CRED plans to invest around $10 million in lending partner LiquiLoans as the Indian fintech startup expands its ownership in financial services, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed.
The Bengaluru-based startup’s investment in Mumbai-based LiquiLoans raises the lender’s valuation to nearly $200 million, the companies said in a statement.
CRED partnered with LiquiLoans last year to launch CRED Mint, a service that allows CRED customers to lend to each other at interest rates up to 9% annually. Kunal Shah, founder and chief executive officer of CRED, said: “Their work has helped expand access to credit and we look forward to partnering with them during this period of growth and innovation. next”.
The investment will help LiquiLoans, which operates a profitable business, “strengthen its technological capabilities and join the ecosystem of trust that CRED enables,” the startup said in a statement. declare.
“Our goal is to build a reliable and trustworthy P2P lending platform. To this end, we have partnered and will continue to work strategically with entities that share similar characteristics,” Achal Mittal, co-founder of LiquiLoans, said in a statement. “Our long-standing relationship with CRED and this investment will advance our goal of creating efficiency for seamless borrowing and investing.”
Peer-to-peer lending has made inroads in India in recent years, but some startups are start fighting to maintain service.
LiquiLoans will be the latest in a series of investments CRED has made over the past year. The startup, which gives users the ability to manage and pay their credit cards and other bills on time, as well as access to D2C brands and loans, invest in lender CredAvenue earlier this year and expense management platform HapPay in December.
CRED, backed by Tiger Global, Sequoia India, Alpha Wave Ventures and Dragoneer and worth 6.4 billion dollarsalso interacted with Amazon-backed Smallcase earlier this year, initially to explore an investment and then for a majority acquisition, TechCrunch previously reported. Three people familiar with the matter said the negotiations did not come to an agreement because of disagreements over pricing.
