED to invest in Smallcase, a seven-year-old stock investment platform backed by India’s leading brokerage, Zerodha, among others.
Talks between the firms about a deal—which reportedly would have valued Smallcase as high as $300-400 million—have fallen through after six months of negotiations.
The companies couldn’t agree on Smallcase’s valuation, according to five industry executives who were either involved in the deal or tracking it closely. All of them spoke on condition of anonymity.
This comes after Vasanth Kamath, …
Advait is a financial journalist and a former writer at The Morning Context. Here, he wrote on India’s banks, the wider financial services industry and the fintech ecosystem. He has previously worked with the Economic and Political Weekly, Business Standard, BloombergQuint and MediaNama, where he covered everything from the Reserve Bank of India to fintech policy.
Writer
advait@mailtmc.com
Mumbai
Ashwin writes on fintech and banking at The Morning Context. He joins us from The Economic Times, he worked across the finance, tech and startup verticals, breaking stories related to India’s banking system, startups in the new economy, digital payments, insurance and cryptocurrencies.
Writer
ashwin@mailtmc.com
Delhi