Milaap Social Ventures, an online social lending platform that has raised Series A round of $1.1 million (around Rs 6.6 crore) from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, has over 200 lenders from across the world supporting 40 Indian students, lending over Rs 8 lakh.

Jungle Ventures makes early stage investments in start-ups from Singapore, India and other Asian countries.

Some 14 students have already been fully funded as part of a new campaign by Milaap, and can now pursue their dreams across sectors as diverse as teaching, pharmacy and healthcare and IT and hardware.

The campaign is to adopt a student and champion his/her cause to undergo job training. Since the campaign began early this month, it has been trying to get sponsors for 25 students at various stages of funding needs. The company has said Rs 1,000 can train a person for a week in software testing and basic programming.

Regarding $1.1-million funding, Jayesh Parekh, co-founder of Sony Entertainment Television and existing investor at Unitus Seed Fund, as also managing partner, Jungle Ventures, and Lion Rock Capital, a Singapore-based family investment office were among the many interested parties in the Series A round. As part of the deal, Hari Kumar, Partner, Lion Rock Capital and Jayesh Parekh have joined the board of the company.

The funds raised will be used to expand engineering and marketing investments for enhancing the online product experience, and to invest in scaling up marketing and outreach efforts.

Earlier, Milaap had raised $250,000 from from Unitus Seed Fund, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder of One97 and Rajiv Madhok, Founder of Oorja.

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