An unicorn of the tech start-ups
Kunal Shah, the founder of Cred a members-only credit card payment app, and FreeCharge, a payments app now owned by one of India’s largest banks Axis Bank, is an entrepreneur, billionaire and angel investor in over 80 emerging startups including, Pianta, Unacademy, RazorPay. A graduate in Philosophy Shah is a successful tech founder without an engineering background. Shah founded Freecharge in 2010 along with Sandeep Tandon and in 2018 he launched an innovative members-only payment app, Cred which caters to only 1% of India’s population. Shah raised 30 million dollars for his second fintech venture on his reputation alone.
Shah’s humble beginnings were rooted in the early financial crisis he witnessed in his family after his father’s business went into massive debt. This raised many triggering questions in his young curious mind. He understood the importance of empowering entrepreneurship and that’s why after selling his company for 2500 crore rupees, he didn’t buy a fancy car, rather invested the money to fund 70 to 80 start-ups. His new venture CRED is a webbased mobile application that allows members to manage all their credit cards in one place, remind them of their due dates and reward them with coins that can be redeemed on experiences, brands and other benefits, every time they pay their bills. CRED rewards offer the customers with benefits like discounts on plane tickets and gym memberships. Admission to CRED is based on the credit score only without any extra charges.
Shah hopes CRED will lead to perks like expedited visa processing or even early access to new car models in the near future. He says, ‘anyone who scores well on CRED can get behind the velvet rope, regardless of social standing.’ Kunal Shah has been an advisor to the board of Bennett Coleman & Co Limited, the Chairman of the Internet and Mobile Association of Indian and an advisor to Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital India. Kunal believes entrepreneurship is the future to an empowered country and he is one big force nurturing, upskilling and funding the new start-ups!
