MENA’s fintech school fee app, zenda, raises $9.4m in seed round

Zenda, MENA’s first fintech app for families, has raised $9.4m in an oversubscribed seed round. The application presently tackles issues with school fee payment, including the lack of ease and flexibility in payment alternatives for parents and poor payment collection for schools.

Families may use zenda to keep track of dues and make payments using a variety of pay-now and pay-later options, as well as earn rewards for paying on time. The app interfaces with schools using its own data model and APIs to reduce last-mile reconciliation issues and delays.

CEO and founder of zenda, Raman Thiagarajan said: “In today’s digital world, we seek low friction and immediacy – why should that not be the case for fee payments? Part of the ecosystem still runs on cash or cheque with no convenient option to pay later. Since our launch, feedback from the market and especially from our users has been terrific – we are grateful and pumped with the response from parents and seeing how they have embraced our service. zenda schools are witnessing a systematic increase in their collections. We have a truly outstanding team and I feel privileged that such a passionate group is with us on this journey. We are excited and hopeful for the possibilities ahead – in providing customer-centric digital financial services to solve some of the simple yet important problems for families in our regions”

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Raman Thiagarajan and Haseeb Ahmed, both alumni of McKinsey & Company, formed zenda in June 2021. This platform is the their second business venture.

Zenda has witnessed strong market traction with schools and with families, a statement said. Since June 2021, its user base has grown 20-fold, with yearly contractual TPV volume exceeding $100m in the UAE and India by Q4 2021.