Genpact founder Bhasin invests in finance firm

Leading back office IT firm Genpact founder Pramod Bhasin and former banker Vikram Gandhi jointly invested Rs.4 crore in Thirumeni Finance Ltd (Varthana), a social enterprise, funding private schools, the non-banking finance firm announced here on Tuesday.

The combined investment of Bhasin and Gandhi is part of Rs.4.7-crore equity the company has raised to complete its Rs.32-crore venture fund raising (A series).

Gandhi, who was a senior banker at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley and founded Asha Impact, a non-government organisation (NGO), is a chief executive of VSG Capital Advisors.

"We are extremely excited to partner with (Varthana founders) Steve (Hardgrave) and Brajesh (Mishra) in this journey to make Varthana a highly scalable enterprise and achieve its vision of providing social impact in underserved communities across India," said Bhasin in a statement.

Hardgrave and Mishra founded Varthana in 2013 which provides loans to schools in the range of Rs.2 lakh to Rs.50 lakh aimed at enabling affordable private schools to add additional class rooms, build girls' bathroom, desks, benches, IT equipment and instructional material which allows them to provide higher quality education experience to underserved communities.

There are 3,00,000 such affordable private schools in India catering to 100 million children. They are the preferred educational option for millions of families due to the poor educational attainment levels in government schools, the statement added.

Varthana currently has Rs.70 crore of business serving nearly 900 schools, the statement added.