India's Leap Finance raises $55m Series C

Sequoia Capital India, Jungle Ventures, and Harvard Management Company also invested. Jungle led a $17 million Series B earlier this year, while Sequoia India led a $5.5 million Series A in 2020.

Leap aims to make international education more accessible to Indian students by providing US dollar-denominated loans, which feature lower interest rates than rupee loans, with no collateral required. It also offers career services, visa advice, and helps students open US bank accounts with debit cards while they are still in India. This service incurs no charges.

The company claims to have helped provide more than $175 million in loans for some 3,000 students at around 230 universities since its inception in 2019. Including services such as international test preparation, professional admissions counseling, and international career guidance, it has helped more than 60,000 South Asian students pursue studies abroad in the past 18 months.

Services initially focused on the US but have expanded to encompass Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Australia. Leap now claims to manage an ecosystem of one million international study aspirants in South Asia. The company will use the new funding to exploit a perceived re-opening of international borders, taking its platform to Southeast Asia as well as the Middle East and North Africa.

"Leap is on the trajectory to become the preeminent study abroad platform for students,” Amit Patel, a managing director at Owl, said in a statement. The overseas education market is fragmented where there is no single one-stop solution. It can be very confusing for students to know where to begin preparation, what colleges they should target, and how they are going to afford to pay for their education.”

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Financials
• Expansion
• India
• Owl Ventures
• Sequoia Capital
• Jungle Ventures
• Education
• Financial Services
• TMT