Kissht is a lending-tech company, operated by OnEMI Technology, based in India, that offers loans and financial products to individuals and small businesses through its app.

This Startup Deep Dive explains what Kissht does, how it makes money, who backs it, how it compares with rivals and what could go wrong, using publicly available information. It is educational and not investment advice. Last updated: October 2026.

Kissht in Brief

• What it is: Kissht is an Indian Digital consumer lending company based in Mumbai.
• Who it serves: consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises.
• Kissht offers personal loans, loans against property and insurance distribution, mainly to salaried borrowers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities through its app.
• Personal loans are about 98% of the loan book (third-party summary of the DRHP).
• Parent OnEMI Technology Solutions also runs RING with PaywithRing, a point-of-sale instant credit and EMI product at merchants.
• Funding: About $142 million in equity raised since inception (some reports say $133 million).

Kissht Quick Facts

Figures marked “reported” come from published reports and may differ between sources; “Not disclosed” means no reliable public figure was found.

What Is Kissht?

Kissht operates in the Digital consumer lending space in India. Understanding a company like this starts with three questions: who is the customer, what painful problem is being solved, and why the solution is better than the alternatives. The sections below apply that lens to Kissht.

• Kissht offers personal loans, loans against property and insurance distribution, mainly to salaried borrowers in tier-2 and tier-3 cities through its app.
• Personal loans are about 98% of the loan book (third-party summary of the DRHP).
• Parent OnEMI Technology Solutions also runs RING with PaywithRing, a point-of-sale instant credit and EMI product at merchants.
• It is piloting Conexo, a platform for sourcing retail loan products, including credit cards, for other financial institutions.
• Reported 9.16 million customers and 1.90 million active borrowers at March 2025, and over 11 million customers by December 2025.

The Origin Story of Kissht

Every company starts from a noticed gap and a team willing to commit to closing it. Strong origin stories are specific: a clear problem, a founding team with relevant skills, and an early product that real customers could test. Founder-market fit, meaning the team’s lived experience or technical depth in the domain, tends to predict how fast a young company learns.

• Founders: Ranvir Singh, Krishnan Vishwanathan.
• Founded in 2015 in Mumbai by Ranvir Singh and Krishnan Vishwanathan, both IIT alumni who met at McKinsey (reported); one source dates founding to 2016.
• They set out to serve creditworthy Indians underserved by formal lending, using app-based, data-driven underwriting.
• Leadership titles differ by source: some list Ranvir Singh as CEO, others list Krishnan Vishwanathan as CEO and Singh as COO.
• Lending is run through NBFC subsidiary Si Creva Capital Services.

Key Milestones and Challenges

No startup grows in a straight line. Early years usually involve slow adoption, product rewrites, hiring mistakes and funding gaps. In the Digital consumer lending sector the common turning points are a first paying customer, a regulatory approval, a successful product demonstration or a funding round that lets the team invest ahead of demand. How a team responds to setbacks says more about resilience than any single headline.

• June 2017: Series A of $2 million; November 2017: Series B of $10 million (aggregator).
• September 2018: Series C of $30 million led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India with Sistema Asia.
• January 2022: about Rs 100 crore (about $13.3 million) debt from Trifecta Capital and Northern Arc.
• June 2022: $80 million round led by Vertex Growth and Brunei Investment Agency.
• August 2025: DRHP filed with SEBI; SEBI later cleared the IPO.
• FY23: profit and revenue doubling; FY25: net profit Rs 160.6 crore on revenue Rs 1,337 crore.

Kissht Funding and Investors

Funding history shows how much outside confidence a company has attracted and how long it can operate before needing more capital. Figures below are reported and may differ between sources; valuation figures are estimates unless the company has confirmed them.

• Series A, June 2017: $2 million, Endiya Partners among investors.
• Series B, November 2017: $10 million, Endiya Partners among investors.
• Series C, September 2018: $30 million, led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India with Sistema Asia Capital.
• Debt, 2019 and January 2022: $7.25 million from Navi Technologies; about $13.3 million from Northern Arc and Trifecta.
• June 2022: $80 million led by Vertex Growth and Brunei Investment Agency, reported valuation $450-500 million.
• IPO: fresh issue originally up to Rs 1,000 crore with an offer for sale of 88.79 lakh shares; Rs 750 crore planned for Si Creva (reported at DRHP stage).

How Does Kissht Make Money? (Business Model)

A business model describes who pays, how often and how much it costs to serve them. Strong models show repeat usage, improving margins with scale and acquisition channels that do not depend only on paid spend. Weak models show one-off sales, rising costs and growth that stops when spending stops. For companies selling to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises, sales cycles and contract size matter as much as headline growth.

• Revenue comes mainly from loan interest, plus processing, late-payment and foreclosure fees, and insurance distribution commissions.
• Lending runs through its NBFC subsidiary Si Creva Capital Services; about 39% of AUM is off-book loans funded by partner institutions.

The Numbers: Kissht Financials

Financial figures show whether growth is turning into a self-sustaining business. Small and private companies often disclose little, so any number below is included only if it was found in public reporting.

• FY23: total income about Rs 1,001 crore; operating revenue Rs 1,037.5 crore reported elsewhere; profit after tax figures differ by source.
• FY24: operating revenue Rs 1,674.45 crore; net profit Rs 197.29 crore.
• FY25: operating revenue Rs 1,337.47 crore (down about 20%, after discontinuing short-tenure high-frequency loans); net profit Rs 160.62 crore (down 18.6%).
• March 2025: total AUM Rs 4,086.64 crore, of which 61% on-book; gross NPAs 2.89% versus 0.79% in FY24.
• 9M FY26 (to December 2025): profit after tax about Rs 199 crore, already above full-year FY25 (third-party summary).

Market Opportunity for Kissht

Market size is easy to exaggerate, so a useful approach separates the total market from the portion a company can realistically reach with its current product and distribution. The main forces behind demand in this sector are the scale of UPI, rising digital lending, growing participation in investing and insurance, and the digitisation of small merchants. Each of these widens the opportunity, but capital efficiency and execution decide who captures it.

• The business is almost entirely unsecured lending, which is affected by RBI regulation such as the November 2023 risk-weight increase on unsecured retail loans.

Technology and Product at Kissht

Technology is rarely the whole moat, but it drives speed, cost and customer experience. A practical way to assess it is to separate the capability the company controls from the commodity infrastructure it rents. In this sector the important factors are uptime, security, fraud controls, integrations with banks and the speed of onboarding customers.

• Lending is delivered through the Kissht app and the RING merchant-linked app.

Team and Culture at Kissht

Teams are the most important and least measurable asset of a young company. Look at how complementary the founders’ skills are, how deep the second layer of leadership is, and how the company hires and retains specialists. Culture shows up in small repeated behaviours: how quickly bad news travels upward and whether commitments to customers are kept.

• Ranvir Singh serves as CEO.

Kissht Competitors: Competitive Landscape

A fair competitive analysis names direct rivals, adjacent players who could move into the space, and the customer’s default alternative. Durable advantages include proprietary data or technology, licences and approvals, brand trust, switching costs and cost leadership.

Risks and Challenges for Kissht

• Gross NPAs rose to 2.89% in FY25 from 0.79%.
• Operating cash flow was negative in FY25 at both OnEMI and its NBFC subsidiary.
• RBI inspection of Si Creva flagged policy gaps and recovery-agent complaints, per the DRHP (reported).
• Credit ratings of CRISIL BBB+ and Acuite A are below large peers; unsecured lending is exposed to RBI risk-weight rules.
• Regulatory risk: rules from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI or NPCI can change economics or business scope quickly.
• Concentration risk: dependence on a few partners, banks or payment rails can create single points of failure.

Risk is not a reason to avoid a company; it is a reason to price it correctly and to monitor the right indicators over time. Regulation in this sector is shaped by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Kissht Growth Outlook: What to Watch

• Company has filed for an IPO with SEBI, with a fresh issue of up to INR 1,000 Cr.
• Key indicators: transaction value, take rate, active users, credit quality and cost of acquiring each customer.
• Funding position: Whether Kissht can reach its next milestone before needing new capital.
• Regulation: Changes from the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI.

Industry Context: Where Kissht Fits

India's financial technology sector has been shaped by public digital infrastructure, especially UPI, along with Aadhaar-based identity, the account aggregator framework and regulation from the RBI, SEBI and IRDAI. These rails let startups reach customers and merchants at very low cost, but also expose them to fast-changing rules on licensing, data and lending conduct.

As payments become a low-margin commodity, fintech companies increasingly compete on distribution, merchant services, credit, wealth and insurance products. Sustainable profit usually depends on compliance strength, cost control and the quality of customer relationships rather than transaction volume alone.

For readers new to this field, a useful habit is to separate announcements from evidence. A plan, a partnership or a funding headline describes intent, while a delivered product, a paying customer or an audited financial statement describes results. Comparing the two over time shows how reliably a company turns promises into outcomes.

Bull Case and Bear Case for Kissht

An investment thesis is a short, testable statement of why a company could become far more valuable, together with what evidence would prove it wrong. The points below are general to this sector and are not forecasts for Kissht.

Bull case

• Digital payments and credit continue to grow, widening the market.
• Strong compliance and distribution create durable advantages.
• Cross-selling to existing customers can lift revenue per user.

Bear case

• Regulatory shifts can change economics overnight.
• Free or low-fee products make profit hard to reach.
• Fraud, outages and partner dependence can hurt trust.

Lessons Founders and Investors Can Take from Kissht

Studying a company in the Digital consumer lending space offers lessons that go beyond any single firm. The points below are general lessons for the sector and are not claims about Kissht.

• Compliance is a growth enabler in financial services, not just a cost, because licences decide what a company is allowed to sell.
• Distribution and customer trust often matter more than the underlying payment or lending technology.
• Products that earn from services and credit tend to be steadier than ones that depend on free transactions.
• Dependence on a single bank partner or rail creates risk that should be managed early.
• Fraud prevention and uptime are core product features, not back-office tasks.

How to Evaluate Kissht as a Startup

• Customer clarity: Can Kissht name its customer and the problem it solves in one sentence?
• Evidence of demand: Look for repeat customers, signed contracts or measurable usage rather than announcements alone.
• Economics: Check whether margins improve as volume grows.
• Execution: Compare announced timelines with what has actually been delivered.
• Funding runway: Estimate how long current capital lasts at the present spending rate.
• Regulatory standing: Confirm required approvals are in place.
• Customer concentration: Check whether a few customers account for most of the revenue.
• Management depth: Look for experienced leaders beyond the founders and a stable core team.

The Takeaway

Kissht is part of India’s growing Digital consumer lending ecosystem. The useful lesson from studying it is the discipline of asking structured questions about customers, economics, advantage and resilience. Companies that answer them well, repeatedly and under pressure are the ones that endure. Readers should treat any single report, ranking or funding headline as one input among many, and should re-check key facts against recent company announcements. Because public information on young companies is often limited, patience in verifying claims is part of good analysis. Public sources can also describe the same company in different ways, so it is worth checking dates, definitions and whether a figure refers to revenue, total income or transaction value, and whether it covers one entity or a wider group, before drawing conclusions. Small differences in rounding, currency conversion or reporting periods can also change how a figure reads. Comparing the same figure across several recent reports helps show whether it is stable or has changed over time. This article is educational and is not investment advice.

• Clear customers and repeat demand matter more than announcements.
• Regulation and capital needs shape how fast a startup in this sector can grow.
• Track a few leading indicators over time rather than one headline metric.

Kissht FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Kissht?

Kissht is a lending-tech company, operated by OnEMI Technology, based in India, that offers loans and financial products to individuals and small businesses through its app. It is profiled in the Startup Deep Dive series, which explains business model, funding, competitors and risks.

Who founded Kissht?

Kissht was founded by Ranvir Singh, Krishnan Vishwanathan, and the company reports a founding year of 2015.

How much funding has Kissht raised?

About $142 million in equity raised since inception (some reports say $133 million). Funding figures are reported and may differ between sources, so readers should check the latest company announcements.

How does Kissht make money?

Kissht earns revenue from its Digital consumer lending products and services sold to consumers, merchants, banks, lenders and enterprises. The exact revenue mix is described in the business model section and is not fully disclosed publicly.

Who are the competitors of Kissht?

Reported rivals include KreditBee, Moneyview, Navi Finserv, Fibe. See the competitor comparison above for how they differ.

What are the main risks for Kissht?

Main risks include rules from the rbi, sebi, irdai or npci can change economics or business scope quickly, funding and capital needs, competition and regulation by the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI and NPCI. This is educational content, not investment advice.

Related Startup Deep Dives: 1to1help — 1to1help: 25-year-old Indian counselling firm covering 11 million+ lives across 1,000+ organisations | Financepeer — Financepeer: education fintech that raised $31M Series B. Browse the full Startup Deep Dive series.

Source

Source: Publicly available data, published reports, industry research, and other credible sources.