EduFi has launched the digital student loan platform in Pakistan, on a mission “to empower more students to achieve their academic pursuits.”
Education is a lever of economic growth and social development “in any country but poor quality state school provision often drives many families to fee-paying schools.”
Helping these families manage the financial challenges of school fees, EduFi is announcing a $6.1m funding round “for its Study Now, Pay Later lending platform.”
It has launched in Pakistan, a country “where 40% of students are attending a fee-paying school and spending over $14 billion for their education every year.”
The pre-seed investment round was “led by Zayn VC with participation from Palm Drive Capital, Deem Ventures Ltd, Q Business, Abhi, Adalfi, Techlogix and other angel investors. EduFi is a fintech platform and mobile app that enables students to secure loans for their school fees.”
EduFi works with liquidity providers and schools “to drive successful student loans.”
The platform is underpinned “by a proprietary education sector focused credit scoring model using advanced machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence.”
Aleena Nadeem, Founder & CEO of EduFi commented:
“We conceived and built this product to serve markets that have low credit penetration. Pakistan presented an ideal opportunity to launch because the need is the greatest and we had a first-mover advantage. Firstly, banks don’t offer student loans, instead users take personal loans which are riddled with a high cost of origination owing to physical verification of identity, personal assets and financial health. The absence of credit scoring has restricted credit access to a thin, top tier of customers. We want to expand the credit and student loan opportunity to a much wider audience of students across the country. Secondly, we feel student loans can be a bridge to the country’s two biggest problems – high levels of poverty and low literacy rates – and catalyze economic growth.”
The EduFi team has created “a full tech stack that provides visibility to liquidity providers on their capital performance and enables schools to capture student performance metrics such as attendance, overdue fees, drop out rates and academic performance of the students.”
In addition, the EduFi App UX offers an unparalleled pathway “for users to quickly and easily access student loans. Combined, this end-to-end tech stack powers the EduFi credit scoring system to disperse student loans within 48 hours of application.”
The loan journey reportedly”offers a faster and simpler application process, fast loan disbursement, flexible repayment options and provides more convenience and accessibility than the traditional lenders.”
EduFi has ended the weeks of manual work “to a few minutes in offering and making a student loan.”