Sreemaan Thiruppathi Raja and Deborah Schermann are selling a study-abroad loan that costs nothing if the graduate never lands the job. Their company, Skillsvest, closed a ₹5.5 crore (roughly $660,000) pre-seed round in 2024, led by Plug and Play Ventures [Entrackr]. The product is an income-share agreement (ISA) that funds 100% of overseas education costs and caps repayment by an internal rate of return [Dealroom.co][Indian Startup Times].
The bet
The ISA is not a new instrument, but Skillsvest is wagering that the model fits the Indian study-abroad corridor, where ticket sizes have ballooned past $80,000 for a US master's and traditional NBFCs demand collateral. The company's wedge is the counsellor channel: it has signed partnerships with more than 4,500 college counsellors across India [SMEStreet].
This distribution choice matters. Counsellors are pre-qualifying intent six to eighteen months before the funding decision. Skillsvest has built a waitlist of more than 3,000 students [SMEStreet] and has deployed over ₹1.2 crore in financing [SMEStreet].
Opportunity
The Indian outbound education market is a large cross-border consumer finance opportunity. Incumbents (HDFC Credila, Avanse, Auxilo, InCred, Prodigy Finance, MPOWER) underwrite on collateral, co-signer income, or US-based future earnings. None price purely on the student's projected outcome.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Deployed capital | $0.145M |
| Pre-seed raised | $0.66M |
| Target students (12-18mo) | 50-100 |
The team and traction
Raja and Schermann incorporated Skillsvest in 2024 [Crunchbase]. The company intends to fund 50 to 100 students over the next 12 to 18 months [Indian Startup Times]. The mix of equity and debt in the pre-seed [CXO Digitalpulse] indicates that warehouse capital will fund the loans.
| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-seed raised | ₹5.5 Cr (~$660K) | Entrackr |
| Capital deployed to date | ₹1.2 Cr+ | SMEStreet |
| Student waitlist | 3,000+ | SMEStreet |
| Counsellor partners | 4,500+ | SMEStreet |
| 12-18mo funding target | 50-100 students | Indian Startup Times |
The honest counterfactual
Critics point to the difficult repayment-enforcement history of ISAs, particularly across borders. The Indian regulatory frame for ISAs is also unsettled, and recovering payments from a graduate who has moved abroad is a litigation problem no Indian fintech has yet solved at scale.
Supporters argue Skillsvest is underwriting the highest-signal slice of the market. The IRR cap [Dealroom.co] limits the upside-tail risk, and the counsellor channel filters for students whose academic profile correlates with employability.
What to watch
Three milestones over the next twelve months will tell the story: a debt facility announcement, the first repayment cohort data, and a follow-on equity round. If Skillsvest can turn 4,500 counsellors and a 3,000-student waitlist into a repayment dataset clean enough to attract debt capital, the model becomes real.