Fintech unicorn Cred said it will acquire online wealth-management platform Kuvera in a cash-and deal to enter the wealth-management space. The size of the deal was not disclosed.
“Kuvera is extremely popular among financially savvy Indians. Their products and vision are aligned with Cred’s principle of investing for long-term value creation rather than short-term entertainment,” Kunal Shah, CEO of Cred, said in a statement.
Once the deal goes through, Kuvera’s team and products will continue to operate independently, but will also work closely with Cred’s leadership on scaling its network, ecosystem, brand and distribution, Cred added. Kuvera customers’ accounts, portfolios, and ongoing investments will continue seamlessly, it said.
Kuvera’s founder Gaurav Rastogi said, “Through our engagement with Cred we realised that our core values of transparency, user value and simplicity align beautifully with each other. Together we see an exciting opportunity to fast-track building new products and features for our community while also bringing a trusted wealth-management solution to millions more.”
Kuvera, founded in 2017, has about three lakh customers and assets under advice of about ₹50,000 crore. However, only about ₹12,000 crore of this was invested through the platform. Most of it is in mutual funds, which do not earn them any revenue. The average mutual fund portfolio on Kuvera has about ₹12 lakh.
Apart from the zero-commission mutual fund offering, the company has also built tools to offer asset tracking, advisory, risk-based asset exploration, family accounts, and diverse asset classes.
Cred, founded in 2018, is a rewards-based payments app that helps users pay credit card bills, utility bills, rent and school fees, among other things. In FY23 its total income jumped to ₹1,484 crore from ₹422 crore in FY22, but its loss also widened to ₹1,347 crore from ₹1,279 crore in FY22.
Last year, the company entered the vehicle-management space with ‘Cred Garage’, through which it offers members concierge, parking, and other services.
Cred has bought a number of companies in the past few years. These include alcohol payment and delivery startup HipBar, corporate expense management platform Happay, and lending service startup CreditVidya. It is backed by marquee investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, Tiger Global, FalconEdge, Sofina Ventures, Insight Partners, Coatue and Dragoneer, among others.