Delhi-based startup Credenc has announced that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Omidyar Network India. Investors like EMV capital, Better Capital, and Indian Institute of Management -Kozhikode (IIMK) Alumni Fund also participated in the funding round.

Credenc is a tech-based education loan platform and it works as the digital finance desk of more than 200 management colleges across 17 Indian cities. Founded by Avinash Kumar and Mayank Batheja in 2017, the startup claims that it has approved loans worth INR

$15 million till now. The company further claims that
it receives more than 200 loan requests a day and
undertakes a rigorous evaluation process. The process for finalizing the loan disbursal uses a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) model which tracks 15 million data points to predict the future income of students applying for loans. Sarvesh Kanodia, Associate, Omidyar Network India said that they see this partnership as an opportunity to demonstrate that a highly impactful and profitable business can be built in the large and untapped higher education financing space. In a press statement, Credenc is intending to build up a loan book of US $500 million over the next five years. The capital raised shall be used to expand operations to 1000 colleges across 50 cities over the next two years. Credenc confirmed that it also plans to hire employees across technology, credit and banking partnerships. Speaking on the recent funding, Batheja said that currently out of around $50 billion annual spends on college tuition fees; only 5% is currently financed by organized lenders, whereas in the US the rate is around 60% of their annual total fees. The startup believes that the education loan penetration rate should be at least 15%. Kumar said that its target segment consists of the top 10k colleges in India, and they would like to ensure that they are available for the top 10% of students from these colleges.