Kissht Lists. Nine Years in the Making.

In 2016, two things happened. Ranvir Singh and Krishnan Vishwanathan founded Kissht. And Endiya Partners was founded. Same year, different missions. Endiya was built to back IP-driven technology companies with a structural edge in large Indian markets. Kissht was built to bring formal credit to the hundreds of millions of Indians the financial system had historically underserved. What connected them was a belief that technology applied rigorously to hard problems creates durable businesses.

In 2017, Ranvir and Krishnan flew to Hyderabad to meet me. The segment was still early and not widely understood. Digital lending to India’s mass-market borrower was an unproven hypothesis. The salaried professional, the self-employed individual earning between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, had limited access to formal credit, with little or no collateral and minimal engagement with traditional lenders. Ranvir and Krishnan believed that was a data problem, not a credit problem. Build the right underwriting infrastructure and you could serve this segment profitably at scale.

I believed them. Endiya wrote the seed cheque.

Today, Kissht lists on BSE and NSE. It is Endiya’s tenth year as a firm. I did not plan the symmetry. But I will take it.

What They Built

The numbers are striking. AUM compounded from Rs 1,268 Cr in FY23 to Rs 5,956 Cr in 9MFY26, at approximately 80% CAGR. As of December 31, 2025, Kissht had served 11.17 million customers. Many of these customers were underserved by formal credit and now borrow through a mobile-first platform. The median CIBIL score of a Kissht borrower is 746. The average age is 32. Creditworthy, aspirational, and until recently, largely overlooked by formal lenders.

The more important number is underneath all of this. Kissht’s underwriting engine runs on 39 proprietary sub-models and 400 plus variables, delivering 5.17x risk separation versus 2.13x from bureau scores alone. More than 85% of new customers receive a loan decision in under 10 minutes. A Net Promoter Score of 91 is indicative of a product that resonates with its users.

23.7% of customers came through organic referral, driving minimal acquisition cost. Over half of AUM is from repeat borrowers. The product earned loyalty.

What made this possible is something that set Kissht apart from the start. Ranvir and Krishnan came from financial services. They spent years at McKinsey before co-founding Si-Creva, the NBFC that became the regulated lending entity at the heart of Kissht. They built the lending infrastructure first, then built the technology platform around it. They understood credit risk from the inside. That institutional knowledge is embedded in every one of those 39 sub-models.

Krishnan puts the early days in context:

“Our journey comes from years in financial services, where the gap for young, aspirational individuals, salaried and self-employed, was clear. We constantly evolved our strategy as we deepened our understanding of this segment. In the early days, conviction is lonely. You are building for a segment most don’t fully understand yet, with a product that does not exist. Endiya Partners didn’t just back the idea. They validated the segment.”

What the Journey Actually Looked Like

Every great company is tested. Kissht was tested three times in ways that mattered.

When COVID hit in 2020, industry cash flows froze overnight. The moratorium on repayments was an existential test for every digital lender. Kissht held. The underwriting model proved it could withstand a systemic shock.

In 2022, the RBI’s digital lending guidelines rewrote the operating rules for every platform in the sector. It was not optional and it was not simple. Kissht rebuilt its structure around Si Creva, its NBFC subsidiary, as the regulated lending entity. That is a genuine institutional rebuild.

The third test was the one they imposed on themselves.

In FY25, Ranvir and Krishnan made a deliberate and uncomfortable call. They shifted the business toward longer-tenor, higher-ticket products. Average loan tenor moved from 2.92 months in FY24 to 9.65 months in FY25. Average ticket size moved from Rs 14,721 to Rs 31,808. They launched LAP, a secured lending vertical, and nearly halved disbursements from Rs 18,531 Cr to Rs 9,858 Cr. Longer-tenor loans reduce the frequency of repeat borrowings by design, so disbursement volumes fall even as the borrower base grows. They accepted that consequence rather than growing the wrong book. Total income fell from Rs 1,700 Cr to Rs 1,353 Cr. PAT fell from Rs 197 Cr to Rs 161 Cr.

A lesser team would have chased the top line going into an IPO year. They held the line instead.

By 9MFY26, PAT had recovered to Rs 199 Cr, ahead of the full FY24 number, on a structurally stronger book. Net NPA stands at 0.31% with a provisioning coverage ratio of 89%. That is the output of ten years of those choices.

The Market’s Verdict

The IPO was subscribed 9.5 times overall. Qualified institutional buyers subscribed their portion 24.87 times, indicating strong institutional demand.

Ranvir on what this partnership meant through all of it:

“From our seed round in 2017 through COVID, a funding winter, and the pressures of scaling a digital lending business, Endiya never wavered. They wrote the first cheque when digital lending was still an unproven idea in India, and they stayed through every challenge that followed. That combination of early conviction and long-term patience is rare in any investor, and it made a real difference to how we built Kissht.”

The Category Ahead

India’s mass-market retail credit opportunity stands at Rs 31.9 lakh crore today, growing to Rs 77.4 lakh crore by FY30, as per industry estimates. Digital lending is compounding at 48% CAGR, as per industry estimates. Strong companies are building in this space, and the competition will only intensify. Kissht enters the public markets among the early pure-play digital lenders in India to list, having demonstrated that this segment can be underwritten profitably at scale. The Rs 850 Cr raised in the fresh issue goes entirely into Si Creva to fund the next phase of loan book growth.

From Where I Sit

Endiya was founded in 2016 on a thesis that has not changed in ten years: back IP-driven, technology-first businesses with a structural advantage in large Indian markets, and back them before consensus forms. Be early. Stay long.

We were there with Kissht from the seed round in 2017. We invested in every subsequent round through to the IPO. We made introductions to follow-on investors at each stage. We engaged in technology reviews, drawing on Endiya’s engineering DNA across our portfolio. And through every difficult moment, we tried to live by a founder-first mindset, which means being available, being honest, and trusting the founders to make the hard calls when they needed to.

Kissht built Rs 5,956 Cr in AUM on approximately Rs 500 Cr of external equity raised over nine years of partnering. Peers in the category raised higher levels of capital (based on industry data) to reach comparable or larger scale. That capital efficiency reflects the founders’ approach to building in financial services.

Kissht is Fund I’s anchor exit. It joins Darwinbox in showing what this thesis produces when it is given time and when founders have the conviction to see it through.

Ten years ago, Ranvir and Krishnan started building. Nine years ago, Endiya backed them. The team they built, and everyone at Kissht who showed up through the hard years, did exactly what they set out to do.

I could not be prouder of what they have built.

Sateesh Andra
Managing Partner, Endiya Partners

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Disclaimer: Endiya Partners is a selling shareholder in the Kissht IPO. This post reflects Endiya’s investment journey and perspective and does not constitute investment advice. All financial and operational data referenced is sourced from the Red Herring Prospectus and the Prospectus filed with the RoC dated May 5, 2026. Market size and growth projections are based on third-party industry estimates cited in the Prospectus.

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