We are investing in zenda’s $9.4m funding round, together with Global Founders Capital, COTU Ventures, and VentureSouq. This marks one of the largest FinTech seed rounds in the MENA region. With zenda, a fintech app for families, parents in the GCC and India can easily pay school fees through pay-now and pay-later options, all while earning rewards for paying on time.
If you have school-going kids, you probably dread the experience of paying school fees. Between the emails that end up in your spam folder, the payment links that you have to follow or the bank transfers that you have to make, the process really is not very representative of how far technology has come.
Not only that, there is a complete lack of clarity on amounts paid and amounts due, which can often be confusing for busy parents. With $37bn in yearly fees paid to private educational institutions in the GCC and $70bn in India, the huge market is ripe for disruption.
Enter zenda. With its easy-to-use application, parents have easy access to all their kids’ school fees and dues, including an overview of the ones that have already been paid and the ones that are coming up. Not only that, zenda allows parents to pay directly through the application, and lets them choose between paying now or paying in installments (pay-now, pay-later). This is the first time that this BNPL offering has been launched in the region, and it comes in especially useful for a mandatory payment that is often large in size.
When we first met Raman and Haseeb, zenda’s co-founders, we were impressed by their deep understanding of the education and financing market in the UAE, India, and beyond – learnings that were gathered from their previous EdTech venture and stints at McKinsey. Since launching zenda mid-last year, they have not been sitting idle: the company’s user base grew 20x since June 2021, crossing $180m+ in annual contracted payment volume in the UAE alone.
We are excited to be part of their journey and look forward to using their app for our own school payments. In the long-term, we believe this will be the parents’ favourite banking solution. Parents that have already tried the app love it, and we are sure that you will too. Inquire with your school whether zenda is already available, and use it if you can!