BENGALURU: Several parents struggle to arrange for money to pay exorbitant school fees for their wards. There have been several instances where parents borrow money, pledge valuables like jewellery just to pay the fees. To ease their burden, ‘FeES', a first-of-its-kind digital school fee financing solution has been introduced by EarlySalary in partnership with Avanse Financial Services.
‘FeES’ provides immediate educational loans to parents, ranging from `50,000 to `3,00,000 and offers flexible repayment options extending from three to six months. All the school expenditures including tuition fees, books and study materials, are covered under this facility.
This solution is being offered through an EarlySalary app, with an objective of helping parents afford good quality school education for their children by simplifying the fee payment process through instant credit facility and convenient EMIs.
Akshay Mehrotra, co-founder and CEO of EarlySalary, says, “The cost of educating children is rising rapidly with growing demand among parents to provide good education for their wards. We hope with our maiden venture ‘FeES’, we can help parents and solve problems that arise due to delayed payment for schools."
He adds, “Today, the cost of education has increased several times over than what it was years before. Some schools find it difficult to offer monthly payment options to parents due to administrative and operational expenses. Thus, we will be working towards tying up with over 500 schools in coming days. This will help to solve parents' problems of managing their kids' school fees,” he adds.
Amit Gainda, CEO, Avanse Financial Services Ltd, says, "As of today, India has more than 1.5 million schools with over 260 million students enrolled. The existing school education segment in India provides immense growth opportunity, with approximately 28.1 per cent of India’s population in the age group of 0 to 14 years, as of 2015."
As per the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, the school fee of a single child per annum has risen from `55,000 in 2005 to `1,25,000 in 2015. "Through the ‘FeES’ feature, we aim to reach out to millions of parents and students to fulfil dreams of educating their children. This partnership is an outcome of Avanse’s strong belief in investing in innovative digital solutions to enhance access to quality education,” he adds.
Box-1
How to use the ‘FeES’ feature:
Download the EarlySalary App from Google Play store or iOS App store. Once you verify the basic information and bank details, the requested school fee amount will be directly credited to the school account instantly without any human intervention. Processing fee will be `999 and zero down payment. New borrowers can also avail credit benefits.
Box -2
What do they do
EarlySalary is a mobile app which allows salaried individuals to avail of instant loans for a couple of days or till their next salary cycle. Founders are Akshay Mehrotra and Ashish Goyal. This start-up aspires to join the Unicorn club this year following a `100 crore funding. Avanse Financial Services Limited addresses needs of higher education of the Indian youth enabling them to 'Aspire without Boundaries'. Avanse is also India's first private sector education loan provider; exclusively catering to women offering benefits such as 5 per cent Tuition scholarship fees, repayment for partial simple interest, loan tenure flexibility, and competitive interest rates.