Over the last 9 months, we processed close to ₹900 crore worth of fees for our partner institutions, including Token Fees. This represents a significant milestone in our journey towards digitizing admissions and fee collection. We were thrilled to witness the remarkable scale of digital transactions and the rapid adoption by both institutions and students.
However, amidst this success, we couldn’t ignore a distressing trend. Approximately ₹200 crores worth of transactions were left incomplete, resulting in a large number of deserving students relinquishing their offer letters. Upon closer investigation, we discovered that the main reason behind this was the difficulty students and parents faced in managing the required funds within the given timeframe, typically ranging from 1 to 5 days. This challenge has become increasingly daunting for parents in India, especially considering the rising cost of education.
At Meritto (formerly NoPaperForms), we believe that every deserving student should have the opportunity to pursue their dreams without financial constraints. In this blog, we will delve deeper into the issue and discuss potential solutions to address the timely payment of fees. Our goal is to empower institutions and families alike, ensuring that no student misses out on the opportunity of a lifetime due to financial limitations. Let’s explore how we can overcome this challenge together and create a more inclusive and accessible education system.
Why Education Remains Out of Bounds for a Large Population of Students
While parents would go to great lengths to finance their child’s education – from mortgaging their house, pawning jewellery, and selling assets to borrowing from informal money lenders at high interest rates, there are still many students who have to completely give up on their dreams of higher education.
Today, out of an estimated $110 billion education market, education financing covers <5 %; it is majorly offline-heavy, driven through banks, and very rigid. While banks have offered education loans traditionally, since 2018, they’ve steadily cut down on education lending, due to rising defaults, as per Reserve Bank of India.
The problem is inadequate financing, at the right time to the right aspirant.
Due to the increasing cost of education and limited or no access to formal loans, higher education remains out of bounds for a large section of the Indian population. If you are applying to a Tier-2 category institute with no collaterals and low or no credit score, you can be assured that you have to leave your offer.
As a net result, on one side the Institution loses out on qualified, meritorious students and on the other, the students lose out on good opportunities.
How Collexo will Revolutionize Education Financing in India
With our deep understanding gained by working with close to ~600 Higher Education Institutions and 400 Schools, we are delighted to announce the launch of Collexo – an integrated payment and financing platform for the education sector. Through Collexo, we will be empowering our Partner Institutions to get their “Full Fees, Upfront” while parents will be able to pay the fees in easy 8 to 12-month Installments with no interest or extra charges and collateral-free access to loans. As of now, we are selectively opening this for 10 partners but we will ramp it up soon and open it up for all our existing partners.
Here are some key highlights on how Collexo will benefit institutions, parents, and students
- 100% upfront cash liquidity for institutions while parents pay monthly with no interest or extra charges. This will empower institutions to accelerate their growth roadmap and unburden the parents and students of paying a lump sum amount at once.
- Hassle-free fee collection for institutions and seamless, flexible payment options for parents. The institutions will be able to track all their payments and the parents will earn handsome cashback and rewards.
- Increased quality admissions and reduced dropouts as we make education affordable for all
- Opportunity to launch premium courses as parents will be able to afford to pay more monthly
Through Collexo, we will make education affordable for all!
Education remains the sure shot way to empowerment for millions. We will give our all to ensure that every student gets a fair shot at attaining it.
Collexo will universalize easy payment to make education affordable and thus, opportunities accessible.
