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OnEMI Technology Ltd, the operator of digital lending platform Kissht, listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday at ₹190 per share, an 11.1% premium to its issue price of ₹171. The debut offers one of the clearest public-market tests yet of whether an app-first lender can be valued beyond just another unsecured credit player.
That question matters because while the market has large listed financial firms such as Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, and Aye Finance, it has few listed pure-play digital lenders of Kissht’s kind. The comparison is not straightforward: established NBFCs offer scale, balance-sheet depth, and long operating histories, while Kissht argues that its technology-led underwriting, diversified sourcing, and cleaner risk metrics deserve separate attention.
That also makes this listing different from many fintech companies that have gone public in recent years. Paytm came to market as a fintech super app, Groww is largely identified with broking and wealth, and Pine Labs has been seen more as a payments and merchant commerce infrastructure play. Kissht, by contrast, gives public investors a more direct read on app-led consumer lending.
Chief executive officer Ranvir Singh has made a strong case for the company's risk quality. Net non-performing assets stood at 0.31% as of December 2025, a figure Singh says has no peer among similar lenders, while a Crisil rating upgrade to A- from BBB+ between the draft and final prospectus provided external validation.
For years, much of India’s unsecured retail credit flowed to borrowers with stronger bureau histories, leaving many salaried and self-employed consumers with thin credit files underserved. That gap created a crop of venture-backed digital lenders such as Kissht, KreditBee, Fibe, Moneyview, Navi, Nira and CASHe, which used app-based distribution and faster underwriting to serve small-ticket borrowers.
Despite the growth, OnEMI with its estimated ₹5,900 crore AUM, remains smaller than competing digital lender KreditBee, whose AUMs stand at ₹11,875 crore at end-September 2025, and is comparable in size with Fibe, whose AUMs stand at ₹5,287 crore as of March-end 2025.
At the end of fiscal 2025, Kissht's net NPA was at 0.25%, as compared to Kreditbee's 0.65% and Fibe's 0.89%.
The category has since scaled sharply. Digital non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) accounted for 78% of personal loans sanctioned in the first nine months of 2025-26 by volume, though only 19% by value, according to Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE). Sanction value rose from ₹92,842 crore in 2022-23 to ₹1.55 trillion in 2024-25, and had already touched ₹1.53 trillion across 99 million loans in the first nine months of 2025-26.
Endiya Partners, an early backer of Kissht, argues the company was built to serve India’s ‘neo-prime’ borrowers, or customers with little formal credit history rather than weak credit quality, using technology-led underwriting to widen access without losing control of risk.
“India’s issue was not subprime, but neo-prime,” Sateesh Andra, managing partner at Endiya, said in an interview, arguing that many such borrowers lacked credit history rather than creditworthiness.
Singh said the company is now focused on lowering its cost of funds and building out its secured lending book. “As you grow, you show strength in terms of risk performance, you are bound to get a much higher reduction in the cost of fund,” he said. Singh added that Crisil Ratings had upgraded the company because it saw “a very, very high degree of comfort with the risk”.
Singh said the company is also recalibrating the mix between on-book and off-book assets, which stood at roughly 51:49 in December 2025, compared with a higher on-book share in March 2025.
The company is also increasing the share of secured loans in its portfolio, rather than moving away from unsecured credit altogether. Singh said secured lending was “a very big strategic focus area for us” and “not one of those tactical things we are doing”.
Endiya’s listing note said Kissht’s average loan tenor rose from 2.92 months in fiscal 2024 to 9.65 months in fiscal 2025, while average ticket size increased from ₹14,721 to ₹31,808, as the company shifted towards longer-tenure, higher-ticket products and launched loan against property. That transition came at a cost: disbursements nearly halved from ₹18,531 crore to ₹9,858 crore, while total income fell from ₹1,700 crore to ₹1,353 crore and profit after tax declined from ₹197 crore to ₹161 crore in fiscal 2025.
The recovery, however, was visible in the nine months ended December 2025. Total AUM rose from ₹1,268 crore in fiscal 2023 to ₹5,956 crore by December 2025, while profit after tax reached ₹199 crore in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, ahead of the full-year fiscal 2025 figure. Return on equity stood at 23.51% on an annualized basis for the nine-month period.
Kissht and its investors are also making a broader case to public-market investors: that the company should be judged not only as a small lender, but as a technology-led credit business with stronger underwriting and a more diversified acquisition model. Singh said Kissht’s edge lay in three areas: risk discrimination, a diversified sourcing mix and its customer base.
“Because it’s a lending business, we are only as good as our ability to discriminate on risk,” he said. He added that digital marketing contributes less than 50% of customer acquisition, with the rest coming from multiple channels. He said the company’s base of 11.2 million customers gives it room to expand into products such as property-backed loans.
Even so, Singh acknowledged the company’s limits relative to larger listed peers and better-funded private rivals. “I don’t have the benefit of vintage,” he said. “Our AUM is still a small fraction.” That may keep Kissht at a discount to larger incumbents for now, but its listing could still become an early marker of how public investors judge the next crop of fintech lenders.
Agnidev is a business journalist with over two years of reporting experience tracking the intersection of capital, policy, and corporate strategy in India.<br><br>He joined Mint in December 2025, after a stint at NDTV Profit (erstwhile BQ Prime). At Mint, Agnidev focuses on the high-stakes world of the Indian capital market, specialising in mergers and acquisitions, burgeoning IPOs, and the investment banking industry.<br><br>Backed by a rigorous, data-driven approach, Agnidev frequently breaks news on the valuation cycles, deal pipelines and listing strategies of India’s most prominent companies. His reportage offers deep dives into the operational health of market leaders across the corporate landscape, providing readers with a clear-eyed view of institutional growth.<br><br>He has reported on major issues like India's derivatives frenzy, IPO froth, the competitive quick commerce industry, the real-money gaming ban, and has broken investigative stories related to scandals such as IndusInd Bank's accounting manipulation and the Gensol-BluSmart fiasco.<br><br>As a reporter, he brings stories that ultimately affect your stock market investments, and tries to bring clarity and brevity in a field that is often filled with jargon and noise.
Salman S.H. is an Assistant Editor with Mint in Bengaluru, where he covers startups, venture capital, and the broader internet economy. Over the course of more than a decade in journalism and strategic communications, he has built deep reporting expertise across technology, fintech, consumer internet, digital platforms, and the business models shaping India’s new economy. At Mint, he tracks the companies, investors, and policy developments influencing how technology is built, funded, and scaled in India.<br><br>His reporting covers venture capital, startup strategy, fintech, edtech, funding trends, and the internet economy. He writes about how startups raise money, grow their businesses, respond to regulation, and adapt to changes in technology and policy. His work also looks at the impact of policy decisions on startups and investors, and tracks the sectors, founders, and firms shaping India’s digital economy.<br><br>Before Mint, Salman worked across several respected newsrooms, including The Economic Times, Financial Express, The Ken, Inc42, and The Core. He has also worked in strategic communications, leading PR strategy and media outreach for clients in education, online learning, consumer internet, and consulting. That combination of newsroom and communications experience gives him a clear understanding of how business stories are reported, shaped, and understood.
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