School fees payment startup Zenda raises $9.4 million

The startup plans to use the funds for product development and market expansion in India.

Zenda was founded in June 2021 by Raman Thiagarajan and Haseeb Ahmed, alumni of McKinsey & Company. Thiagarajan and Ahmed had previously founded edtech startup Nexsquare in Dubai.

After its launch in the United Arab Emirates, Zenda began operations in India in 2021. It presently has more than 40 employees, around 30 of which are in India, operating out of Bengaluru, Kochi, and Delhi.

The fintech startup help families pay school fees with pay-now and pay-later options and unlock reward points for paying on time.

“In today’s digital world, we seek low friction and immediacy. Part of the ecosystem still runs on cash with no convenient option to pay later. Since our launch, feedback from the market and especially from our users has been terrific,” said Thiagarajan, cofounder of Zenda.

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The startup said it has processed fee payments of $70 billion annually to private educational institutions in India, $37 billion in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and $34 billion in the rest of the Middle East and Africa. “The market is sizable yet largely untapped,” the startup said in a statement.

“Fee payments in schools (nurseries, K12 and tertiary) are significantly non-digital, and even where digital, cumbersome, manual and expensive,” Thiagarajan said.

Also, the majority of families earn monthly but fee payments are usually termly or bi-annual, resulting in cash flow stress for parents and collection delays for schools, he added.

Zenda competes with apps such as US-based Zaiper.