Madhusudan Ekambaram, cofounder and CEO, KreditBee.Bengaluru-based Kreditbee is looking to close a $120 million (about ₹1,000 crore) funding round, which could propel the fintech lending startup into the unicorn club.
The company is looking at a post-money valuation of $1.2 billion, according to two persons familiar with the matter.
“The pitch is that in a year or two Kreditbee will go public and at that point the company will seek a valuation of $1.5-1.7 billion in the public market,” said one of the persons, who did not wish to be identified.
Unicorn refers to a privately held startup with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
ET reported on July 23, 2025, that the company had secured board approval to convert into a public limited company, as it prepared for an initial public offering.
The upcoming round will be led by an external investor and existing investors will pump in additional capital into the company, said the second person.
In January 2023, Kreditbee had raised $200 million in its last major equity infusion round, from Advent International, MUFG and others. The round pushed its valuation to about $680 million.
Queries emailed to Kreditbee went unanswered.
Rough estimates suggest Kreditbee is seeking multiples of three to four times on its net worth as of March 2025, the last full financial year for which the company reported its earnings. Other large non-banking financial companies like Bajaj Finance, with a much more diversified lending business, operate at multiples of four to five times.
In March last year, Kreditbee had a net worth of around ₹3,100 crore, documents accessed from credit rating agency CareEdge showed. The firm’s total assets under management stood at ₹10,102 crore, with around 42% of the book being held through partner lenders in a co-lending model.
“The company is also seeking a tech multiple,” said the first person cited earlier. “This will be a pre-IPO round, which will establish its private-market valuation as it gets ready for the public markets.”
The founder of another digital lending startup said that at Kreditbee’s scale, investors would be comfortable pouring in the money as there are large private equity players on the capitalisation table and the company has grown steadily over the years. Kreditbee counts the Premji Invest, Advent International, Mirae Asset, MUFG and others as its investors.
“While unsecured lending has slowed down over the last two years, well-established players have managed to evoke investor interest,” said the founder, who did not wish to be identified.
Kreditbee’s net profit for the quarter to December 2025 stood at ₹137.8 crore, up from ₹47 crore a year ago, while its operating revenue went up to ₹805 crore from ₹566.2 crore during this period, according to the filings made by the fintech startup.
The company’s funding comes at a time when consumer lending startups have been facing growth challenges amid overall tightening of the interest rate cycle. Some of the large consumer lending startups, however, have managed to buck the trend.
Pune-based fintech lender Fibe closed a $35 million funding round led by International Finance Corporation in December 2025. Moneyview, another digital lending startup, closed an internal funding round from its existing investors in September 2024, which valued the company at $1 billion. Moneyview is planning a public listing.
Mumbai-based lending startup Kissht is planning to raise ₹1,000 crore through a public issue and it filed its draft prospectus in August last year.
While Kreditbee primarily operates as a consumer lending platform, over the last two years it has diversified into business loans and secured loans. The company offers loans against properties and business loans to small business owners. In March 2025, 1.5% of its assets under management were loans against properties 6.8% of the loan book was business loans.
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