Overseas education platform, Leap, which runs leapfinance.com, and leapscholar.com has raised $17 million (Rs 120 crores) in Series B, led by Singapore based Jungle Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital India and Owl Ventures - the world’s largest edtech focussed VC fund. This comes in less than a year after Leap raised $5.5 million led by Sequoia, taking the total capital raised by the start-up to $22.5 million.

Leap offers counselling services, visa services, education loans and other financial products tailored for students pursuing international education and careers. It will use the new capital to expand its product portfolio, further strengthen its team across technology and business functions, expand geographically and grow its student communities. The company will also establish global offices for institutional partnerships and other business functions.

Vaibhav Singh, the co-founder of Leap, said, “Our mission is to make global education and careers more accessible to meritorious Indian students. We are unlocking access to financial products and career services which international students are traditionally locked out of. We offer dollar loans which are substantially cheaper than INR loans which charge much higher rates of interest. We also offer an international bank account where students get a working US bank account and debit card while in India, with zero charges and the lowest forex rates.”

Leap launched in 2019 with its international education loan product – offering zero collateral, total cost of study, dollar loans to Indian students pursuing international education in the US. Since then it has expanded its product suite and also expanded to Canada, UK and Australia. Leap’s online community of study abroad aspirants has grown to 500,000+ members with 200,000 monthly active users who exchanged 9 million chat messages last month. The start-up has helped over 20,000 students in their study abroad journey in the past year and aims to serve 150,000 students in the current year.

“We are a one-stop solution for everything that a study abroad aspirant needs. India has the largest pool of STEM-educated English speaking graduates and millions of them want global degrees and careers. This is a big decision and there is a real need for accurate information and expert guidance. Our online community helps students evaluate career options, network with seniors and shortlist the best courses. We then use this data to offer personalised test prep, professional counselling services, visa guidance and financial products” said Arnav Kumar, co-founder of Leap.

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