With rising school fees and aspirations of parents in their choices of schools, it may sometimes become difficult for parents to pay the fees in full.
Schools, generally, collect their fees in 2 or 3 part payments and each of these part payments can be a significant amount for a household budget of a parent who is salaried or running a small business.
With rising school fees and aspirations of parents in their choices of schools, it may sometimes become difficult for parents to pay the fees in full. Schools, generally, collect their fees in 2 or 3 part payments and each of these part payments can be a significant amount for a household budget of a parent who is salaried or running a small business.
Even if affordability isn’t the issue, keeping such significant amounts idle and liquid can be a hassle for parents.
In order to help parents in such situations, GrayQuest, a Mumbai-based education-focused fintech startup, has come up with a scheme that allows the conversion of school, university and online course fees into smaller, affordable and convenient bite-sized installments at no extra cost.
“Now, instead of having to pay an education fee of 2 lakh in two parts of 1 lakh each, parents can pay it in 10 parts of 20,000 each. We offer anywhere between 6 and 12 monthly installments with zero interest,” says Rishab Mehta, Founder & CEO, GrayQuest.
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GrayQuest pays educational institutions as per their policies.
If an institute requires annual payment, then they pay them their annual fee upfront at the start of the year. If the norm is a quarterly payment, then they claim to pay the schools at the beginning of every quarter.
The key point here is that, as Mehta says, that parents always get to pay in easy monthly installments.
“Upfront fee payment works well for educational institutions as they no longer have to wait till the end of the year to receive their fees and can use this boosted cash flow for purposes such as paying teachers’ salaries and improving infrastructure for students. Parents, on the other hand, no longer have to worry about 2 to 3 bulk payments in which schools typically,” Mehta opines.
In addition to this, parents also get access to benefits like a free Rs 20 lakh insurance cover and 35+ student-centric rewards for paying their school fees through GrayQuest (this includes free access to curricular and extra-curricular activities and entertainment).
“Opting to pay education fees through GrayQuest allows parents to effectively utilize their capital and enjoy the convenience of paying in easy monthly installments at zero cost,” Mehta adds.
GrayQuest offers fee payment solutions for schools, universities, EdTech platforms as well as other educational institutions.
The fintech firm claims to have seen a sharp surge in parents opting for their service during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
“While we have seen some parents opting for our facility to gain an additional liquidity boost, most of our new customers are with us because they simply see it as a smarter way of paying fees,” Mehta says.
As of now, GrayQuest is associated with 2,500 of the top educational institutions in India.
GrayQuest operates digitally and covers all major towns and cities in India. They have 4 regional bases from where the teams operate with the headquarter in Mumbai.
