Ludhiana / Amritsar / Chandigarh, April 19, 2022 (News Team): GyanDhan, India’s First Digital Education Financing Platform and NBFC is witnessing a rising demand for loans from Amritsar, Ludhiana and Chandigarh, as children demand to seek higher education in Canada, UK, Australia and other countries.
Chandigarh has seen a rise of 60% while Amritsar is 129% and Ludhiana being the highest at 140%.Canada being the favourite destination is followed by UK,Australia and USA.Courses like Engineering,Technology and Management course has 50% of the share.
Canada is opted for Higher education, PG Diploma course and Masters followed by UG Diploma and UG degrees. Algonquin College, Brock University, Centennial College,is preferred in Canada. Swinburne University of Technology, the University of South Australia, in Australia. New York University, Murray State University, and Arizona State University are top choices in the USA. For the UK, universities like Nottingham Trent University, Teesside University, Birmingham City University, Coventry College, King’s College London, and the University of Manchester are the top preferences of students.
According to Gyandhan’s report, aspirants for abroad education is rising at exponential rate of 2.5 times from these cities making them stand under top 20 cities of India. Female students from Amritsar are preferring to go abroad post covid and the percentage has increased to 128% in 2021.
GyanDhan received a loan request of 34 Million USD, with more than 13 Million USD loan amount requests from Ludhiana and Chandigarh. The volume of loan has increased in the last two years. Ludhiana saw 2 times growth in the last year, while Amritsar witnessed 1.5 times and Chandigarh at 1.1 times.
The process to avail a loan at GyanDhan is made easy. They have partnered with several lenders in the market that enables them to fast-track the loan applications of their customers. To make the process fair and meritocratic, they have built an in-house credit score model, called the GyanDhan score, that assigns a credit score to the students after assessing their academic records, professional achievements, future earning potential, and target course and country. It eliminates the usual markers of loan eligibility, such as collateral, used by traditional lenders. The loan application is judged solely based on the applicant’s profile. It effectively increases the chances of loan approval for students who cannot pledge collateral to secure a loan.
Ankit Mehra, Co-founder and CEO, GyanDhan said, “Historically, students from Punjab and Chandigarh opt for Canada for their higher education abroad. However, the data suggests that other countries like the USA, Germany, and France are coming up in the mix albeit slowly but steadily. To facilitate an easy and better loan process, GyanDhan is launching a new Group Loan product. Students receive the benefit of GyanDhan’s seamless education loan process along with assured cashback and a chance to win sponsored flight tickets to their destination.”
According to a report, the number of Indian students opting for higher education abroad grew from 440,000 in 2016 to 770,000 in 2019 and is set to grow further to roughly 1.8 million by 2024, resulting in increased overseas spending on higher education. Compared to this, the number of students domestically increased from 37 million to roughly 40 million between 2016 and 2019.
In terms of states of origin from within India, a report finds that the majority of the student outflow is from states like Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Maharashtra, which are amongst the richest states in India with possibly high awareness of the educational benefits.
The significant increase in outflow of students from India over the recent years is driven by factors like better educational quality and outcomes abroad, higher standards of living, gaps in the Indian education system leading to supply-demand imbalance, and upward income mobility of Indian households, among others.