Bangalore based, Fintech start-up Bluebear Technology Private Limited (“Propelld”) announces that it has raised $250K in seed funding from Indian Angel Network and IAN Fund. Leading the funding round are IAN Members Ambarish Raghuvanshi (Former, CFO, Naukri), Alok Sharma(Former CEO, Apple India) and Satish Jajodia (Former-CEO/CFO of Education Dynamics, Ex. Director Strategy and Advanced Analytics with Citigroup).
Propelldis a student education financing platform which brings Financial Institutions to lend to students taking professional training/Vocational certification courses, using its proprietary employability outcome algorithm to include earning potential when determining the ability of a borrower to repay. This includes data points such as schools, academic performance, stream and work experience to get a grasp on ability and propensity to repay.
Commenting on the future direction of Propelld, Victor (Co-Founder at Propelld) said “Measuring employability of students based on their academic history and skills is our core strength. We are looking at leveraging the data to introduce new financing products in the markets such as CV based lending (without the need of co-guarantors) and also expand our scope of services to career path discovery, lead generation for Institutes, creating skill community etc.”
Speaking on the investment, Ambarish Raghuvanshi (IAN Lead, ex-CFO Naukri), said, “The Education Space has traditionally been overlooked by financial players. Its challenges are unique. At the same time, this translates into a massive opportunity, especially with year on year increased spending in the space. We saw an amazing drive in the founding team, wanting to dream, dare and scale.”
Addressing these challenges, Victor adds, “Before us, Banks/NBFCs saw lending in this space as high risk, equating youth and lack of credit to risk. I believe, we have cracked the code of quantifying the risk in one’s education. We model our decisions on expected income and expected expenses. Till date, we haven’t had a single case of default. We started with technology courses such as certification programs in Data Science, Digital Marketing, Cyber Security, Coding etc. However, having seen a much larger demand in the non-technology space, we have now started moving in that as well. ”
The unique system provides a win-win situation for both institutes and lenders . Institutes benefit from increased lead conversion, higher quality students and decreased lead conversion times. Financial lenders benefit from getting access to high-quality students pursuing quality courses, at bulk, with zero upfront investment and zero acquisition cost.
