KreditBee Joins The ‘Desh Wapsi’ Brigade, Looks To Move Domicile To India

Joining the ‘Desh Wapsi’ bandwagon, lending tech startup KreditBee is reportedly looking to shift its headquarters to India from Singapore.

KreditBee has been working on the plan to reverse flip back to India for the past few months, Entrackr reported citing sources. The startup is seeking the inputs of regulators and figuring out tax liabilities, the report added.

Inc42 has reached out to the startup for a comment on the matter. The story will be updated on receiving a response. 

As per the report, the move to shift domicile to India will “smoothen” the startup’s IPO plans. Earlier, KreditBee cofounder and CEO Madhusudan Ekambaram said that the startup is eyeing a listing on the bourses by 2027.

“Fintech companies including KreditBee want to be headquartered in India because the local ecosystem including public markets have matured in the past few years… Moreover, regulators tend to like fintech firms to be based out of the country as diligence and monitoring becomes easy,” Entrackr quoted a source as saying. 

The development comes at a time when a growing number of big-ticket Indian startups, including Groww, Razorpay, Pine Labs, Meesho and Zepto, are looking to move their base to India. The decision to reverse flip is primarily led by considerations around going public and an easy relationship with the regulators. 

However, moving back to the country has been fraught with its own set of challenges. PhonePe, which moved its headquarters to India in 2022, had to grapple with a hefty INR 8,000 Cr tax bill and cumbersome paperwork. 

Meanwhile, the government seems to be in no mood to offer any rebates to startups moving their domicile to India. Earlier this year, commerce minister Piyush Goyal said that companies flipping back to India will have to bear tax liabilities.

For KreditBee too, these challenges are expected to have headlined the discussions to shift base to the country. 

Founded in 2018, the lending tech startup is the brainchild of Ekambaram, Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy, and Vivek Veda. It offers small ticket size loans of up to INR 4 Lakh for a tenure of two to 15 months. KreditBee competes with the likes of Navi, PB Fintech, LoanTap, and Capital Float. 

The company is registered as Finnove Private Limited in Singapore, and the overseas entity owns 70% in the Indian arm of the lending firm. The startup has raised more than $350 Mn in funding till date and is backed by the likes of Advent International, Premji Invest, Mirae, and NewQuest. 

The startup, last valued at around $700 Mn, raised $9.4 Mn from its existing investors in its extended Series D round last month.