Democratising Quality Education

Eduvanz Financing is an NBFC Fintech that ena­bles young learners to Study Now and Pay Later in small easy on the pocket instalments. The core objec­tive of the company is to make education accessible to all learners across K-12, Test-Prep, Upskilling and UG/PG segments. 

The fintech platform has registered ten times growth in AUM (assets under management) to emerge as the preferred lending partner for the edtech players across India. It has served over 20,000 customers and disbursed loans worth Rs. 250 crore. It has grown to 150-plus team serving more than 200 cities in India with over 350 educational institutes as partners and has successfully launched India’s first CSR backed loan product towards nation-building, which has enabled individuals from the bot­tom of the pyramid to learn and get employed.

The platform offers a point of sales payment solution for institutes that helps them provide instant finance thereby helping them boost enrolments. They use proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) based algo­rithms and predictive analytics to provide loans based on the future employability of learners. Using the mobile app, end-to-end processing from loan application to credit assessment to disbursal happens com­pletely online in a matter of a few hours.

With an aim to democratise access to quality education, over the last few years, it has touched the lives of thousands of students from hun­dreds of institutes across India by helping them get low-cost and flexible education finance.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH DURING PANDEMIC

Speaking about the impact of the pandemic on the company, Varun Chopra, Co-founder and CEO, Eduvanz Financing, said, “We have grown four times in the last twelve months. A lot has been done in dig­ital education, and we have helped people to get a job and also with upskilling their skill-sets. For us it has been good 12 months where we had revenue at out dispersal and were able to grow exponentially.”

Chopra stated, “During the pandemic when the ecosystem was impacted, our team remained focused and aligned to be the preferred lending partner for all educational institutes. I was empowered to take ownership and bold decisions to acquire companies such as Klarity and launch a new product, Corporate Marketplace.” 

Chopra’s entrepreneurial role model is the founder of Virgin Group, Richard Branson for his ‘love for life, ability to listen and to mix work and pleasure’. “Branson’s exemplary competi­tive spirit and resilience inspires me to take on giants. His extraordinary abilities as an entre­preneur, adventurer, futurist, envi­ronmentalist and philanthropist makes him such a great model.”

Some of the major achievements of the company include raising funds from top VCs like Sequoia Capital, being selected by Oracle as part of their Oracle Accelerator Cohort, Innovation Partner as rec­ognised by National Skills Development Company, being part of Champions of Change organised by PM and Niti Aayog and being among top 13 Start-ups of Maharashtra Fintech to name a few.

“If I were able to steer Eduvanz on its growth path, a major share goes to team that helped in making comparisons using quantitative metrics, decide when to stop fund­ing or when to continue it, and strengthen my resolve to continu­ally optimise the company’s alloca­tion of resources,” Chopra said. 

Chopra’s piece of advice to a bud­ding entrepreneur is to try and identify a problem which has a large scale impact rather than solv­ing something that is easy. As per him, being patient and persistent in one’s efforts is the key.