Cred Becomes 1st Fintech Platform to Roll Out Access to CBDC e-Rupee

Cred, a fintech platform backed by Tiger Global and Peak XV, has become the first fintech company to roll out access to India's central bank digital currency (CBDC), known as the e-rupee.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated a pilot for the e-rupee in December 2022, initially allowing only banks to offer access. However, in April 2024, the RBI expanded the pilot to include payment firms.

Cred will initially roll out access to its e-rupee wallet to a select set of users, with the issuance of e-rupee tokens facilitated by YES Bank. The goal is to make e-rupee transactions seamless and drive adoption among creditworthy users.

Kunal Shah, the founder of Cred, stated that their goal is to make e-rupee transactions frictionless and drive its adoption among the most creditworthy Indians.

While e-rupee transactions had surged initially, they have since declined, reflecting the global challenge central banks face in popularizing digital currencies.

Cred's platform is known for catering to creditworthy users, making it an ideal partner for the initial rollout of the e-rupee to ensure a smooth and reliable implementation.

Other payment firms like GooglePay, PhonePe, AmazonPay, and MobiKwik are also expected to join the digital currency pilot.

CRED in Talks To Acquire Kuvera

Kunal Shah promoted CRED is reportedly in talks to acquire Kuvera, an online investment platform operated by Bengaluru headquartered Arevuk Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd.

Kuvera is an Indian online wealth management platform for mutual funds, digital gold, fixed deposits, cryptocurrency exchange, insurance and US ETF investment. The probable acquisition is a sign of CRED's growing interest in the lucrative category of stock investments and mutual funds.

The detailed discussions are ongoing and an acquisition deal could finalize within weeks, the source said, requesting anonymity as the details are private.

CRED, valued at over $6 billion, is expanding its offering other than credit cards & loans payment. The Indian mutual fund market is one of the largest and fastest-growing in the world.

In ongoing funding winter and layoffs among startups, Mutual Funds and Investment platforms has emerged as one of the lucrative investment choices of investors and VCs. Mutual funds and robust equity markets have given Indian savers a good foundation for financial products

Of late, investment platforms like Jiraaf, Stable Money and Volt Money have successfully raised money with Mutual Funds as one of their offerings.

Cred offers different products including Cred RentPay, Cred Cash, Cred Pay, Cred Store, and Cred Travel Store, etc. In August 2021, Cred launched a Peer to Peer (P2P) lending feature known as Cred Mint that aims to monetise through its 7.5 million users.

Founded in 2016, by Gaurav Rastogi — ex-portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley, and Neelabh Sanyal — former vice-president with Axis Capital, Kuvera has raised about $10 million to date from number of angel investors and also from Eight Roads Fintech Strategic Investments, the investment arm of Fidelity International.

CRED Launches Crowdfunding Campaign targets one billion litre of oxygen

CRED, a members only credit card bill payment platform, in partnership with healthcare fundraising platform Milaap, has launched a crowdfunding campaign where members can spend CRED Coins towards oxygen for those who need it most.

Every 10,000 CRED Coin will go towards 1,000 litre of oxygen. Members can participate as many times as they’d like, with no cap on coin spends. Milaap will channel the funds raised to partners and will buy and deploy oxygen concentrators for hospitals and healthcare non-profits across India.

During the first Covid-19 wave, CRED launched a similar initiative where members contributed coins to donate over 300,000 masks for frontline workers.

Update: CRED members can now donate CRED coins towards buying oxygen concentrators for hospitals, healthcare orgs across India. With a goal of 1 billion litres, we’ve partnered with Milaap to ensure contributions reach hospitals in need.

— Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) April 26, 2021

CRED members receive a CRED Coin for every rupee in credit card bills that they pay on CRED. With over 5.9 million members in the CRED community, the campaign aims at raising enough funds to arrange for one billion litres of oxygen.

Those who wish to contribute more can do so on milaap.org/oxygen.

"Starting May 3, daily updates will be published on a microsite in-app until the deployment is complete. The entire value of member contributions will go towards the cause with CRED covering the administrative fees," Cred said.

Those with innovative ideas to make hospitals self-sufficient in oxygen, or convert other containers to transport oxygen, can also email oxygen@cred.club for consideration and support from the CRED Oxygen Fund.

UrbanClap, CRED and Dunzo among Top 5 Soonicorns Newsmakers of 2019

• UrbanClap was in the limelight for Investment announcements and expansion to international markets.


• CRED has made huge strides towards becoming a household name.


• BharatPe to secure funding from one of the biggest Venture Capitals in today’s world

Wizikey, Asia’s first PR and communication platform has collated interesting trends across industries using its AI and ML-based Technology and created a report on the top newsmakers of 2019 in the Soonicorns world. The report has been created after a thorough study of all the news published in the sector from 1st of January till date.

The number of India’s potential unicorns—a term to describe startups valued at $1 billion—more than tripled from 15 last year to 52 in 2019, becoming the world’s largest pipeline of unicorns in the making, Nasscom said in its report ‘Indian Tech Start-up Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s’.

The top 12 Soonicorns who were shortlisted on the basis of news they made are as follows: UrbanClap, BharatPe, Vedantu, Pharmeasy, Dunzo, Medlife, OkCredit, Chargebee, Sharechat, Dailyhunt, Rupeek and FreshtoHome. 8 Soonicorns moved up the ladder to become Unicorns and many more are expected to do the same in 2019.

“Indian startups have created a lot of benchmarks this year. Two common themes that defined why these companies were at the top of the category in terms of making news was about their Funding Announcement and Strategic Partnerships,” said Anshul Sushil, Founder and CEO of Wizikey.

Here are the top newsmakers in the Soonicorn category for the year 2019:



UrbanClap has had a good year in the limelight. Investment announcements and expansion to international markets were the major highlights for the year. The new range of offerings

from time to time also made sure that they remain in the media limelight. A careful analysis shows that the business was in the news for more than one reason. The most common news buzzwords for UrbanClap were Tiger Global, Flipkart and Home Services.

Since its conception almost a year back, CRED has made huge strides towards becoming a household name and it seems to be succeeding. In just one year CRED has been able to create

huge waves in the investing space. CRED has received substantial media coverage thanks to its sudden rise to fame with majority of it coming from the funding it received and Kunal Shah’s own funding activities. This soonicorn made news on the buzzwords Credit Reward, Credit Card Payments and Tiger Global.

BharatPe has had a stellar year in the spotlight. Having had a quiet couple of months at the very beginning of the year, BharatPe’s visibility started its upward trend after it entered talks with Sequoia to secure funding from one of the biggest Venture Capitals in today’s world. BharatPe has now become a household name and a force to be reckoned with in the digital payments space. The company has since launched various features and offerings to cement its position as a market leader in this space. The most common buzzwords for BharatPe were Digital Payments, QR Payments and Sequoia.

Dunzo had consistent visibility throughout the year. The highlights of the first half of the year came from the launch of Swiggy stores which sited Dunzo as a major competitor. There was also a fair amount of speculation regarding Dunzo’s plan to raise funds. The latter half saw Dunzo getting higher coverage thanks to their partnership with Google and Airtel acquiring Vahan. Dunzo also announced a fresh round of funding during the latter half of the year. The most common buzzwords for this newsmaker were Google Funding, Home Delivery and B2B Logistics Services. 

Vedantu, a relatively new entrant in a booming ed-tech industry has been able to make a name for itself in the news this year. Vedantu has been in the news consistently this year owing to its various funding announcements and feature releases. The biggest announcement the company made by far was about receiving funding from Tiger Global, a leading venture capital firm. One blip on an otherwise positive year for Vedantu was when they received considerable publicity for a hack of their platform.

About Wizikey:

Wizikey is a PR Software-as-a-Service that uses data and AI to simplify PR, making it transparent and measurable for Fortune 500 companies and startups alike. It enables users with features like realtime media intelligence, helps delivering stories to the right journalist while saving spam, hours of scrutiny and giving brands the voice they need.

Wizikey’s co-founders Anshul and Aakriti have spent over a decade in the communications industry, identifying key problems as they served 300+ businesses. These first principles form the foundation of Wizikey - to make the communications industry efficient, transparent and measurable through the power of data and AI tech. With investors like Ajai Chowdhry (Co-founder, HCL), Alok Mittal (Co-founder and CEO, Indifi), Ambarish Raghuvanshi (ex-CFO, Info Edge), Keshav R Murugesh (CEO, WNS), Raman Roy (Chairman, NASSCOM and Chairman, Quattro), Sanjiv Bajaj (CEO, Bajaj Finserv) and the Indian Angel Fund among others, we strive each day to make PR accessible and simple - for everyone.