Hey,
Give me your credit card details. Would ya?
Naah….right? But you gave it to a bunch of folks who's playing the looooong game with your credit card details. (Hint: Indranagar ka gunda)
Yeah, you guess it right….. Cred has it and plays with it. Wanna know the game of Cred?
Let's play together.
(Level 1) The 1% club
Ain't you a part of Cred club?! You are missing out bigtime!!
This is the feeling Cred is try to create through the exclusive "1% club" and it's marketing.
The Why of the narrative 1% club
To create exclusivity
To feel privileged
To feel something….sort of special
The narrative
Cred has created a trend of exclusivity with the narrative, (1%), which now can be seen followed by many new startups like GrowthX (1% product teams), Versatile (1% designers), even Finance With Sharan has started something with "1%" 😅
Cred has created an entry barrier with credit score considered as a threshold for the app's access. By that, being in that club, creates exclusivity and privilege only the top (750+ credit scorers) hold.
Why Credit Score as the threshold?
Cred needs country's top spenders with stable income!
The math behind credit score -
Timely payments of loans/credits = Good credit score = More Credit offers with lucrative interest rates = More spending = More Income.
Confused?
Lemme tell ya. Credit score is indirectly proportional to the stability of income you possess.
The better the credit score, the better would be your payment track record.
And to check this banks provide you credits with lucrative offers and more to assess the above.
So, 750+ credit score denotes, you are among those top 1% spenders with stable income and good payment record.
And prior to Cred, no one treated and organised these "1%" well!!
By organising them to a single source (Cred app), it has become easier for brands to target "the top 1% spenders" for their product too.
Upgrading to Level 2……………
(Level 2) Value Cred Coins
Cred coins teach you something.
The Why's of Cred coins;
To engage yaar
To prompt ya, for what? To spend more
What if i tell you Cred is also an finance education app?!
As y'all know, Cred coins are the platform currency for cred using which you could avail the offerings on Cred.
Yes. Cred coins teach you the value of money.
What's that?
I-N-F-L-A-T-I-O-N
You'd be thinking: What the fuck?!
Let's dive deeper as we are in level 2.
You pay bills on Cred, you earn cred coins.
You play games on Cred, you earn cred coins.
Every 5 hrs, Cred coins are minted to generate even more coins.
For every redemption (rewards, vouchers, price slash, discounts), Cred coins are burned.
Now how this is related to inflation?
The more money is printed the more invaluable and useless it becomes and hence more pricier the things become.
Similarly, the more cred coins you have the more invaluable it gets as you can't avail or buy relevant things or would have to burn more coins to avail certain stuff.
And this again opens another loop:
The more Cred coins you have, the less valuable it gets. The less valuable it gets, the more prompted you'd be to burn it high. The more you burn it, the less guilty you'd feel.
And this phenomenon gets recorded in our brain and we apply it unconsciously while spending on Cred.
The USP of Cred (Rewards)
The other side of rewarding you with Cred coin is that it gets you or tempts you to spend mindlessly (when you have alot), on the current engagement lever of Cred, which are the games on Rewards page.
There's alot to talk about the rewards page on Cred.
It's the page which talks everything of what Cred does, is and would be.
(Lost the context, save it and read it when you are free.
Mindfucked?! Ask your doubts in the comments below or share it with the Sherlock you hang around!!)
Paying bills are a factor of pain. We are losing money and know one has thought of reducing that pain.
Cred using that sound, motion and sometimes useful rewards, is trying to be the pain killer of paying bills.
So, that paying bills would become less of a pain and more of a joyful task. It's hard but Cred tries to manage it beautifully. Kudos to its Design Mafia.
So, Cred would never stop rewarding you. You'd always get something to soothe that pain of losing money.
The rewards page is also the ad banner for brands. The page where you spin the wheel for the Jackpot but never achieved it (The 777)
Congrats, you've unlocked Level 3. 👌
(Level 3) The Delta 4
Kunal Shah the player, knows to play it well. Branding and Trust is what he has agressively put effort on. Why? That's the future of sales.
Indians are low trust society. And to build trust among this huge "low trust" folks, we have to play big and this guy know it.
Kunal invests aggressively in startups> Startups then brag about it (Kunal Shah backed) > Generates buzz via online medium > Kunal Shah as a brand grows and continue this loop.
And this phenomenon has worked well for him and Cred team, as most of the folks started using Cred just for the trust we all possess in this "famous startup guy".
THE CRED MAFIA
The Cred team is crazy super skilled, we all know that (if not, use the Cred app)!
Cred has challenged the industry set design foundation or principles by choosing a different design system (Neomorphism). A never seen design style on any other Indian or Fintech apps.
It's got all the criticism and backlash from the design world.
Why criticise them, when they are what the do. "Marketing company"!!
This criticism again bought eyeballs to this Cred app and voila, they have 10+ mn users.
Who won?
THE NEVER SEEN
Cred sets a standard everywhere. Be it joining the app or the team. They have created their own rules which in turn makes them invincible and unique again.
Regarding the never seen design approach, Cred did this so as to fulfill different set of outcomes….
For the top 1% (okay)
To give users a seamless fun experience (Emmm)
To have the best talents (??)
Yeah, they did it to have the best talents out there.
What gets your company to success? It's the people that hang around within the company!
By setting a new design standard in the fintech space, Cred tried to attract the best talents, as their design or motions can't be fulfilled by so called "good designers or devs". They have to be extra ordinary!
This made them attract great designers, devs and PMs and, this again created a loop of great talents be attracted to Cred by default.
(A recent article by a 20y/o on LinkedIn went viral, where he showcased his motion design skills and desire to join Cred!)
This again creates a buzz for what? The product: "Cred"
So the loop is : Out of the box Design > Out of the world talents > Generate even more buzz for the product…..
The Next
Recently they have launched a lifestyle magazine within the app. Why?
Cred has got the distribution. And you open it and scan to get rewards (sometimes Cred coins 😁)
They launched it to solve the dilemma they face right now.
New products are being listed on Cred. And users trust Kunal and his team but not these products.
So, to brag about them and to bring their attention, what's better than a getting featured on a magazine that gets the eyeball of the top 1%?!
New Brands list on Cred > Gets featured on Periscope > Grabs Users attention and they might get it.
Case Solved? 🤷
Let's wait n watch.
The aspirational game of Persicope
Being a lifestyle magazine, they showcase lifestyle of people and create an aspiration for you to get you spend more on the brands
But for that you need to open it right?
And to make you open it, read it and spend time on it, Your favourite celebs are bought in….
Nothing to talk about it more, it's new and freshly available on Cred App, while reading observe its pattern carefully.
And the final
(Level 4) The dirty Big Picture
Cred is bigger than you imagine
Believe me. Why do you think investors have poured money into Cred and let them burn all these cash reserves?!
Your spending helps:
Brands grow 📈
Cred grow 💹
Govt grow 📈
Banks grow 📈
Kunal Shah said: "Cred is an experiment, that if it works, will change the country!"
So, with all the phenomenon I've explained now it would be easier for you to understand:
We all love rewards and use Cred app so as to get rewards.
Cred wins ✅
Using Cred app gets us to products we might need and we again get rewards for buying it through Cred.
Brand and Cred win ✅
Now Cred has got newly launched brands. And when we support them, they grow and their growth boosts the economy
Brand, Cred and Govt win ✅
And now analyse your spending pattern, banks could provide you with more credit and which again lead to more spending.
Cred, Bank, Brands and Govt win ✅
So, for all these to happen, as Cred has nailed the distribution, they need to exist.
And for their existence, investors pour money seeing this potential!
That's it.
Download Cred Baby, Download Cred!
(Pumped up with huge and lot of information?! Take a brake, Grab a KitKat!)
Hope you were able to follow all along…
Now share your perspective and next startup you'd like to be deconstructed👇
Your writing is pretty engaging..gotta know some good stuff here