Startups ease process of obtaining education loans

CHENNAI: Yeswanth Kumar Muppalla from Vijayawada, a student at North Carolina University, USA, had approached banks for loans and faced rejection multiple times. Getting to know of a startup — GyanDhan — that facilitates education loans through a camp conducted in his undergraduate college, his loan got processed. “I would like to mention one point here, if you go to the same bank on your own, they not even process your application but if you go through GyanDhan, they will consider our application and negotiate the interest rate too,” he added.
Gyan Dhan, founded by founded by two IIT alumni -Ankit Mehra and Jainesh Sinha, operates in the higher education segment for foreign universities.The startup, partnering with SBI and Axis Bank, facilitates loan disbursal to students who do not even have a collateral. “ Over half the close to 100 loans have been processed without collateral,” said Jainesh Sinha, co-founder. The startup takes into consideration the employability quotient of the student. Sinha added that the startup has also help reduce unnecessary paper work. “In one case, the bank had asked an applicant to furnish the i20 form (which states that you are a non-immigrant student), which wasn’t required. We approached the bank and got the loans sanctioned. The startup has processed loans worth 21 crore, with an average ticket size of 27 lakh across the country.
Facilitating loan disbursal towards of blue-collar workers, OpenTap, a peer-to-peer lending platform, does the vetting process before it connects loan borrowers and loan givers. The P2P platform says 40% of its loans are for educational purposes — for school and college-going students. “At OpenTap, we give loans mostly to blue-collar workers through the employer. Many of our loan borrowers work in the textile, auto, chemicals and ancillary industries - so we access their credit worthiness through the employer. There are non-traditional data sets we look at — how long has the person been employed? How many children does he have? Do they go to school?” says Senthil Natarajan, founder, OpenTap.
“Employers also find it a huge relief as many of these are pressured to give salary advances. If they give salary advance for one employee they'll have to follow-suit for all their other employees. So for them also it helps that we are stepping in and willing to offer credit. Blue collar workers are traditionally severely underbanked — banks are unwilling to give them loans because they don’t have a credit score or history,” says Natarajan. N Selvaraj from Hosakottai, near Bengaluru was able to fund the education of his 6 year old daughter’s education in Shobal matric higher secondary school. The borrowers can pay back in monthly instalments.
Shiksha, a Chennai-based startup co-founded by chartered accountants — Jacob Abraham and V L Ramakrishnan, Shiksha — also operates in the school education segment for auto drivers, small store owners and those without a valid credit score. It lends money every year with the collateral being a letter of recommendation from the schools they have tied up with stating that the parents have paid their fees regularly.
In Bankbazaar, an online marketplace with more than 50 banks integrated, customers get the benefit of choosing from more than 35 real time bank offers customized basis their profile. “This changes everything that was laid down for the physical financial services. In addition, this gives empowerment to the customer to decide a personal finance product without any external influence. It gives them better understanding of the product and they are confident about its benefits,” said Adhil Shetty, co-founder and CEO, BankBazaar.com