It’s been a minute.
2015–2018
- Exited FreeCharge. Spent time learning and investing.
- Pondered about: Why can't trust be rewarded? Started with $1M of personal capital.
- Launched CRED to reward people for paying credit card bills on time.
2019–2025
- Built a system run by a team that values ownership, judgment, and craft.
- Grew from 0 to 17M members by aligning incentives with behaviour.
- Built several products during COVID lockdowns.
- Raised $900M+ from global investors. Did 4 ESOP buybacks.
- Made Indiranagar and IPL ads slightly more interesting.
- Received a full stack of regulatory licences.
- Lost 35 kilos.
- Scaled from 0 to ~$325M ( ~₹3,200 crore) in annual revenue across payments, lending, insurance, commerce, wealth, and credit cards.
2026
- First profitable quarter (yet occasionally asked what our business model is)
- Raised another $900M from Meta in primary and secondary capital.
- Announcing our 5th ESOP buyback.
Today
CRED is ready for its next phase. I am stepping back and @miten steps in as interim CEO, partnered with an incredibly talented team. He has been heading strategy and finance and suffering me since 2020. I’m stepping away from the operating role and will continue as a shareholder. My commitment doesn’t change. Just the role.
Extremely grateful to our members, partners, regulators, and investors who made this possible. And to our board, Shailendra, Micky, Saurabh for their extraordinary conviction.
Team CRED, I’ll still expect you to be a 10x version of yourselves.
As for me, I’ll be joining Meta to lead WhatsApp globally.
Meta comes in as a minority investor in CRED. No access to member data.
While it’s come very far, the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive. I look forward to working with Mark, Chris, and the leadership across Meta for the next step in WhatsApp’s journey. Will, thank you for scaling something the world relies on quietly, and for making this transition smooth.
Onwards.
Side Income Idea: if you have an app, then make a constraint that the username must have 5 characters, below that, pay 5$ a month. If the user misses the payment, add a random word to the username.
@nitin_gadkari@thirumaofficial It’s deeply disappointing that while people are dying in road accidents like the one at Mahi Bridge, our leaders remain silent. Common citizens deserve your attention and empathy, not just birthday wishes to other politicians.
What started as a dicussion on discord voice chat
From a Discord chat to an 11th-floor office in Noida’s IT hub.
What started as an open-source project with 50+ contributors turned into something none of us fully anticipated — @PixelwandHQ
In the early days, we were juggling between college and writing code from our apartment. We were figuring out how to get our first client — and when none came, we decided to build our own product.
That first product wasn’t perfect. But it taught us everything — and surprisingly, it brought us our first big client.
Not everything was smooth. We lost some key team members — and with them, came our lowest moment. But we didn’t break. We learned, grew wiser, and came back stronger.
Today, as we step into our new office at Noida, it feels like a small validation that we’re on the right path.
When I first entered this space, my teammate by my side, I felt a calm clarity: This is the place I want to build in.
To some, this might look like just an office.
But for me — a boy who couldn’t afford tuition once, who almost gave up on education after 12th — this space is proof that dreams born in scarcity can find a place in abundance.
When my parents visited the new office, I saw their eyes — part disbelief, part pride. That moment will stay with me forever.
At Pixelwand, our ethos is simple:
Learn by building.
Deliver more than expected.
Never compromise on quality.
This office isn’t a destination — it’s just the beginning.
Let’s build more. Together.
@julianharris@michbarsinai Totally agree with you both— even great AI output needs validation. MBT helps here by modeling expected behavior and testing against that, not just trusting what one LLM (or another) says. It’s one way to close the trust gap.
AI is writing code faster than ever.
But what happens when it hallucinates?
This is how I almost shipped a major bug — and how I fixed it with something smarter: Model-Based Testing🧵
@julianharris Totally Agreed as prompt engineering helps a lot, but like you said, LLMs often cap out at ~80%. Tools like Provengo help catch what slips through that last 20%, especially when quality or safety really matters.
@julianharris That's a great point — we do require tests for every change. But AI-generated code often passes basic tests while hiding subtle bugs.
Model-Based Testing with Provengo models system behavior and auto-generates smarter tests — catching edge cases we might miss.