Bangalore-based Jodo, a fintech startup helping students and their parents finance education, has raised $15 million (approx. Rs 119 crore) in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global, along with the participation from existing investors Elevation Capital and Matrix Partners India.
With this Series A round, The startup said it will accelerate product innovation and sales and scale its team. It also plans to scale up its education partnerships to 5,000 institutes in the next 18 months and help 1.5 million students with their fee payments.
Founded in 2020 by Atulya Bhat, Raghav Nagarajan, and Koustav Dey, The founders noticed that many households face difficulties while paying tuition fees due to the lack of flexible payment options.
“Education fee payments, one of the most important and high-value spend categories, has seen little innovation and is lagging in digitization,” the founders said in a statement.
Jodo says it provides a suite of specialized payment and lending products to make fee payments convenient and affordable for parents and students while making fee collection hassle-free for educational institutes.
“At Jodo, we have built industry-first payment and lending products grounds-up, keeping the requirements of parents, students, and educational institutes in focus,” the founders added.
The startup offers lending products through NBFC partners to help students and their parents finance their education. Currently, It has partnered with over 700 education institutions, of which 40% are offline schools in the kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) segment.
Jodo claims it has facilitated over Rs 1,000 crore worth of fee payments and has catered to over 100,000 students on its platform. The startup also said that institutes are able to get a predictable inflow of payments, improve collection efficiency and decrease the fee collection window. On the other hand, parents can pay fees in a schedule that is most convenient, it said.
Apart from this, The startup also plans to launch newer products to manage payouts made by education institutes, as well as launch an education-saving product for parents.
Speaking on the investment, Alex Cook, Partner at Tiger Global said, “Jodo is modernizing payments and credit for India’s education market by increasing convenience and affordability for parents and providing a better workflow for schools and institutions. We are very impressed with Jodo’s progress and are excited to partner with them as they expand the product suite and become available at more schools.”
“The enthusiasm with which their products have been adopted by schools and parents alike proves that not only are they solving a deep pain point, but that they are doing so through tech-first solutions that are intuitive to use,” said Mridul Arora, Partner at Elevation Capital.
“Jodo is poised to be a leader in vertical payments, integrating business workflows and finance, starting with education payments. We’re delighted to reinvest to deepen our partnership with Atulya, Koustav & Raghav and welcome Tiger Global to the partnership”, said Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director at Matrix India.
Source @Indianstartupnews
