CRED is Looking to Acquire Happay

Cred Startup Acquisition News

Kunal Shah's CRED appears to be aggressively buying businesses -- a tactic it has stayed away from during 2 years following the company's inception. CRED is currently at the point of purchasing Happay, the expense management firm.

Both companies were in discussions over the last couple of months and the conditions of the deal are now in place, according to two sources familiar with specifics of the transaction.

Happay is the second acquisition for CRED following HipBar which was an alcohol delivery business it acquired in October. CRED could also be in talks to buy Times Internet's Dineout as well as Rainmatter's debt investing platform WintWealth. But the talks are still in their early stages and the Bengaluru-based firm is still waiting to confirm the talks.

In the case of Happay it offers companies with expense management to manage tax and travel advantages for employees. Happay offers customized solutions for large corporations that have multiple branches as well as logistic companies with a surface.

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The company, which has been in operation for a decade, also allows large companies to issue credit and prepaid cards as well as manage expenses for employees between 800 and 900k. They are employed by 6,000 businesses which includes 100 large companies.

At the time of writing, Happay has raised $22-25 million through various financing rounds. Based on TechCircle's estimates the company was valued at 60 million during its Series B funding round of the year 2019. If CRED buys Happay within the range above this will result in an attractive exit for Happay's shareholders.

Although Happay is still waiting to file its annual financial statements for FY21, its operating revenues grew by 49% to 37.55 crore in FY20 , up from the 25.12 crore during FY19. The company's losses in FY20 increased 95% to 49.20 crore.

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This year has been an incredible one for CRED in terms of the amount of money that was raised. CRED raked in $466 million in 2021 , and will soon become a part of Razorpay and Meesho which are in talks to secure new rounds that have valuations exceeding $5 billion. Entrackr has exclusive news about CRED's upcoming round that would be worth the company's three-year-old status at more than $5.5 billion.