Kissht raises $80 mn, to foray into challenger card segment
Summary
Consumer lending fintech firm Kissht has raised $80 million as part of a fresh funding round led by Vertex Growth and Brunei Investment Agency Existing investorsVentures SEA India and Endiya Partners also participated in the round.The latest round values the fintech company at close to $500 million, two people aware of the matter told ET.Along with the fundraise, the company also said it would foray into the challenger card segment , where it will issue its buy-now-pay-later cards called Ring in association with RBL and SBM Bank to customers linked with a credit line.The challenger card segment is fraught with heavy competition from the likes of Jupiter, Uni, Slice, and OneCard, among others. Over the past few months, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has been consulting players and the wider industry to understand the operations of new-age card-based credit fintech firms and is looking to regulate the space.In November, ET was the first to report, citing sources, that Kissht was in talks to raise up to $75 million at a valuation of $380-$420 million.The company said it would use the funds to enhance its product design, scale up card issuances to 10 million in the next 12-18 months and invest towards increasing its book size, while improving its technology backend.Founded in 2015, Kissht currently provides a credit line to consumers as well as unsecured personal loans. The company has an active loan book of Rs 900 crore.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, told ET. 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.The company is also focussed on acquiring users through offline channels by embedding its credit offerings at the point of sale in mid-scale department stores, Singh added.The founders of Kissht have a unique understanding of the needs of the new-to-credit population of India.