look news india
The biggest and shocking business news of this time is coming out from the Indian Fintech world. The world’s leading social media company Meta is going to take a huge and historic step in the Indian digital payment market. This parent company (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) led by Mark Zuckerberg is making a huge investment of ₹ 8,550 crore (about $ 900 million) in India’s most prestigious credit card payment platform ‘CRED’. Under this mega corporate deal, Meta will acquire a majority stake of 20 percent in Cred.
But, the most surprising and attractive thing about this high-profile deal worth billions of rupees is that despite investing such huge funds, Meta will not get any personal or financial data of crores of Cred customers. Keeping the trust and privacy of its customers as the highest priority, CRED has imposed a complete ‘No Entry’ board on data access. Along with this, there is also going to be a major era change at the leadership level within the company, where the company’s famous founder Kunal Shah is now stepping away from the day-to-day operations.
After all, why did Meta spend ₹8,550 crore of cash without getting the data?
CRED currently has a membership base of around 1.7 crore of the most premium and affluent credit card users in the country. These are the selected people who have excellent CIBIL scores and who share highly sensitive and confidential financial information related to their credit card bills, banking transactions and personal expenses on this platform. Since Meta is a company primarily dependent on online advertisements, which always keeps an eye on user data and their behavior, Cred has taken a very smart and master stroke step by keeping Meta away from this database.
Its biggest advantage will be that the data of premium customers present on the platform will be completely safe from falling into the hands of hackers or any other advertising company. Additionally, Cred will remain legally protected under India’s stringent Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) laws and stringent financial regulations of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Kunal Shah’s departure; Mitan Sampat becomes the new boss of Cred
With this mega investment, a new administrative chapter is beginning within CRED. Kunal Shah, the famous entrepreneur and founder who took the company from zero to this point, is now completely distancing himself from the day-to-day operations of the company after holding the helm for almost eight years.
Now in his place, Mitan Sampat has been given the big responsibility of interim CEO of the company. Mitan Sampat is not a new face to CRED, he has been handling the entire work of the Chief Strategy and Finance department within CRED since the year 2020. Now, there will be a huge responsibility on his shoulders to keep the company continuously profitable and to take Cred to a big IPO in the stock market in the future.
New path for credit progress will open through WhatsApp
Now the big question arises that if Meta does not get the data, then what is Cred going to gain from this big partnership? Actually, in exchange for this deal, Cred is going to get the direct and exclusive support of millions of active users of ‘WhatsApp’ available with Meta. In the future, advanced financial services like credit card payment reminders, one-click bill payments and cashback can be initiated directly within WhatsApp chat, keeping customer privacy 100% secure.
This is a great time for Credit on the financial and earnings front as well. At present, the company’s annual revenue has crossed ₹ 3,200 crore and recently the company has also recorded the first profitable quarter in its history. Cred will use the fresh funds of ₹ 8,550 crore from this deal to rapidly expand its personal loan and merchant loan business to every corner of the country. The company already has a huge assets under management (AUM) of ₹24,000 crore, and is now eyeing to make a big mark in the insurance and wealth management sector.