Edtech firms MPOWER, Credenc get $125 mn in funding for business growth

The companies work with Indian students going abroad for education, partner with colleges and companies.

Education funding firms MPOWER Financing and Credenc have got $125 million in combination of equity and debt investment to scale up business.

The companies work with Indian students going abroad for education.

MPOWER Financing raised an equity investment of $100 million from King Street Capital Management, Drakes Landing Associates, Pennington Alternative Income and Tilden Park Capital Management. The funding is in addition to the $30 million MPOWER raised earlier this year—a round in which Tilden had participated.

Capital India, a finance company, invested $ 25 million, in Credenc, an education lending fin-tech platform. With Capital India’s investment and by using combination of debt and equity, Credenc plans to build a book of Rs 3,000 crore by 2025.

Credenc, which was founded by Avinash Kumar and Mayank Batheja in 2017, gives loans for schooling, online upskilling and higher education. It works as the digital finance partners of more than a thousand colleges in 17 Indian cities. It plans to have India's first student focused neo bank.

Emmanuel Smadja, chief executive officer of MPOWER Financing, said the company will use the new funds to support students, automate and scale operations, and "to grow our team". 

Capital India in a statement said the founders will continue to run operations for Credenc. It would not want to disrupt the working of the organisation and believe they know the business best.

SK Narvar, promoter of Capital India, said the annual spend on college fees in India is around $ 50 billion over Rs 3.5 trillion, of which only five per cent is financed by organised lenders.