-By Tarika Sethia & Ishan Shah
The ed-tech boom in India has grown multi-fold in the last two years and Varun Chopra of Eduvanz, funding education and skill seekers believes the time is good and the focus will be on tier-2, 3 & 4 cities.
Varun Chopra, Co-founder & CEO at Eduvanz believes that banks have slightly burnt their fingers in financing higher education loans and Eduvanz found a space to fund students who are looking to do courses in domestic universities in India.
Varun said, “The idea was that how everybody is creating financial entities around a certain specific sector or product like an auto loan, property loan, microfinance, etc. We wanted to be the lender for learners.”
Pandemic Impact
The pandemic has accelerated Eduvanz’s growth journey. Some of the key drivers Varun sees is the New Education Policy 2020 and UGC Policy where degrees can be given online which has never happened before in India. So students who are sitting out of tier 2,3,4 cities, now don’t have to come to Bombay and Delhi to get educated, backed by the high penetration of the internet across India.
Eduvanz sanctions loans to these students and becomes one point of contact. It also launched no-cost loans where students can buy laptops, mobile phones at 0% interest.
Varun said, “0% is just a small behaviour change of another way of buying products and paying later. So just like BNPL is picking up in the consumer sector. We’ve created products like study-now-pay-later. So this SNPL product is really making a difference for both the consumer and the education institutes because for educational institutes it is helping them meet the demand of the students and increasing their enrollment and for students, it is at zero cost, it’s very beneficial.”
The average ticket size is around Rs 1.8 lakh and the average tenure of 18 months, but it starts lending at as low as Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,00,000. It has tied up with over 200 universities across countries.
Courses in demand & Risks
Varun highlights that courses and skill sets related to the BFSI, Analytics, Digital Marketing, Blockchain are in demand and students are trying to build their careers in these sectors. A big shift is also being seen in how work from home has benefited these students to pursue courses beyond working hours.
Varun adds, “Employment is backed by quality education and skillsets. Most of these educational courses are also becoming hybrid today. Some of these models are becoming very effective and that is where the boom in education learning is happening in India.
25% of the borrowers are introduced to educational institutes where they don’t have any tie-ups. While they may not get a 0% loan but are able to get their education financed at a cheaper cost, explains Varun.
It has brought down its exposures which are impacted by the pandemic also with institutes where placements have gone down and there’s an employability risk which is determined by its internally created score called ’employability score’.
BFSI, IT & Technology are the key drivers for now.
Impact on Existing book
Varun said, there has been an impact but luckily we were part of the impact-based lending. So we have partnered with Michael Susan Dell foundations, where we get the coverage if the borrower is not able to pay back. However, our portfolio is extremely solid.
It claims that they are one of the best performing fintech with NBFC license with NPAs less than 0.7% in spite of two phases of severed Covid-19 waves. He added, “We have reduced a little bit of exposure on each impacted sector. We have tweaked how much exposure some of the institutes we can take. To be honest, I think we have been fortunate enough because most of the borrowers get employed. Even if there is a delay in getting employed, these guys have been able to kind of repay back over a period of time.”
New Avenues
Eduvanz has also started financing school fees for which it acquired a company called ‘clarity’ last year. It provides students mentorship and industry guidance. Varun said, “We are creating an entirely digital platform around it, where we have partnerships at schools and colleges. Students can talk to these industry veterans and understand good career opportunities and options.”
It has also partnered with companies like Apple to finance study-related equipment where borrowers may want a laptop to do their education. Varun adds, “So there’s a lot of focus on creating a whole lender for learners, not just finance a part of their education, but anything related to their learning, whether it is in mobile devices, insurance, laptops.”
In the last four years, it has collected huge amounts of data on institutes, sectors, consumers, employment trends which has enabled them to create innovative products.
In terms of credit demand, Varun said, “ In the last four months we have constantly hit the highest. There is an extreme amount of demand and we are disbursing close to Rs 40-45 crore per month, and we are planning to reach Rs 75 crore in two to three months. So that’s the immediate target.”
Fundraise & Growth
Eduvanz is looking for a series-B round closely and will be more like a growth capital to build strong technology infrastructure and products and create a strong distribution model for learners.
Varun adds, “The ed-tech boom has led to a new kind of quality education turning up and no sector has grown without the availability of finance, every sector is to be pushed by the financial sector. Being somewhere where we were one of the first ones, we hope to carry this torch of growth in upcoming times.”