Overseas Education Platform Leap Bags $17 Mn From Jungle Ventures, Looks To Serve 150K Students This Year

Bengaluru-based overseas education platform Leap, which runs Leap Finance and Leap Scholar, has raised $17 Mn in a Series B funding round led by Singapore-based Jungle Ventures. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Owl Ventures also participated in the round.

The company has raised $22.5 Mn to date, with $5.5 Mn coming in as seed funding in March 2020. The round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from InCred founder and CEO Bhupinder Singh and CRED’s founder Kunal Shah, along with other angel investors.

Leap is an overseas education platform that provides counselling as well as financial products to students to figure out the right institutions and financing solutions. It was founded in 2019 by Vaibhav Singh and Arnav Kumar.

The company started off its journey with an international education loan product, offering zero collateral, full cost of study, and dollar loans to Indian students pursuing international education in the US. Since then, the company has expanded its product suite and geographical reach to Canada, UK and Australia. It claims that its education loans are cheaper than existing market alternatives. The company also offers international bank accounts with zero charges and the lowest forex rates. Besides this, the company will soon launch a credit card tailored to the needs of international students.

Leap also offers personalised test-prep courses, professional counselling services, visa guidance and financial products. The startup has helped over 20K students study abroad in 2020 and aims to serve 150K students in the current year. Leap, in its press note, claimed that its community of study abroad aspirants has grown to more than 500K+ (5 Lakh) profiled members with 200,000 monthly active users who exchanged 9 Mn chat messages last month.

The company plans to use the latest funding to expand its product portfolio as well as geographical reach even further to grow its student communities. Besides this, the company would also focus on strengthening its team across business and technology functions. The company will also establish global offices for institutional partnerships and other business functions.

Leap competes with Mumbai-based Eduvanz, which was founded by Varun Chopra and Raheel Shah in 2016. The company has raised $17.5 Mn to date from investors like Sequoia Capital India, Unitus Ventures, InCred Financial Services, Northern Arc Capital and others. Eduvanz claims to have already enabled more than 25,000 learners through its point-of-sale (PoS) loans platform with over $41 Mn (INR 300 Cr) disbursed.