(Under)writing on the Wall

Going deep and wide in financing education loans has allowed Propelld to carve out a viable niche

- BY SAMAR SRIVASTAVA

About a decade ago, Victor Senapaty, 37, chanced upon a peculiar trend. In a country where education is seen as a path to success, the quantum of education loans outside of, say the top 50 institutes, was nothing to write home about.

What surprised Senapaty and his co-founders Brijesh Samantaray and Bibhu Prasad Das—the three had grown up together in Bhubaneswar and then gone their own ways—was that education loans made up just 1 percent of the loan book of the State Bank of India.

A bit of research showed that while the market was large—₹41,800 crore in FY24, according to Crisil—the state-run banks hadn’t gone past the top tier colleges. Making loans of ₹1 lakh to 3 lakh and then collecting on them is a cumbersome task. Best to stick to known institutes is their philosophy.

Loans for overseas education—while more lucrative—stood at about 5 percent of the market. Compare this to the $2 trillion of outstanding education loans in the US and Senapaty and team knew they had an opportunity staring them in the face. Propelld, a specialised education financing platform, was eventually set up in 2017.