Fintech startup Quiklo offers loan to students to pay course fee

Financial technology start-up, Quiklo (Olmec Technologies Pvt. Ltd), which provides loans to students for buying consumer durables such as phones and laptops, has launched an education finance service.

As part of the new service, consumers, essentially students, can avail loans to pay course fees or even test preparation fees.

Mrigank Shekhar, Co-Founder, Quiklo, said, "The education loan sector has a very low penetration in the country with only 5% getting loans for education and about 10% getting personal loan for education fees. While the selection criteria for banks are already strict, they give loans for a fixed set of top 100 colleges, beyond which the coverage is very minimal. Quiklo, through our education finance platform aims to empower those who have been declined loans in the past."

Quiklo partners with banks and non-banking financial institutions to disburse the loans. Once a student is deemed eligible for a loan, a partner financial institution disburses the money directly to the payee instead of giving the money to the borrower.

The company has so far raised about $2.3 million from venture capital firm Accel Partners and TracxnLabs.

Prayank Swaroop, Principal, Accel Partners, said, "We really liked the Quiklo team and decided to incubate them in our office. Education is an exciting space to be in. The founders spent a number of months on ideation, market research and product design—our investing team members supported them through this process. And we have been part of Quiklo journey since inception."

Quiklo currently claims to process loans of about Rs 5 crore every month, while non-performing assets are about 1.5% of the total disbursements.