The company recently raised ₹50 crore in Series A funding from Classplus and Pravega Ventures and is now focused on building a stronger local presence to bridge the information gap around education financing in these regions.
“There’s a serious information gap in smaller cities,” said Ankit Mehra, Co-Founder and CEO of GyanDhan, in an interview with CNBC-TV18. “We want to build a strong on-ground presence and work with consulting partners so students and parents can come to get their queries answered.”
GyanDhan is also working to simplify what it calls a broken education loan process. According to Mehra, even affluent families avoid taking loans because of the hassle involved. “We want to remove that hassle and make the process as painless as getting a personal loan from a digital app.”
A core part of GyanDhan’s model is addressing the trust gap in education loans. Lenders often hesitate to finance students because they struggle to assess future employability, relying instead on parental income and property. “If we can predict the future employability of students, we can issue unsecured or semi-secured loans based on potential, rather than financial background,” Mehra said.
The company also offers a tech-enabled, customer-facing interface for over 15 domestic and international lenders, helping students navigate the loan journey more easily. “The student doesn’t need to visit the lender multiple times,” said Mehra. “They go through a tech-driven process and get a complete checklist of documents at one go.”
Since its inception, GyanDhan has disbursed ₹7,000 crore in loans, including ₹2,000 crore last year alone. It aims to reach ₹18,000 crore in total originations over the next three years. The company’s NBFC arm primarily serves the domestic skill development segment, while the study abroad market remains a major focus, with around 5,000 students supported last year.
Despite macroeconomic and visa-related headwinds impacting overseas education, GyanDhan is not looking to diversify into new sectors just yet. “We don’t want to dilute our focus by adding 10 different divisions,” Mehra said. “Our goal is to increase education loan penetration from 20% to 45%.”
While the company sees current slowdowns as temporary, it is actively engaging with the Government of India’s skill development loan programme to broaden its impact. “These short-term headwinds don’t really impact our long-term growth plans,” Mehra added.
Watch accompanying video for full show.
