Indian startup Cred raises $81 million

Cred a fast-growing Indian startup that allows users to pay their credit card bills and gives rewards in return, has raised $81 million in a Series C financing round, which puts the company at $806 million valuation

Existing Cred investor DST Global led the round, along with Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and General Catalyst. In addition, Sofina, Coatue and Satyan Gajwani of Times Internet also invested in this round.

Approximately $1.2 million of the cash was used to buy shares from staff liquidating vested stocks gained from Employee Stock Ownership Plans (Esop).

Cred founder Kunal Shah, says: “It’s important to acknowledge the role that employees have played in our success. We are committed to enabling wealth-creation opportunities for them and have allocated 10% of our captable allocated for ESOPs even at the Series C stage.”

Cred currently claims to hold a 20% market share of all Indian credit card payments, and has doubled its user base to 5.9 million individuals over the past year.