Kissht Raises $30 Mn In Series C Funding To Increase Online, Offline Merchants

Mumbai-based fintech startup Kissht has raised $30 Mn in a Series C financing round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia (SEA) and India and Sistema Asia Fund, with participation from existing investors Fosun RZ Capital, Ventureast, and Endiya Partners.

Kissht plans to use the funding to increase its base of both offline and online merchants, deepen its presence across categories, and further enhance its data and analytics capabilities.

Founded in 2015 by former McKinsey consultants Krishnan Vishwanathan and Ranvir Singh, Kissht provides purchase financing and personal loans to its customers through a financial technology platform which is integrated with online and offline merchants.

Krishnan Vishwanathan, CEO and co-founder of Kissht, said: “At Kissht, we are continuously striving for innovative affordability solutions that do justice to the growing and aspirational middle-class of India. Our data-centric algorithms and technology platform allows us to underwrite the new to credit and excluded segments extensively while ensuring we are risk prudent. We will use the funding to further accelerate growth.

The company claims to have developed a proprietary self-learning algorithm which assesses a customer’s credit profile in a fraction of a second, based on more than 2,000 digital footprints.

Prior to this round, Kissht $10 Mn funding in a round led by Chinese investment conglomerate, Fosun International. It also secured $2 Mn earlier in 2017 from Hyderabad-based, early-stage venture capital firm Endiya Partners and Ventureast.

Piyush Kharbanda, Executive Director at Vertex Ventures, said “We see brand new markets opening up in consumer financing in India, and believe that technology will play a fundamental role in addressing this opportunity. However, we feel that it is equally important for lenders to stick to well-understood fundamentals of financial services, such as a strong focus on managing collections, etc.”

Here are some quick updates about Kissht:

• In February 2018, the startup launched its Scan and Pay Later credit wallet, which enables customers to shop on credit using the Kissht QR Code
• Kissht is also among the top Indian fintech startups to watch out for in 2018, as per Inc42’s Startup Watchlist
• The startup claims to be present in more than 50 online and over 3,500 offline points of sale across categories, including consumer durables, electronics, health, alternative energy and education, and enables customers to easily access credit for their purchases
• Recently, reports surfaced that Chinese conglomerate Tencent was looking to invest $5 Mn-$15 Mn in startups such as Kissht

Dhruv Kapoor, Managing Director at Sistema Asia Capital, said, “India is a credit-starved country with a $140 Bn annual credit gap that Kissht is addressing through its proprietary technology and innovative financial products. We are excited to partner with Krishnan and Ranvir in their journey.”

According to the Inc42 Datalabs’ Indian Tech Startup Funding Report H1 2018, 46% of the total funding of $3 Bn in H1 2018 went to fintech and ecommerce alone.

Fintech startups raised a combined funding of $631.29 Mn across 70 deals in H1 2018.

Kissht competes with the likes of Veritas Finance, Lendingkart, Capital Float, Quikrupee, SMEcorner, Innoviti, Biz2credit, FlexiLoans, and KredX, among others.

The Indian fintech software market is forecast to cross $2.4 Bn by 2020, according to a report by KPMG India and NASSCOM.