GradRight to raise funds to expand global footprint

Hyderabad: GradRight, a higher education focused fintech firm based in Hyderabad, is trying to change the way students finance their education by bringing together students, banks, and universities on a single platform ‘FundRight’, by also bringing down the loan research and approval time from 2-3 months to just 3-4 days and saving lakhs for each […]

Hyderabad: GradRight, a higher education focused fintech firm based in Hyderabad, is trying to change the way students finance their education by bringing together students, banks, and universities on a single platform ‘FundRight’, by also bringing down the loan research and approval time from 2-3 months to just 3-4 days and saving lakhs for each student. Sasidhar Sista, co-founder, GradRight, tells Telangana Today what growth opportunities the company sees and the global market scenario.

Funding for growth

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We earlier raised funds from a close network of individuals in the US. There is a growing investor interest and we are in the process of shortlisting investors. The scale at which we want to grow, we will move aggressively towards fund raising soon. Active conversations are in progress, and we will hit the ground in terms of fund raising in a month or so. The funds will be utilised to make inroads into the US, Canada, and the UK.

Global presence

We have a presence in the UK already. We are also making efforts to make inroads into the US to set up an office there. The US, Canada, and the UK will be the three major markets where we will focus in future. We want to partner with universities in these countries to enable international student recruitment not just for Indian students but also those from other countries from South Asia or Africa.

US scenario

GradRight, which has created an algorithm that defines and rates each country on ease of settling in a country post academics, has set a higher score to the US with the new administration in place. There is a lot of positivity among the students towards the US with change in policy stance and ease in the pandemic situation. The US is looked up favourably because of these changes. There is a significant shift, and the number is almost doubling this year compared to last year. Conversions are very high towards the US.

SelectRight platform

We will be focusing on the university selection process through our SelectRight platform that we have rolled out recently. The entire application process typically takes eight months for a student. Every year, there are a million students going abroad from India and going through a tedious process. We are trying to ease the process through a simplified evaluation method. We aim to help overseas universities do away and replace the traditional selection process with the help of technology. Online solutions can help save time.

Emerging technologies

A lot of students now want to specialise in emerging technologies. They want to study machine learning, robotics, artificial intelligence and deeptech. Those with work experience are looking for deeptech or advanced specialisations, while those without experience are looking for general specialisations. Universities are dependent on the global student community which accounts for 50 per cent or more and are creating courses that are in demand to meet the interests of the international students.

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