Bangalore and San Francisco based financial Technology startup Leap Finance recently revealed that it had secured $5.5 million in the funding round led by the Sequoia India. The round also saw participation from the leading angels, including the Bhupinder Singh, Founder, and CEO, as well as Kunal Shah, Founder and CEO, Cred, among others.
Co-founded by the IIT Kharagpur alumni Vaibhav Singh and Arnav Kumar, Leap Finance provides education loans to students based on the student’s future income. According to the startup, its engine takes into account several alternatives and derived data points to predict the duture income potential.
Speaking on the problem the startup is solving, Vaibhav Singh, Co-founder of Leap Finance, said,
“Indian students make up for 25 percent of a class in many top graduate programmes in the US. These are smart, hard-working students who got in the best programmes and have a great future ahead. Yet, the education loans they avail of are at interest rates twice as high as their American peers. This disparity stems from systemic inefficiencies and lack of innovation.”
Speaking on the investment, Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India LLP, said,
“Indian students studying abroad today spend $15 billion annually and we estimate an annual credit need for more than $5 billion against this. This attractiveness of the market, strong founder-market fit, and Leap’s mission-driven team are what led to our belief in an early partnership with them.”
