Education loan platform Eduvanz Financing Pvt. Ltd has raised $5 million (Rs 37 crore) in its Series A round of funding led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.
The capital will be used for geographical expansion and creation of new credit products, a Sequoia release said.
Existing backer and early-stage impact investor Unitus Ventures also participated in this round.
VCCircle was the first to report in March that Sequoia had onboarded Eduvanz with a funding of Rs 12 crore ($1.6 million). The above-mentioned transaction is part of the same round.
Mumbai-based Eduvanz was launched by Varun Chopra, Raheel Shah and Atul Sashittal in September 2016.
Chopra, who is the CEO, is an IIT-Madras alumnus and previously worked with Nomura and Deutsche Bank.
Shah, the chief business officer, is an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus and earlier worked with Accenture.
Sashittal, the tech chief, has worked with financial services companies such as CLSA and Angel Broking in the past.
Eduvanz provides loans to individuals to pursue any vocational degree or skill development course at any institute either recognised or in partnership with the company. It has tie-ups with more than 80 institutes.
The company has built a portfolio of Rs 12 crore with a borrower base of over 1,000 students. It aims to build a book size of more than Rs 100 crore and expand across India over the next two years.
Eduvanz also aims to offer loan products that will focus on supporting financial requirements for K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) programmes, online skill development courses and professional courses.
The startup had last year secured $2 million from social-impact investment firm Unitus Ventures and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.
For Sequoia, Eduvanz is its latest fintech investment. The investment firm has previously invested in companies such as Razorpay, Mobikwik, Pine Labs and Freecharge.
The education loan segment in the broader financial-technology space has seen a handful of deals in the recent past.
In December 2019, Credenc Web Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an education loans platform, had raised Rs 17.8 crore in a seed funding round led by impact investor Omidyar Network India
In July 2019, Propelld, another student-education financing platform, had raised Rs 15 crore from early-stage investors Stellaris Venture Partners and India Quotient, among others.
