Page 46 - EW FEB 2022

People

year stint as director of the widely Aspiring Minds, Delhi). Next stop in
acclaimed Teach for India program. his eventful career was a 14-month
To add theory to practice in 2011, she stint as associate vice president and
signed up for the MBA degree pro- business head at Lenskart, an Indian
gramme of the top-ranked Harvard optical prescription eyewear retail
Business School, USA. chain, followed by another successful
Direct talk. “During my two-years sojourn with GirnarSoft, the par-
at Teach for India, I interacted with ent company of cardekho.com. In
thousands of students and discerned October 2017, together with Avinash
a deep disconnect between their Kumar, a colleague at GirnarSoft, he
personal career vision, passions, co-founded Credenc.
parents views of the world of work, Direct talk. “Students spend around
and outdated school and college cur- $50 billion (Rs.3.5 lakh crore) on
riculums. Subsequently at Harvard, higher education in India. Of this,
I researched and identified India’s only 5 percent is financed by organ-
employability crisis as the most crip- ised sector banks and non-banking
pling to the Indian economy. This financial institutions. Moreover,
resulted in the birth of Talerang. Batheja: 5,000 loans per month while the study abroad loans seg-
Our first cohort received internship ment is heavily serviced, the same
offers from Aditya Birla, Godrej, and Enterprising loans is not true of domestic education.
Mahindra & Mahindra among other Banks are reluctant to provide loans
top-ranked corporate groups with 50 provider to students admitted into non Top
percent of them receiving placement 100 ranked colleges of professional
offers,” says Raina. education in India. Though I was
In 2016 in partnership with a AYANK BATHEJA is aware of this reality and the hardship
Harvard-Stanford research team, co-founder and director many students faced while securing
Raina visited several colleges in Mof Delhi-based fintech higher education loans during my
small town India. This research startup, Credenc Web Technologies days at letsintern.com, it was during
project awakened her to the high Pvt. Ltd (estb.2017) which offers my stint at cardekho.com and after
potential and reach of ICT (informa- higher education loans to students. I met Avinash that we discussed this
tion communication technologies) Over the past four years, Credenc has problem and decided to resolve it.
for education dissemination. “We disbursed education loans valued at The outcome is Credenc, a tech-
decided to go online with the hope Rs.160 crore to over 3,000 students. enabled education loans provider,”
to reach ambitious students in every Newspeg. Recently, Credenc received says Batheja.
college across the nation to prepare equity and debt investment of $25 The USP of Credenc is its “su-
them for their dream careers,” recalls million (Rs.187 crore) from Capital perbly engineered website” which
Raina. Talerang Online was launched India Finance Ltd to expand the rigorously evaluates student loan
in 2018. organised sector education loans applications using a proprietary
Future plans. Encouraged by the suc- market in India. Moreover, Credenc artificial intelligence (AI) model,
cess of Talerang’s online platform, has bought digital content platform which tracks 15 million data points
Raina has drawn up ambitious future ObserveNow. to predict students’ future incomes.
plans. “We have finalised a blueprint History. A commerce and business “In Credenc, we have created an
to increase Talerang’s user base graduate of Delhi University, Batheja excellent online system which as-
exponentially by offering more tech served as student-president of AIE- sesses student loans applications and
enabled content. We are lucky to SEC, the well-known international employability potential followed by
have partnered with top colleges and youth non-profit organisation, and individualised loan processing and
corporates in India but now we want after graduation was appointed its approval guidance by our execu-
to widen our reach to every Indian director. Subsequently, he signed up tives,” says Batheja.
student. Indian industry is likely to with Mirabilis Advisory, an econom- Future plans. On average, the com-
experience a sharp recovery in the ics advisory firm, for about a year pany pays out 5,000 education loans
post-pandemic era. There will be a before the entrepreneurial bug bit per month. “We are currently dis-
surge of demand for the workplaces him. In 2010, he promoted Envisage bursing loans valued at Rs.30 crore
ready graduates we provide,” says Solutions, alongside letsintern.com, per month and our plan is to increase
Raina. one of the world’s largest student it to Rs.100 crore by the end of this
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) internship portals (acquired by year, and Rs.3,000 crore by 2025.

46 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2022