Margins are earned from desire, not utility

Cred founder Kunal Shah talks to Deepsekhar Choudhury about survival, scale and institution-building, his focus on India's most affluent consumers and why prosperity demands risk-taking. Edited excerpts

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What do you want Cred to accomplish in the long term?

When you are trying to build a startup, your first goal is to ensure survival and there's no guarantee that capital creates survival. Then you think about how to scale it, just like raising a child—first ensuring safety, then growth.

After that, you operate with an institution-building mindset, with the belief that it will last for the time you are alive or even outlast every team member.

Our vision is to improve money relationships for the top 25-30mn Indians. Many are first in their families to use credit cards or mutual funds. Unless they have good early experiences, they'll be scared and not participate in the future.

How difficult is it to start up in a highly regulated ecosystem?

It is obviously harder to trust a startup than companies that have lasted 50-100 years. It’s very easy to mistrust, put down or mock a founder who is trying to build, especially compared to large companies that have so much more clout managing policy, navigating the ecosystem, accessing capital pools, talent, everything.

Imagine convincing someone to join a company where you don’t know if you'll have runway for 12 months, versus a company that has lasted 100 years. It will always be a challenge.

Today Cred is a distributor of products. Do you aspire to become a manufacturer to capture more value?