Bucking the trend of shrinking funding, slowing revenue and large-scale layoffs in the edtech sector, startups in the overseas education space are reporting strong sales and investor interest, amid rising demand for studying abroad. Leverage Edu, Leap Scholar, AdmitKard, Adventum Student Living and Azent Overseas Education, among others, are riding on the increasing number of students aspiring to study in countries like US, Canada, Australia, Qatar, Oman and Germany.

As per the latest data from the ministry of external affairs, about 1.5 million Indian students are pursuing education abroad as of January. Consulting firm Redseer expects this number to increase to 1.8 million by next year. While the broader edtech segment has not fully recovered from the funding winter of last year, study-abroad startups are seeing healthy growth in investments.


According to data compiled by Tracxn for FE, study-abroad startups have raised $49 million in funding so far in 2023, nearly double the $25.1 million raised last year. The data compiled by Tracxn includes 70 overseas education firms.

For comparison, funding in the broader edtech sector has declined by two-thirds so far this year, compared to the same period in 2022, as per Crunchbase data. Large edtech players, which had seen a boom in business during the pandemic, have been facing valuation concerns with the shift back to in-person schooling slowing sales.

Vikas Phadnis, founder and CEO of Auctus Capital, which has invested in study-abroad start-up Adventum Student Living (ASL), said the sector is in its early growth stage and clear of ambiguity in business structure, making it attractive for investors.

“There are x numbers of source countries from where students like to travel abroad to certain destination countries… so the global play is clear and evident, and that’s something that any investor would like to have clarity on,” he said.

What’s driving the boom

After the pandemic largely pushed the discovery of higher education online, study-abroad platforms have seen a significant growth in their online footprint and overall sales compared to brick-and-mortar consultancy services.

Amit Singh, founder of ASL, which operates overseas accommodation platform UniAcco, attributed the growth of his business to the technology that makes the entire studying abroad process convenient for students.

“Technology has changed the whole game where the discovery has moved online, application process has moved online, visa has moved online,” he said in an interaction with FE. Like most startups in this space, ASL provides services across the entire process of overseas education, including counselling, application assistance, financing aid, visa and accommodation.

Another reason for the boom in overseas education is that every major overseas destination is offering a return on investment to students in terms of a post-study work visa, said Azent Overseas Education founder Priyanka Nishar.

“In Canada, you can get up to three years of post-study rights, in the UK you get two years for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and three years for a PhD, the US allows three years for STEM courses and then in Australia it can be up to six years,” she said.

Both ASL and Azent plan to end this year with a two-three times growth in the number of onboarded students. ASL’s UniAcco, which booked 12,000 students last year, is on track to book 25,000 students by the end of 2023, Singh said.

Earlier this year, the company raised $5 million in a round led by Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund. They plan to close this year with `100 crore in revenue, primarily from the 5% commission they earn from vendors for each bed booked by a student.

Admitkard, another study-abroad startup that recently raised funds from external investors, sees a large part of its growth coming from students in tier II and tier III cities, which have fewer brick-and-mortar education counselling services.

In this financial year, the GSV Ventures-backed Admitkard plans to increase revenue to nearly `50 crore from the `16 crore it had reported in the previous financial year.

Easy credit

A major growth driver in the study-abroad market is also the easy access to educational loans, primarily the ones without collateral, offered by private banks and non-banking financial institutions such as HDFC Credila, Avanse, Auxilo and Incred.

As per Crisil Ratings, NBFCs have a share of 70-75% in the overseas education credit market. Students can get unsecured loans of up to `70 lakh from these institutions with an average interest rate between 11-12.7%.

Sudhakar Prakasam, director at research firm CareEdge, said the three major NBFCs in overseas educational credit, HDFC Credila, Avanse, and Auxilo, have recorded good growth in their loan books this year.

Their combined study-abroad loan book is at `27,000 crore as of June-end, Prakasam said. It was at `17,877 crore as of September last year. By the end of this financial year, the companies’ AUM is expected to grow about 25-30% over the previous year, he said.

“Despite the majority of loans being unsecured in nature, NBFCs have been able to maintain healthy asset quality in comparison to the banks on account of niche expertise in loan underwriting and follow-up,” CareEdge had said in a report earlier this year.

Prakasam said these NBFCs usually have a very low share of non-performing assets at about 0.4-0.5%.