Student loans start-up Credenc raises $25m from Capital India
India-based lending start-up Credenc has received a $25 million investment from financing firm Capital India.
Avinash Kumar, co-founder of Credenc
The Delhi-based firm works with around 1,000 colleges across 17 cities in its home country. It offers students lending options for the payment of their tuition.
Credenc says the fresh capital will go towards the expansion of its loan portfolio, following internal development of its technology platform.
“Our partnership with Capital India is very strategic, it will give us both balance sheet and cost of capital advantage,” says Avinash Kumar, co-founder of Credenc.
He adds the firm will help in “disrupting the education lending segment” by providing loans to students “who were until now ignored”.
Credenc uses what it calls a proprietary AI model to track more than 15 million data points when predicting the future income of students applying for loans.
According to data from the Indian bankers’ committee, student loan disbursement in India sits at around $8.8 billion, while around $2 billion in loans were issued in the first half of 2020 alone.
