Private equity player Sequoia backed fintech player Eduvanz Financing will be raising $15 million in another round of financing deals this month, sources told Business Line . Eduvanz provides education loans at “zero” per cent interest rate and is a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) registered NBFC.

So far, Eduvanz has extended education loans to the tune of ₹400 crore. Sequoia had invested close to $7 million in Eduvanz during its previous rounds of fund raising. Eduvanz has already signed term sheets with investors for the next round of funding and the deals are likely to be closed this month, the sources said. Apart from Sequoia, Unitus Ventures is another investor in Eduvanz.

The Mumbai-based Eduvanz was launched by Varun Chopra, Raheel Shah and Atul Sashittal in September 2016. Chopra, CEO of Eduvanz, is from IIT-Madras and previously worked with Nomura and Deutsche Bank. Shah, an IIM-Ahmedabad, has worked with Accenture and Sashittal was with CLSA and Angel Broking earlier.

Eduvanz also aims to offer loans for online skill development courses and professional courses. Its immediate competition includes Avanse Financial Services, Grayquest Education Finance and Google-incubated fintech player Financepeer. Eduvanz is likely to be planning for its IPO at around 2024.

The start-up has so far secured funding from social-impact investment firm Unitus Ventures and Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Education loan segment has seen noticeable buzz in the past couple of years. Reportedly, in December 2019, Credenc Web Technologies Pvt. Ltd, an education loans platform, had raised ₹17.8 crore in seed funding by Omidyar Network India.

Prior to that Propelld, another student-education financing platform had raised ₹15 crore from Stellaris Venture Partners and India Quotient, among others