Truly Transforming Consumer Credit: Celebrating Kissht's IPO

Kissht listed its shares on the public market today, May 8, 2026. It has been almost eight years since we first invested in the company in late 2018. When we first met them, Ranvir and Krishnan had a clear vision, an extremely committed early team, and were just beginning to flex their execution muscle. To watch that vision come to life over the last eight years has been a privilege for all of us at Vertex Ventures, and a tremendous learning opportunity for me as an investor and a board member.

Our journey with Kissht actually began a year before we invested. As is often the case with our best investments, we missed the first round, but we came away so convinced of the team that we were first in line when they returned to raise their next round.

The venture capital world was buzzing with excitement that digital lenders would transform credit. Through 2017 and 2018, we met more than fifty companies attacking digital lending in various forms. Lending is not a winner-take-all category; the market rewards consistent performance for every good operator. But delivering that consistency, year after year, requires a very particular kind of DNA, and we were convinced this team had it.

The thesis for lending, as ever, is simple. The complexity lies in dogged commitment to the cause, attention to the minute details, and relentless execution behind the scenes. Those complexities only intensified through Kissht’s journey. Almost immediately after we invested, IL&FS defaulted. Then came COVID, when we had to take new disbursements close to zero while the regulator (rightly) placed a moratorium on collections. Then came the regulatory tightening of a rampant co-lending market — which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise for Kissht. Through it all, the team iterated through several models: from purchase-backed financing at retail, to a purely digital personal finance app, and more recently into secured lending. Ranvir and Krishnan have truly shown me how startups should function — nimble, always evolving, and ready to take on the world.

Throughout this journey, the team never took its eye off the basics. First and foremost was an unrelenting respect for the regulatory regime. Kissht was one of the very few companies that committed to having an NBFC at the outset, and to staying compliant with both the letter and the spirit of the law. Second, while we always had best-in-class underwriting capabilities, the team understood early on that the real success of the business would come from collections and credit-cost discipline. Every single aspect of collections has been iterated upon and backed with relentless execution.

One specific moment stays with me. It was fleeting, but its impact on me has been profound. It was a Zoom call early in COVID, when the first ramifications of the pandemic were just being felt, and the founders were planning to halt fresh disbursements. As investors often do, I offered a comment I thought might add value. The details don’t matter, but Ranvir and Krishnan’s reaction was instant. Ranvir gave me a proper dressing down, Krishnan was calm and stern, but both echoed something that has never really left me. We would never take strategic decisions optimised for the near term. We were building this company for a very large outcome, and if we let any one thing compromise our fundamentals, that outcome would never come. It transformed my perspective on long-term thinking. Just as importantly, I was grateful that we had built a relationship whereby the founders could speak their minds without sugar-coating.

I would be remiss not to mention the team behind the effort. Kissht has never been the most glamorous employer, nor has it ever paid the fanciest salaries. And yet it has been home to deeply committed team members, many of whom have spent years with the organisation and remain dedicated to the journey ahead. It truly takes a village to build a successful company. A special thank you to all our co-investors — Ventureast, Endiya, Fosun, Sistema, Vertex Growth, and BIA — for being on this journey with us.

Congratulations, Ranvir, Krishnan, and the entire Kissht team. The best is yet to come. At Vertex Ventures, we remain committed to the Financial Services and Fintech theses, and continue to back truly disruptive, scalable startups, including Recko, Signzy, IndiaP2P, Metafin, Wint Wealth, and Kiwi, with many more to come.

Piyush Kharbanda
General Partner

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