Kissht, a consumer lending fintech company, has raised $80 million in a fresh round of funding headed by Vertex Growth and the Brunei Investment Agency.
The financing included existing investors Vertex Ventures SEA India and Endiya Partners.
According to two people familiar with the matter, the latest round valued the fintech company at close to $500 million.
Along with the fundraising, the business said that it would enter the challenger card segment, offering its buy-now-pay-later cards called Ring in association with RBL and SBM Bank to customers linked with a credit line.
According to the company, the funds will be used to improve product design, scale-up card issuances to 10 million in the next 12-18 months, and invest in expanding its book size while upgrading its technological backend.
Kissht, which was founded in 2015, now offers users a credit line and unsecured personal loans. It has about 3.2 million users on its platform, of which more than 50% are active monthly.
The company distributes health-related insurance and counts Aditya Birla Health Insurance as a partner. However, the vertical continues to be a small part of the overall revenues.
The platform disburses Rs 580 crore in loans every month on average, with an average ticket size of Rs 13,500. The company has a Rs 900 crore active loan book.
“We have been strongly focussed on credit, and thought payments were a natural extension to our offerings. The idea behind launching a card was so that customers can use the credit in a seamless manner for all services, products and even small ticket offline transactions such as groceries,” Ranvir Singh, founder and chief executive of Kissht, said. “This helps customers use the credit for recurring transactions and improves engagement, rather than a one-time personal loan which is very episodic.”
Kissht will issue these cards through its non-banking finance company (NBFC) arm.
Singh added that the company is also focused on acquiring users through offline channels by embedding its credit offerings at the point of sale in mid-scale department stores.
“The founders of Kissht have a unique understanding of the needs of the new-to-credit population of India. The multiservice credit and payments offering will revolutionise the way millennials and other new borrowers use and think about credit,” said James Lee, managing partner of Vertex Growth.
The company’s total consolidated revenue was Rs 410 crore in 2021-22, and profits were Rs 55 crore.
