Avanse Financial Services, a new-age education finance company, is eyeing 45 per cent growth in education loan disbursements on pan-India basis at about ₹ 1,100 crore this fiscal, a top official said.

This diversified non-banking finance company (NBFC) is confident of making available its education loan products in the top 25 education hubs across the country by March 2019, Amit Gainda, Chief Executive Officer, Avanse Financial Services, told BusinessLine .

“With 25 education hubs, we are well covered for the next two years. We want to build this business patiently. We are in this business for the long term and would like to be there for 25 years. We have just completed five years,” said Gainda.

India has very few organised education loan providers in the private sector. Avanse is ranked second in the industry league table for education loans.

Growth aspiration

Gainda said that Avanse – an associate company of Wadhawan Global Capital – was aspiring to grow its disbursements by 45-50 per cent this fiscal.

“In 2017-18, we had disbursed ₹770 crore education loans. In the previous year, we had done ₹484 crore. So far this fiscal, we have already crossed ₹400 crore in education loans,” he said.

Currently, the total assets under management (AUM) for the company stood at about ₹3,000 crore.

Avanse closed fiscal 2017-18 with an AUM of ₹2,187 crore, said Gainda.

Besides education loans, which account for 80 per cent of Avanse’s balance sheet, this diversified NBFC is also into commercial finance and MSME lending.

Till date, Avanse has provided education loans to 13,000 families (B2C business) and had non-performing loans of 0.10 per cent as of end March 2018.

Banking on technology

Gainda also said that Avanse had used technology to bring convenience for school fee payments.

“I would like to see this as the latest category creation by us,” he said. For this, Avanse had recently entered into a partnership with EarlySalary, a digital lending fintech start-up, to provide a first-of-its-kind digital, school fee financing solution called the ‘FeES’ app.

“It’s like the Uber of education financing, if I may draw an analogy here. We have done the soft launch,” said Gainda.

Through this facility, Avanse is making school fees affordable for parents. “There is no paper involved in this process and it’s completely machine-driven. The money is paid directly to the child’s school account,” he said.

This facility is only for the salaried customers.

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