New Delhi, Dec 17 (PTI) School-focused NBFC Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) plans to double its coverage to as many as 10,000 schools across the country and disburse loans worth Rs 500 crore in the next fiscal year.
The nearly one-decade old company used to provide funding to private unaided schools in the affordable segment. However, during the pandemic it introduced a zero-cost product for parents so that they could pay the fee for their children’s education.
“We fund schools in the affordable category in the areas where formal banking is not available. Under our School Rejuvenation Programme, schools that were affected during the pandemic, we want to see how they can be brought back to the business.
“So, we have completely digitised our business ecosystem from fee collection module to exam management software to content (syllabus) distribution. With this, we want to scale up our customer base to 10,000 schools from 5,000 presently,” Sandeep Wirkhare, MD & CEO at ISFC, said in an interaction with PTI.
It has developed a tech-enabled ERP (enterprise resource planning) system facilitating end-to-end teacher and salary management besides fee collection module available free of cost to schools. Wirkhare said the company disbursed loans worth Rs 40 crore in the last fiscal year and it is expected to disburse about Rs 60 crore in the current fiscal year.
“We are targeting to raise USD 5-6 million (Rs 38-45 crore) as bridge loan in the next six months, which will be good enough for us to do disbursements of Rs 500 crore in next fiscal year,” he added.
The company had raised USD 5 million last year from its key investor Gray Matters Capital of the US, which is a impact investor focused on social sector, education and others worldwide.
However, the company will seek funding from a new investor in the latest round of funding as it intends to diversify its equity shareholding, the official said.
ISFC provides funding up to Rs 15 lakh for school infrastructure funding. While the newly introduced zero-cost fee funding to parents has an average ticket size of Rs 20,000-25,000, with a loan tenure of one year. PTI KPM MKJ
