[Funding alert] Eduvanz raises $2M from Unitus Ventures and Dell Foundation

Fintech startup Eduvanz Financing has raised $2 million in a pre-Series A round, from Unitus Ventures and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The company will be using the freshly raised funds to expand their geographies to more than 30 cities across India, including in Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Jaipur and Chennai, amongst others. This was confirmed by Cofounder Varun Chopra , over a telephonic conversation with YourStory.

Varun further confirmed that the startup will be using the funds to hire 80 people right now, taking the team size to 110 employees, over the next few months. Most of these hiring will across sales and tech team, and risk verticals.

Founded in 2016 by Varun, Raheel Shah and Atul Sashittal, the tech-driven NBFC offers short education loans for skill training and development. The startup uses technology to assign credit scores to loan-seeking students, based on their socio-economic and demographic background.

In January 2017, the startup was granted an NBFC License by the RBI to start providing loans in the multi-billion skill development sector. Eduvanz had then raised $500,000 investment in a round led by Blinc Advisors.

The company is in the process of raising a Series A round to be confirmed over the course of this year. It is building a pan-India presence with paperless, presence-less, cash-less loans solutions, enabled by proprietary algorithms and predictive analytics.

So far, Eduvanz has disbursed 1,400 loans and has received applications from 10,000 applicants. Eduvanz has partnered with over 120+ institutes and top corporates like Godrej, Dr. Reddy foundation etc as they continue to build their presence for both online and offline courses.

According to media reports, Varun said:

“The deep experience of our investors in supporting startups in the education and financial services sector aligns very well with our vision.The capital from this round will be used to strengthen our technology and expand our lending operations as we build a Rs 100 crore loan portfolio over the next two years.”

Also read: Y Combinator-backed Cashfree raises $5.5M from Smilegate Investments