Bengaluru and Washington DC-based MPOWER Financing, which provides educational loans to international and DACA students, has raised $25 million in funding from Tilden Park Capital Management, a New York-based investment management firm.
The funds come in addition to the $9 million MPOWER raised last year from a clutch of investors including Breega, Potencia Ventures, AI8, Cometa, Zephyr-Peacock, 1776, Fresco Capital, 1994 LLC, and Goal Structured Solutions.
The funding proceeds will be invested in further automating MPOWER’s digital loan platform, which leverages proprietary underwriting technology to provide a loan decision to students within minutes, per a company statement.
MPOWER will also grow its team in Washington, DC, and Bangalore, where it plans to hire over 50 employees this year across engineering, marketing, operations, underwriting, analytics, HR, and finance, the statement added.
“We will benefit from Tilden Park’s capital markets and credit expertise, as well as their global investment experience,” said Manu Smadja, MPOWER Financing’s CEO and co-founder.
MPOWER Financing helps students build their credit histories and provides them with personal finance education and career support to help prepare for life after school. The platform claims to be working with over 350 top universities and colleges across the U.S. and Canada to provide financing to students from over 200 countries.
The company said it has received over $2 billion in loan application volume on its platform since 2014.
Some of the Indian startups operating in the education financing space Eduvanz, Leap Finance, Indian School Finance Company (ISFC), Avanse, and Propelld.
Last August, ISFC raised $30 million in a mix of equity and debt from existing investor Gray Matters Capital, with participation from other partner NBFCs including InCred, U GRO, and Profectus Capital.
The same month, Eduvanz had raised $5 million in Series A funding, led by Sequoia India. Existing investor Unitus had also participated in the startup’s financing round.
