Seed Investment in Rootopia, a P2P Lending Platform dedicated for Education in Vietnam
Genesia Ventures, Inc. announced that it has invested in the Seed Round of Rootopia from Genesia Venture Fund No. 3 (“GV-3”), a P2P Lending Platform dedicated for Education in Vietnam.
About Rootopia
Rootopia is giving a better education opportunity to young Vietnamese through on-demand student loan solutions for underserved families at affordable interest rates.
After more than 1 year of operation to date, the Rootopia school finance platform has helped connect more than 400 students and students at more than 100 schools and centers in more than 10 provinces and cities across the country to continue. Indeed, through the support of Rootopia and “angel investors”, many children have achieved many good achievements in their studies and gradually improved their personal and family lives.
Problems and Solution
<Problems/ Issues/Opportunity>
▼ (Stakeholder 1): Parents and Students:
・Increasing school fees: under the Government’s policy pushing to “School with its own financial responsibilities ” that make schools keep increasing schools fees with an annual rate of 7~10%
・High-interest rates and many hidden fees to access student loans (i.e, Consumer finance companies with 30~90% annual interest rate, hidden insurances, or closing loans with 2~7% on loan amount)
・A lengthy and sophisticated approval process: with the paper loan application and lots of requirements like income proof, which take at least a week.
With limited available and affordable financing options for education, results in limited opportunities to access education for students in Vietnam.
▼(Stakeholder 2): Schools
Limited POS Financing options for students, which results in decreasing the “conversion rate” for students entering schools
<Solutions>
They provide a 100% online journey for parents and students.
Also, angels enjoy a 100% online sponsor journey when requests are approved.
Rootopia is a financial technology platform to help parents and students solve difficulties in tuition fees, based on connecting financial sponsors (Angel Investor). to invest in cases that need support to pay tuition fees quickly, intuitively and transparently. Rootopia acts as an intermediary platform to connect and strictly conduct due diligence to ensure the financial aid is invested to the right people with the right purpose for education. On the Rootopia platform, parents and students can complete the registration for tuition assistance conveniently and quickly, with a dedicated and reputable team. This can be considered as the safest and most friendly school finance solution on the market today, with an interest rate of 0. 9%/month on the total value of financial support. After that, the parents of students can split the amount by months to repay the financial support, thereby helping to reduce the pressure and burden on the overall spending cash flow of each individual and their family.
About the market of Education in Vietnam
According to the tuition fee schedule in Decree 81/2021, from the school year 2022 – 2023, the tuition fee increase ceiling will increase at an annual rate of about 7.5%/year for preschool education, public general education and high school education. 12.5%/year for public university education. From the perspective of schools, whether they like it or not, schools still have to increase tuition fees. Especially for schools that are fully autonomous, ie not entitled to the state budget, they are forced to increase tuition fees to have enough operating funds, as well as to cover the costs of price slippage and investment. ensure the operation of training programs and output standards for pupils and students.
Although according to TTC Edu’s statistics, Vietnamese parents on average spend 47% of their family income to invest in their children’s education. But under the pressure of increasing tuition fees, which people joke that the rate of increase in tuition fees is faster than the growth rate of wages of parents of students in Vietnam, this will really become an increasingly burdensome burden. spending for the whole family, limiting the choices and opportunities for students to go to school in Vietnam. Therefore, parents and students will need access to school financial aid packages and services to help them reduce their tuition burden. However, the fact that they still face many difficulties in accessing these services, at a reasonable cost, saving time with easy registration procedures, is an extremely “luxury” thing. “Hard to find nowadays in Vietnam.
About the investment
Hoang Thi Kim Dung, Associate, Genesia Ventures
（Summarized below）
When thinking back my journey of changing lives through poverty for more than a decade with education, has actually been supported and sponsored by my parents, my extended family, and the surrounding community, even the national government. Therefore, I have always strongly believed that education can change a life, a family, a community, and more broadly a country for the better. To do that, it takes the cooperation of many people, businesses, and government organizations, to join in on each individual’s journey to education. Returning to Vietnam from Japan, with that belief and gratitude, I always want to be able to join hands and contribute a small part to supporting the learning path of young people in Vietnam. This is an important reason for us not to give up, pursuing an investment in Rootopia as a Lead Investor in this Pre-seed round. As well as this is a strong motivation for me to be determined to accompany the Rootopia team to overcome all challenges, to develop sustainably, and to bring the most positive values on each young person’s journey to pursue learning in Vietnam.
Company Profile
Company Name: ROOT HOLDING SG PTE. LTD.
Co-founder & CEO: Nguyen Xuan Truong
WEB: https://student.rootopia.vn/
Establishment: 8, 2021
Headquarters: 68 Circular Road #02-01 Singapore
