Leap, an overseas education platform has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Jungle Ventures with participation from Sequoia Capital India and Owl Ventures. This new funding comes less than a year after Leap raised $5.5 million from Capital India and others, taking the total fundraised by the startup to date to $22.5 million.

This investment by Jungle Ventures also marks the Singapore-based VC firm’s maiden investment in the Indian edtech space.

Founded in 2019 by Vaibhav Singh and Arnav Kumar, Leap provides counseling, visa services, education loans, and other financial products for students looking to study abroad.

The Silicon-Valley based startup currently helps students join colleges in several countries including the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. The company currently runs two platforms, ie: Leap Finance and Leap Scholar. The former is concerned with funding, while the latter is concerned with educational advice and counseling.

The firm is also planning to implement a credit card designed specifically for international students.

“We are a one-stop solution for everything that a study-abroad aspirant needs. India has the largest pool of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) educated English-speaking graduates and millions of them want global degrees and careers. Our online community helps students evaluate career options, network with seniors, and shortlist the best courses. We then use this data to offer personalized test prep, professional counseling services, visa guidance, and financial products," says, Arnav Kumar, co-founder of Leap.
Singh aforesaid Covid has allowed the Leap team the time to create the inspiration of the business with an internet community of over 500,000 students registered on the platform as of currently.

Leap will use the funds to expand geographically and its product portfolio, strengthen its team across various fields like technology and business functions and grow its student community. The company is also planning to set up offices globally for institutional partnerships and other business functions.

“As we come out of Covid, we are fully geared up for massive scale as the world slowly comes back to normal. Not only do we have the natural demand to cater to in 2021, we have a backlog of students from 2020 as well. So Covid has given us an opportunity to hyper accelerate now given the next 12-18 months, demand will be much larger,” says, Singh.

Leap claims to have helped over 20,000 students in the past year and aims to serve 150,000 students in the current year. The company is also planning to cross $10million in revenue.

“Leap marks our first investment in the edu-tech space. India is the second-largest market globally for overseas enrolment, and in just a decade overseas higher education annual enrolments from India are up more than 300 percent,” said Amit Anand, Founding Partner, Jungle Ventures.