Kissht (meaning "EMI" in Hindi) is India's leading digital lending platform — offering instant personal loans of up to ₹5 lakh within 5 minutes, no physical documentation required. Operating through its NBFC arm Si Creva Capital Services, Kissht has disbursed billions in credit to 10+ million customers across urban, tier-2, and tier-3 India.
What makes Kissht unusual in India's crowded lending market is its combination of genuine profitability (₹160 Cr net profit FY25, even in a difficult year), massive consumer scale (60M+ downloads, 10M+ customers), and a SEBI-approved IPO that will be one of the most closely watched fintech listings of 2026. The FY25 numbers show a company navigating real headwinds — RBI regulatory pressure on short-duration unsecured lending forced a sharp contraction in disbursements — but doing so while remaining profitable and executing a deliberate product pivot toward longer-tenure and secured credit.
"We are building India's most trusted credit platform — where speed and transparency are not trade-offs but the same thing."
— Krishnan Vishwanathan, Founder & CEO, KisshtTwo IIT/Yale alumni who left strategy consulting to solve a problem they had studied analytically — and then decided to fix personally. The Kissht story is what happens when McKinsey rigour meets fintech founder conviction.
Krishnan Vishwanathan is the kind of founder who earns four engineering patents before turning 30. An IIT Delhi graduate (Computer Science, 1998), he worked as an engineer and researcher before completing his MBA at Yale University in 2008 — one of the world's most competitive business programs. At McKinsey, he worked in financial services consulting, advising banks on lending infrastructure, credit underwriting, and financial product design. During this period he developed a precise diagnosis of India's consumer credit problem: banks had the capital but lacked the data and technology to underwrite millions of small-ticket borrowers quickly. The diagnosis eventually became the company. In 2013, before launching Kissht, he founded Si-Creva — a strategic consulting firm that worked with 100+ banking and corporate institutions — which later became the NBFC backbone of the lending platform. Krishnan serves as CEO and CFO, holding both roles — a governance arrangement that concentrates financial and operational decision-making and will face scrutiny during the IPO process.
Ranvir Singh co-founded Kissht and serves as COO, bringing complementary operational expertise to Krishnan's financial engineering background. Together, the founders' shared McKinsey heritage means Kissht has been built with an unusual degree of analytical rigour — data-driven credit models, systematic unit economics tracking, and a willingness to contract sharply (halving disbursements in FY25) rather than grow recklessly when regulatory signals demanded caution. This is not a typical startup founder mentality. It is a strategy consultant's mentality — and in the lending business, that discipline has kept Kissht profitable while competitors burned cash.
"India's next wave of borrowers are digital-first, aspiration-driven, and looking for speed without compromising on transparency. That's exactly who we built Kissht for."
— Ranvir Singh & Krishnan Vishwanathan, Founders, KisshtThe name "Kissht" is deliberately chosen: kist or kisht is the Hindi/Urdu word for instalment or EMI — the financial concept that defines most Indian consumer credit. The name signals the product's purpose in the language of the customer, not the language of the boardroom. This attention to cultural resonance in product naming reflects the founders' understanding that trust in financial services is built at the level of language and familiarity, not features and interest rates.
700 million Indians are credit-eligible but credit-excluded — not because they can't repay, but because the system can't evaluate them quickly enough, cheaply enough, or at the right ticket size. Kissht was built to close that gap.
India's formal credit system was built for the formally employed, with payslips, ITRs, and stable salaries. India's actual workforce is 40% informal — gig workers, small traders, daily wage earners, and self-employed professionals who have real income and real repayment capacity but none of the documentation the system demands. Traditional banks turned them away. Kissht evaluated them differently: using bank transaction data, UPI payment history, mobile usage patterns, and proprietary ML models trained on millions of actual repayment outcomes to generate credit scores for people that CIBIL couldn't score.
The eCommerce credit gap was Kissht's initial wedge. Indians buying consumer electronics, appliances, and lifestyle products online wanted EMI options — but credit cards had <2% penetration and bank EMI cards required lengthy approval processes. Kissht embedded itself as the buy-now-pay-later infrastructure for offline and online merchants: 500+ online partners and 3,000+ offline merchants who offered Kissht credit to their shoppers at point of purchase. The shopper got instant credit. The merchant got converted sales. Kissht got a loan originated with merchant data enriching its credit model.
The structural insight: Kissht recognized that the consumer credit problem in India wasn't a capital problem — banks had capital. It was a data and decision speed problem. Banks couldn't evaluate 50 million thin-file borrowers fast enough or cheaply enough to serve them profitably. Kissht built the evaluation engine that made those borrowers bankable — and in doing so, created a new credit population that India's financial system had systematically excluded for decades.
Kissht operates as a tech-enabled NBFC — lending its own capital (via Si Creva) while using proprietary ML models and alternative data to underwrite borrowers at scale and speed that traditional institutions cannot match. Revenue is generated from interest income, processing fees, and insurance commissions.
Kissht's revenue model is classic NBFC: interest income on the loan book is the primary driver, supplemented by processing fees, insurance distribution commissions, and late payment charges.
| Revenue Source | How It Works | Margin | FY25 Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interest Income on Loans | Core NBFC revenue — interest charged on personal loans, Ring credit line, and new secured loan products. Rates range from 18–36% annualized on personal loans, lower for secured LAP products. | High · 60–70% NIM | Primary · ~75% Revenue |
| Processing Fees | One-time fee charged at loan origination — typically 1–3% of loan value. Booked upfront, directly boosting near-term revenue on each disbursement. | Very High · Pure margin | Secondary Revenue |
| Insurance Distribution | Commission earned distributing credit life insurance and personal accident cover to borrowers — bundled with loan disbursement. Low-effort high-margin add-on. | High · Commission income | Growing |
| Late Payment & Foreclosure Fees | Fees charged on late EMI payments and early loan closures. Predictable income stream from loan book management. | Medium | Steady |
| Secured Loans (LAP) | New product line — Loan Against Property and small business loans. Lower interest rates (12–18%) but larger ticket sizes, longer tenures, and much lower default risk. Launched 2024–25. | Lower rate · Lower risk | Emerging · Strategic Priority |
Kissht raised $133 million in equity funding from a focused set of institutional investors — Vertex Ventures, Ventureast, Endiya Partners, and sovereign funds — with the IPO now set to provide public market capital for the next growth phase.
| Year | Round | Amount | Investors & Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015–2016 | Seed | ₹3 Cr (Self) | Krishnan Vishwanathan personally invested ₹3 crore to launch Kissht. First 9,000 customers, ₹17 Cr in loans disbursed. Proof of concept established before seeking external capital. |
| 2018 | Series A/B | $15M | Vertex Ventures SE Asia & India leads. Ventureast participates. Capital used for technology platform build-out and ML credit model development. Kissht crosses 1M users. |
| 2021 | Series C | $30M | Brunei Investment Authority (BIA) and Singapore Government (GIC/related entity) participate — sovereign fund backing signals credibility. Capital for NBFC book growth and Ring product development. |
| 2022 (Jun) | Series D | $80M | Endiya Partners, Vertex Ventures, Ventureast — largest round. Kissht announces plans to enter BNPL card market via Ring. Valuation: undisclosed. Disbursements reach record levels in subsequent FY24. This capital funded the peak growth period. |
| 2025 (Aug) | Pre-IPO / DRHP | DRHP Filed | DRHP filed with SEBI for ₹1,000 Cr fresh issue + 88.8 lakh share OFS. Existing investors partially exit via OFS. SEBI approval granted January 2026. Listing expected 2026. |
Capital efficiency note: Kissht built a ₹4,129 Cr AUM lending book and ₹160 Cr annual profit on $133M of equity capital. The equity-to-AUM leverage (30:1) is standard for NBFCs but reflects disciplined capital deployment — Kissht borrowed smartly on its NBFC balance sheet to grow the book without over-diluting equity. The IPO's ₹1,000 Cr fresh issue will strengthen the NBFC's capital adequacy ratio and fund the secured lending expansion — exactly what a transitioning lending platform needs as it moves upmarket.
Kissht's growth strategy has fundamentally shifted post-FY24 — from scale-at-all-costs unsecured lending to a deliberate move upmarket toward longer-tenure, higher-ticket, secured credit products that are more resilient to regulatory cycles.
Strategy 1 — The Pivot to Longer-Tenure Loans: Kissht's most important strategic decision of the past two years was voluntarily stopping all loans with tenure under six months. This was painful: disbursements halved, revenue fell 20%. But the strategic logic is sound. Short-duration unsecured loans are the segment most exposed to RBI regulatory pressure, most susceptible to collection challenges, and hardest to defend against digital lending apps and BNPL competitors. By moving entirely to 6+ month tenures, Kissht's loan book has better predictability, lower regulatory risk, and higher NIM per rupee deployed. 99.5% of the portfolio is now long-duration — a structural transformation in 18 months.
Strategy 2 — Secured Lending Diversification: Kissht's entry into Loan Against Property (LAP) and small business loans is the most significant product expansion in its history. Secured lending requires a fundamentally different operating model (property valuation, legal due diligence, longer sales cycles) — but delivers dramatically lower default rates and allows Kissht to serve a higher-income customer segment willing to pay for premium service. If Kissht can successfully combine its digital speed and UX with secured lending infrastructure, it creates a product category where it has no direct digital-native competitor.
"We are not just a personal loan company anymore. We are building a full-stack digital lending platform — from ₹10,000 personal loans to ₹50 lakh property-backed credit."
— Krishnan Vishwanathan, CEO, Kissht, FY26Strategy 3 — IPO as Capital Fuel and Trust Signal: The ₹1,000 Cr IPO serves two strategic purposes beyond liquidity. First, it strengthens Si Creva Capital's (the NBFC's) capital adequacy ratio — critical for lending more at better rates from institutional debt markets. Second, a listed Kissht is more creditworthy in the eyes of institutional lenders (banks, insurance companies, pension funds) who provide the debt capital the NBFC needs to scale its loan book. Being listed literally makes Kissht a better NBFC — lower cost of funds, higher borrowing limits, more lender confidence.
Strategy 4 — ML Moat Deepening: Kissht has 10 years of repayment data across millions of borrowers — from thin-file first-timers to repeat customers who have completed 5+ loan cycles. This dataset is the raw material for credit models that no new entrant can replicate. The company continues to invest in ML infrastructure, alternative data feeds (UPI patterns, GST filings, device behavioural data), and automated collections systems that reduce NPAs without manual intervention.
Kissht's FY25 numbers tell a story of a company hit hard by regulatory forces beyond its control — and the strategic and operational challenges of rebuilding the business model in real-time while preparing for a public listing.
The RBI Regulatory Shock (2023–2025): RBI's tightening of unsecured consumer lending — higher risk weights on personal loans, restrictions on short-duration digital credit, and warnings to NBFCs about overleveraged retail borrowers — was the biggest external blow to Kissht's business since its founding. Disbursements fell from ₹18,527 Cr in FY24 to ₹9,776 Cr in FY25 — a 47% collapse. Revenue fell 20%. This was not a business failure; it was a regulatory-induced contraction that hit every consumer NBFC simultaneously. But it exposed Kissht's concentration risk: a business almost entirely dependent on short-duration unsecured loans was uniquely vulnerable to exactly this regulatory scenario.
Website Blocking Controversy (2022): The Indian government blocked Kissht's website in 2022 as part of a sweep against predatory digital lending apps — a reputational crisis that Kissht strongly contested. The company clarified it was an error — Kissht was caught in a broad government action against Chinese-linked lending apps, and its website was unblocked after review. The incident caused significant negative press but no lasting regulatory action. It did, however, highlight the reputational fragility of consumer lending platforms in India's increasingly watchful regulatory environment.
FY25 Revenue Contraction: A 20% year-on-year revenue decline in a company preparing for an IPO is a challenging narrative to manage with public market investors. While the strategic rationale is sound (pivot away from short-duration loans), the financial optics create headwinds for IPO pricing. Institutional investors will demand clear visibility into when the secured lending ramp-up will restore revenue growth — and Kissht must demonstrate FY26 and FY27 recovery trajectories convincingly in its roadshow.
Founder Role Concentration: Krishnan Vishwanathan holds both the CEO and CFO positions simultaneously — an unusual dual-role concentration for a company approaching a public listing. SEBI and institutional IPO investors typically require separation of these roles for governance reasons. Whether Kissht addresses this pre-IPO (by appointing a separate CFO) or manages investor concerns through other governance disclosures will be a key scrutiny point during the listing process.
The core challenge going forward: Kissht must prove that the FY25 contraction was a deliberate, managed strategic transition — not the beginning of structural decline. The AUM growth (₹4,129 Cr vs ₹2,670 Cr, +55%) is the best evidence that the loan book quality is improving even as volume shrank. FY26 results will be the definitive verdict on whether the pivot is working.
Kissht competes in the most crowded segment of Indian fintech — digital consumer lending. The IPO-bound peer group (Moneyview, KreditBee) are its closest comparables, while fintechs like slice, Navi, and CRED's lending arm compete across product segments.
| Company | Category | Key Strength | Kissht Advantage | Threat Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kissht | Digital NBFC | 10yr ML moat, 60M downloads, SEBI IPO approved, profitable, secured lending pivot | — | IPO-Ready · Profitable |
| KreditBee | Digital NBFC | Large user base, strong tier-2 presence, also IPO-bound, competitive ML underwriting | Kissht has higher profitability per rupee revenue; longer credit history | High · Direct Peer |
| Moneyview | Credit + PFM | Personal finance management app driving credit product discovery; strong brand loyalty | Kissht has deeper merchant/BNPL origination network; larger AUM | High · Direct Peer |
| Navi (Sachin Bansal) | Digital NBFC + Insurance | Navi's founder capital advantage is hard to match; but Kissht's data moat is deeper | High · Capital Advantage | |
| Freo (MoneyTap) | Credit Line NBFC | Revolving credit line, bank partnerships, clean regulatory record post-pivot | Kissht has 10× the download base and established merchant network | Moderate |
| CRED (CRED Cash) | Premium Lending | High-CIBIL borrowers, lower default rates, CRED brand trust | Different target segment — Kissht serves mass market, CRED serves premium; limited overlap | Low Overlap |
| Traditional Banks (SBI, HDFC) | Incumbent Lenders | Kissht's 5-min digital disbursement vs. bank's 3-day process — speed advantage still decisive | Low · Complement |
Kissht is a nuanced investment case — a profitable digital lender with a 10-year data moat and SEBI-approved IPO, navigating a deliberate post-regulatory-shock reconstruction. The bull case is compelling. The risks are specific and time-bound.
Kissht's journey — from McKinsey consultants diagnosing India's credit gap to IPO-ready digital lender — is a masterclass in building lending businesses in regulated markets. The lessons cut across technology, strategy, and regulatory wisdom.
"Kissht's FY25 was a stress test. It passed. The question for 2026 is whether the secured lending pivot delivers growth fast enough to tell a recovery story before the IPO window closes."
— Investor Analysis, March 2026