*EdTech startup SKILL MONKS paves way to ease financial stress in the training and skilling sector

*Skill seekers can avail collateral-free loan with 100% online disbursement

NATIONAL, MUMBAI, 17 AUGUST, 2020 (GPN): SKILL MONKS, India’s FIRST integrated marketplace for training and skilling  announces its strategic partnership with three leading financing companies including ZestMoney, Propelled and Credit Fair. This association provides flexible payment options to skill seekers (Students, Graduates and Working professionals) to reduce financial strain while choosing quality training and skilling programs. Through skill financing option, skill seekers can avail collateral-free loan with 100% online disbursals that can be paid in easy installments over a period of time. SKILL MONKS is extremely delighted to ensure continuity of training through digital enrolment process and alleviate financial burdens that are faced by skill seekers in India, currently.

With the growing reluctance amongst students availing loans due to high interest rates and tight repayment schedules, there was a need for a simple, flexible mode of financial support to reduce the burden and ensure seamless learning, paving way for growth and tap emerging job opportunities. SKILL MONKS identified this gap in the market place to provide the much needed skill financing provision to address concerns of skill seekers by facilitating faster disbursement of loans with minimal interest rates along with easy repayment options through their finance partnerships.

Commenting on this announcement Rameswar Mandali, CEO and Founder, SKILL MONKS said, “We are witnessing a surge of job opportunities in tech specific areas like Cyber Security, Data Science, AWS and Digital marketing , to name a few , but quality skilling programs for these streams can be expensive. This results in increased financial distress that limits skill seekers in choosing the right course at the right time. Therefore, partnerships like these are the need of the hour to not only fuel the growth of the Indian skilling and training sector but also allow aspiring learners to become valued contributors to society. Our association with our financing partners was a priority since we identified the financial challenges faced by the skill seekers to enroll for programs, during the initial phase of SKILL MONKS. We assisted close to INR 1.8 million of loan amount across programs starting from INR 6,000 to INR 3,50,000.”

Commenting on the association with SKILL MONKS, Abhishek Sharma, Head of Growth, ZestMoney stated, “SKILL MONKS is bringing a very interesting product to the ever-growing EdTech ecosystem, in the form of a one-stop marketplace that enables students & professionals to discover courses across domains. We are super-excited to bring ZestMoney’s fully-digital and fully-automated EMI offering to the platform, to make these courses accessible to all.”

“A platform like SKILL MONKS can optimize substantial revenue expenditures for customer acquisition of Educational institutes through demand aggregation. Such demand aggregation in turn helps service providers like financial, technology, etc to cater to a large number of fragmented institutes through a single window, thus further reducing costs for the institutes. Propelld has been fortunate to partner with SKILL MONKS in this early part of their journey and we see a great potential going forward” said Bibhu Prasad Das, CEO and Co-founder, Propelld.

In India, there are approximately 40 million students in higher education, 7 million students in universities that have graduated this year and 5 million IT workforce. This 5 million IT workforce is on the lookout for reskilling/ upskilling to enhance their career prospects.  In addition, an estimated number of 18 million working professionals lost employment due to COVID-19, as per the April 2020 CMIE report. Loss of jobs coupled with a focused shift to digitization and automation has led both students, graduates and working professionals to pursue upskilling and reskilling programs in search of better opportunities or in many cases stay relevant in their current jobs. SKILL MONKS helps such individuals meet their career aspirations by helping in career discovery, connecting them to the right training companies and most importantly enabling them through quick, easy and affordable loans to pursue the right training programs.

During these unprecedented times, a flexible and affordable payment option is really the need of the hour for students and professionals. Therefore, SKILL MONKS will continue to work closely with its partners to extend skill financing facilities across training and skilling programs to impact a larger cross section of the society.  Going forward to broad base training and skilling needs, EdTech leaders should come forward and take responsibility in making training more affordable and aid digital transition. ENDS

About SKILL MONKS

SKILL MONKS is a unique market place platform in the EdTech space connecting customers and training companies. The solution is an enabler for diverse skill development needs focused on Quality, Affordability and Accessibility. We enable Working professionals, Graduates and Students in their IT skilling and re-skilling, exam preparation and job preparation needs by providing career discovery options to help choose the right course and connect to the right training company on the platform by providing quality assurance. The platform facilitates customers to undertake classroom as well as online training depending on their needs. Our vision is to be the preferred one-stop solution for diverse skill training and exam preparation needs. For more information visit www.skillmonks.com