Kunal Shah's CRED plays the "follow the money" game

After catering to youngsters looking to save a buck at FreeCharge, Kunal Shah is targeting the top of the pyramid with CRED. But will chasing the money card lead to a pot of gold or a lump of pyrite?

Years on from a nose-bleed $400 million exit with FreeCharge, Kunal Shah is looking for an encore with his new startup CRED

A credit card management app, CRED has already raised $30 million in a seed round from the likes of Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, and Ru-Net

But with great funding comes great responsibility to deliver a stellar product that wins great traction and eventually a unicorn-esqe exit

How will CRED stand out in a sea of competition in the payments space? How exactly does it hope to bring in the bucks?

“Follow the money card.”

That is all you need to do to win.

As far as gambling card games go, the Three-card Monte is just about the simplest game you can find.

There are three cards, placed face down on a table.

One of the cards is the “money” card, usually the queen of hearts. The other two cards are knaves—the jack of spades and the jack of clubs.

The dealer shows you the money card, places it down again, and then quickly rearranges the cards.

AUTHOR

Sumanth Raghavendra

Sumanth is a serial entrepreneur with more than eighteen years experience in running startups. He is currently the founder of Deck App Technologies, a Bangalore-based startup attempting to re-imagine productivity software for the Post-PC era. Sumanth’s columns appear regularly in leading publications. He holds MBA degrees from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, USA.

View Full Profile

Others tell you what. We tell you the ‘So What?’

Read articles that decode the most significant shifts happening around business, technology, startups and healthcare. 1000+ articles for subscribers of the India edition. 150+ articles for subscribers of the Southeast Asia edition. Plus premium newsletters that help you make sense of the world around you.

So much journalism in India is superficial.

Articles are generic, almost cookie-cutter in their approach. And they don’t provide enough context on the issues they cover. The Ken is different. I don’t always agree with everything they say but I appreciate their commitment to publishing deeply reported narratives and investigations. Their reporters find new ways to analyze tech among other industries. And that’s always worth a read.

Sid Talwar / Co-Founder and Partner / Lightbox Venture Capital

As entrepreneurs, we thrive on being in the know at all times.

A personal subscription to The Ken was a no brainer. But as startup founders, this isn't enough. Team members also need to be in the know, for everyone handles customer-facing responsibilities and an ecosystem change that impacts customers also impacts us

Kiran Jonnalagadda / Co-founder / HasGeek and Internet Freedom Foundation