cred spennyz: Cred acqui-hires YCombinator-backed fintech Spennyz

As a part of the arrangement, some founding team members, including Spenny founder Rathin Shah, will be joining the Cred product team and work on building new features.

“The work Cred and Kunal (Shah) have done to inculcate positive financial behaviour has been an inspiration. We’re excited to start a new journey working with the kickass team at Cred to take this mission forward. Onwards & upwards!’’, said Rathin Shah on Twitter on Friday.

Founded in 2019 by Shah and Gaurav Arora, Spenny was a micro-investment platform which nudged users to invest small amounts of money in mutual funds and digital gold every time they chose to spend.

This comes in the wake of the company asking users to withdraw their deposits in March this year, as it decided to phase out the service, and stopped taking new deposits. Spenny had also asked users to sell their digital gold on the app and redeem their funds.

Last year, Cred acquired credit software provider CreditVidya in an equity-and-cash deal. In the past, it has acquired expense management software and corporate credit card provider, Happay. It also acquired HipBar in 2021 for its prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licence.

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Cred founder Kunal-Shah led Newtap Technologies, which owns a non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence, had picked up $50-$70 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital and the Singapore sovereign fund, GIC, ET had reported on May 1. Cred has a 20 percent stake in Newtap Technologies. In an exclusive report, ET had said on May 30 that Cred is expanding its lending strategy as it looks to broaden its user base.

This was a departure from its strategy of catering to premium credit users only, who owned a credit card. To execute the same, the fintech firm was leveraging Prefr, a digital lending platform that merged with Cred through the acquisition of CreditVidya.

As a part of the arrangement, some founding team members, including Spenny founder Rathin Shah, will be joining the Cred product team and work on building new features.

“The work Cred and Kunal (Shah) have done to inculcate positive financial behaviour has been an inspiration. We’re excited to start a new journey working with the kickass team at Cred to take this mission forward. Onwards & upwards!’’, said Rathin Shah on Twitter on Friday.

Founded in 2019 by Shah and Gaurav Arora, Spenny was a micro-investment platform which nudged users to invest small amounts of money in mutual funds and digital gold every time they chose to spend.

This comes in the wake of the company asking users to withdraw their deposits in March this year, as it decided to phase out the service, and stopped taking new deposits. Spenny had also asked users to sell their digital gold on the app and redeem their funds.

Last year, Cred acquired credit software provider CreditVidya in an equity-and-cash deal. In the past, it has acquired expense management software and corporate credit card provider, Happay. It also acquired HipBar in 2021 for its prepaid payment instrument (PPI) licence.

Discover the stories of your interest

Cred founder Kunal-Shah led Newtap Technologies, which owns a non-banking finance company (NBFC) licence, had picked up $50-$70 million from existing investors Sequoia Capital and the Singapore sovereign fund, GIC, ET had reported on May 1. Cred has a 20 percent stake in Newtap Technologies. In an exclusive report, ET had said on May 30 that Cred is expanding its lending strategy as it looks to broaden its user base.

This was a departure from its strategy of catering to premium credit users only, who owned a credit card. To execute the same, the fintech firm was leveraging Prefr, a digital lending platform that merged with Cred through the acquisition of CreditVidya.