EdTech startup OnFees eyes fresh funding to expand business operations

After a rapid growth in its home turf of Mumbai and Pune, education technology start-up OnFees.com is looking to expand across multiple cities across the country and has begun approaching venture capital and private equity funds for the next round of funding.

The one-and-half-year-old company, which seeks to provide a digital fee management platform to educational institutions and their students, said it is already serving over 100 schools and colleges with its 70-member team in Mumbai and Pune.

"By the middle of the 2018-19 academic session, transactions worth Rs 50 crore from over one lakh students have been processed through the OnFees platform," it said in a statement.

The company said it is now planning expansion in other cities while aiming to tap the huge market across India with an estimated size of USD 100 billion going forward.

Felix Advisory has been appointed as its official investment advisors. It has already started approaching venture capital and private equity funds for the next round of funding to prepare for the upcoming academic session, it said.

Set up by three young tech entrepreneurs Mayur Jain (CEO), Viral Dedhiya (Chief Technology Officer) and Manisha Thakur (Chief Marketing Officer), the company said it has seen a year-on-year growth of over 300 per cent in terms of a number of students accessing the Onfees platform.

These include top Mumbai colleges such as Ramnarain Ruia College, St Andrews College, RA Podar College, Siddharth College and D Y Patil Ayurvedic College.

Besides, OnFees' 24X7 call centres attended about 50,000 student queries during the 2018-19 admission session and it has undertaken an ambitious 'Digital Financial Literacy Awareness campaign' organised in association with the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI).

Co-founder Jain said students are keen on digital technologies and cashless transactions, while principals and staff of educational institutions have also wholeheartedly supported the OnFees-NPCI initiative and have expressed strong interest in onboarding to drive efficiency and transparency through technology.

Speaking about the proven technologies of EasyTech Edu, which runs OnFees.com, Jain said the company has verified ability to understand the comprehensive needs of any educational organisation and provide a seamless technology-driven solution to build efficiency and reduce cost.

"Our solutions are scalable both horizontally and vertically and can be custom-tailored designed to satisfy the needs of educational institutions of all sizes, with mechanisms designed to ensure compliance with not just the needs of today but also those arising in the coming years," he said.

Apart from serving institutes with individual modules like admissions, fees payment, attendance and exam management, the OnFees team is also serving various colleges with digitised administrative processes through one platform.

(With inputs from agencies.)