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Educational institutions in India often lack the money management tools to digitize and streamline their banking and finance functions so that they can focus on providing high-quality education in their communities. This is where the idea for Anthem was born. Host Amee Parbhoo talks with Pavee Ramanisankar, co-founder and COO of Anthem.
Fintech has the power to build a more inclusive world. Fintech for the People is about the innovators who are developing fintech solutions that reach the people who’ve been left behind. In each episode, we’ll hear from innovators who are creating financial solutions that bring every person the financial tools they need to grow their business, support their family, and build their community. Together, we’ll learn how fintech looks different in spaces and places where basic financial services are a luxury — and how solutions to address these challenges require a different level of creativity, empathy, and execution.
Fintech for the People is an Accion podcast hosted by Amee Parbhoo, Managing Partner of Accion Venture Lab – an early-stage investor in inclusive fintech startups. Learn more about Accion Venture Lab here. Episodes will be released in seasons, on a weekly schedule.
Amee Parbhoo (00:13):
Welcome, everyone, to the second episode of Fintech for the People. I'm Amee Parbhoo, your host and managing partner of Accion Venture Lab. As always, Fintech for the People is produced by Accion Venture Lab. We're an early stage investor in inclusive fintech startups around the world.
Amee Parbhoo (00:30):
This season, we're showcasing five of the newest companies in our portfolio, which are all women led. Tune in each week to learn from a new founder about the challenges they're tackling, their approach to building an inclusive fintech company, and ways they think we can make venture capital more inclusive.
Amee Parbhoo (00:48):
Last week, in our first episode of the series, we spoke with Suzy Ferreira, CEO of Dinie, about the company's embedded finance plugin for platforms that serve small businesses in Brazil.
Amee Parbhoo (01:00):
Today, we'll head to India, where our next guest is helping educational institutions streamline their money management and spend more time on what matters, providing high-quality education for their students. With that, I'd like to introduce Pavee Ramanisankar, co-founder and COO of Anthem. Welcome to the show, Pavee.
Pavee Ramanisankar (01:18):
Thank You for having me, Amee.
Amee Parbhoo (01:20):
I'm excited to dig into Anthem today, but first I'd love to learn more about your background. It's a bit unique for a fintech founder. Your studies are in education, and I know you've operated schools prior to Anthem. Would you tell us more about your path?
Pavee Ramanisankar (01:36):
So, Amee, yes, I've been nowhere close to fintech. Majority of my time has been in education. I've been running an education institution, a K-12 school to be specific, for many, many years, and that's when I think the foundation of Anthem has always been. The experience of having run an educational institution, having worked with multiple stakeholders, including the teachers, the parents, the admin staff. Knowing how much operational heavy lifting an educational institution owner has to do is something that I've experienced firsthand. And similarly, a lot of help that the educational institution needs was not there when I was running an educational institution, be it financial help, be it technology help. So this was two major areas where I thought that it could have been a lot easier for someone like me if support systems for these two areas were a lot more prevalent.
Amee Parbhoo (02:37):
And so how did you come up with that idea of Anthem while you were operating the school? And maybe tell us more about what the company does?
Pavee Ramanisankar (02:45):
Sure. So when I was running the school, one of the things that I'd always noticed is that there isn't formal financial services available to stakeholders, including... be it the education institution owner or be it the teacher or the parent. It's always something informal that has to come in. So that was the first point when I thought that, if I really want to work with education, I have to work on solving the financial aspect of this sector, because that's really core to it, but an educator is not thinking about it full time, but like any business, an educational institution's foundations also have to be really strong for it to really see the impact that everybody wants when they first start an institution, right? So laying this financial foundation was something that was of my area of interest. And so when we started Anthem first, we were lending to different stakeholders.
Pavee Ramanisankar (03:39):
That's when we also realized the lack of data that is required for any financial institution to lend. And the lack of this data usually comes from the fact that there isn't records that's kept organized or in any kind of platform. And that was when the technology aspect of Anthem also came in. We work with around 45,000 institutions across India, and that was the founding story of Anthem. It has different aspects to it, but more so from personal experience and working with a lot of passionate educators and understanding some key areas that are not natural strengths of people like me, but how do we support these stakeholders was where probably it all started.
Amee Parbhoo (04:25):
So maybe could you elaborate on the product, the offering that Anthem provides educational institutions? How are you solving that data gap? And what are you providing to schools in addition to that capital?
Pavee Ramanisankar (04:39):
So I think today it's an affordable SaaS platform for educational institutions to digitize their finances, their administration, and their operations. So these three key functions are something that take up a lot of time, energy, and effort, and sort of eat into the energy of an educator. So what we thought was digitizing these functions provides a way for not only efficiencies in the organization but also opens doors for these educational institutions to larger networks of formal financial services as well.
Pavee Ramanisankar (05:12):
So Anthem is a SaaS platform that provides four key modules for all institutions, which is finances, revenue, expenses, admissions, and communication, which is the classroom management. So these are the four modules that today Anthem provides to schools, colleges, coaching centers, any kind of educational institution.
Amee Parbhoo (05:31):
That's great. And I think fits so much with this acceleration of just digitization that we're seeing in the broader ecosystem. I'm curious if you could say more of about that, but what's been the demand and the interest of schools when you approach them and share what Anthem can provide?
Pavee Ramanisankar (05:50):
The educational institutions that we work with are extremely happy with Anthem purely because of the focus that we offer. It's a very, very simple, focused tool that'll help you do things that are just the pain points. For someone who is running a college or a coaching institute, fee collection is one of the main issues because you have to remind students, remind parents, so that your revenue comes in streamlined. So that is an area of pain point. So we solved that. So our uptake has been really, really good from there.
Pavee Ramanisankar (06:24):
And that's where we picked up. And then we started doing expenses next. And then we started doing admissions, because admissions is also very, very key because that's going into your next year's revenue as well. So the uptake from the educational institutions has been tremendous, even better than what we thought it would be initially.
Pavee Ramanisankar (06:41):
And COVID's result in pushing people towards the digital world also definitely helped, because fee collection can no more be cash. It cannot be checks anymore. So that aspect of it was one. And, in general, I think, like everybody, educational institutions are also a lot more open to technology just around the same time. So it really helped. The receptivity was there, as well as the right simple product, just solving the most core pain points, was also available. So I think it was a great match.
Amee Parbhoo (07:15):
Yeah. The right moment for the right product. Speaking of COVID, I mean the pandemic has specifically impacted educational institutions. Could you speak more about what that impact has been for your customers and for your business, for Anthem? How have you navigated these challenging times?
Pavee Ramanisankar (07:34):
I think one of the most unprepared sectors is probably education, and most challenging it has been for the sector, purely because education has always been this recession-proof sector, but nobody expected the pandemic to hit so hard. But, while that is the downside of COVID, what it has really done to education as a sector is really open doors to digitization that was long pending. And that has really opened doors to what education can look like from here on. I think something like this is either tremendous... I think this will be a landmark moment for education in total because we have moved to a place where the physical location is probably... Yes, it is great to have, but even if not, we are still going to continue education no matter what. That's where we are.
Pavee Ramanisankar (08:29):
I remember, when I was running the school or even when I was going to school, we would always have rain holidays. From where I come from, monsoons were crazy. So we would have rain holidays, like two or three weeks, and then there would be water logged everywhere. But even as the pandemic recedes, when we talk to educational institutions, they always say that we've learned how to cope with anything right now. Like schools need not stop because [crosstalk 00:08:55] need not stop because students can't come or teachers can't come to work, come to a physical location.
Pavee Ramanisankar (09:01):
Now we've gone past that. And we are here right now, where education would happen no matter what. And while a lot of this digitization was happening around curriculum and how classrooms happen, equal amount of digitization was also required in the administrative wing, because, while classrooms were becoming digital, there was a lot of administrative aspects of education that doesn't come straight, right?
Pavee Ramanisankar (09:28):
When we think of classrooms, we think of students studying, teachers teaching, but we don't think of the tons of files that are lying in a registrar's office or how people sign in, sign out, clock in, clock out their attendance, or how the lines [inaudible 00:09:45] that form when they're going to pay the fee. So all of this is a very large part of the institution. But that's not the first thing that you think about when you think about education.
Pavee Ramanisankar (09:55):
While the pandemic pushed through a lot of curriculum and how classes happen, I think at Anthem, we were ready to take over the larger un-looked-at portions of the institutions that really was also craving for digitization. And I think Anthem very nicely took that space in, because institutions are ready for it, and then all we needed to do was provide them exactly... identify the right pain point and then cater to that. So I think that's the larger aspect of how probably COVID and the pandemic impacted the sector, as well as Anthem.
Amee Parbhoo (10:30):
Yeah, no. That's such a great point. In some ways, what you all do, of streamlining, saving time on the administration, just provides more time to focus on what matters, which is the education piece and what you're providing to the students. So that's really interesting to hear.
Amee Parbhoo (10:50):
I want to turn back to the financial services roadmap. You've talked a lot about the SaaS platform and the data that you all are collecting there. How do you leverage the platform to effectively provide these financial services to your customers?
Pavee Ramanisankar (11:05):
That's a great question. I think the SaaS platform, or any platform for that matter, does not do a good job if it just identifies a problem. For example, one of the things that Anthem does is show accurately what is the fee pending, from where, which class, how much, which is the fees at risk. That's one of the most important things that a business owner needs, but it doesn't stop there. What we do is identify the problem but also offer solutions for that, which is where our fintech piece comes in. Our fintech piece comes in in two or three different ways. One is just payments. We make the fee payment process a lot easier, a lot smoother. Today, the beauty of a SaaS platform like Anthem is that it's just not a platform in isolation but works with multiple different everyday tech.
Pavee Ramanisankar (11:57):
When I say everyday tech, something like WhatsApp, something like Google Pay, right? So this is something that's embedded in every Indian's DNA today. So when the SaaS platform owner works through these works along with these platforms, like pay your fees on UPI, and then it automatically reconciles at the backend. Or get your reminders on WhatsApp. So this kind of SaaS, along with other fintech platforms and payments and otherwise, so it sort of integrates everyday life in with Anthem as well.
Pavee Ramanisankar (12:29):
So payments is one really big aspect of Anthem. The other part is that, while one part of the solution is of course giving them a really easy access to make the payments. But what if there are parents who are unable to make the payments right up front? People want the children to study in really good institutions, and what if there was a better payment plan? What if there was BNPL for education? What if there was something that would allow parents to really give the dream that they're dreaming for their children? So this is something that we also offer. So identifying the solution, but also problem solving in terms of payments, problem solving in terms of what are the other aspects that we can solve for when it comes to just affording education? So we try and cover all aspects and not just stop with visibility. So payments is one big angle we are looking at. BNPL is another one that we are looking at, which helps the parents access education that they would otherwise probably find it difficult to.
Amee Parbhoo (13:29):
That's great. And how about on the educational institution side? Are you thinking about... You mentioned the challenges of accessing working capital when you were operating a school. How do you think about those financial needs of the schools and institutions?
Pavee Ramanisankar (13:44):
So what Anthem does beautifully is that, while we are solving the problem of the parents' affordability, the data that the platform collects is about fee collection, how the fee is paid, what frequency it's paid, what is the fee collection efficiency? So all of this, while in one way helps us finance the fee loans themselves, the same data on the other side actually shows us the financial strength of the institution. The same data. What frequency is the fee paid? When does the collection happen? Understanding the cycles, the efficiency of collection, class wise.
Pavee Ramanisankar (14:21):
All of this is the same data that helps us have this really amazing visibility that is required for a lender, that otherwise that, even when we are lending earlier, that we did not have. It's something that is right there for us. And with so much more confidence and so much more data-driven underwriting and understanding the credit worthiness of the institution, today we are able to support educational institutions with their working capital, having a really strong understanding, really strong data-backed credit underwriting, that we're able to provide working capital for the institutions as well. So it's beautiful how, with the data around fee collection, how we're able to cater to two different stakeholders, but solving their problems on both sides.
Amee Parbhoo (15:08):
That's really exciting how this one platform and tool provides data to a full ecosystem, really, in the education space. So I want to turn to something a little different and hear more about Anthem's team and the culture. I'm particularly curious how you, as a founder, have found building the culture at a tech company similar or different to building the culture at your school. What do you feel like you've learned from your previous experience and brought to Anthem?
Pavee Ramanisankar (15:37):
I really like that question because it makes me think. I think in terms of the school that I was running, so the school had its roots in happy schooling, which meant that every single student who comes to school comes happily and learning happens only when there's joy. So that's something that I ask myself at Anthem every day. Everybody who's coming to Anthem. Are they coming in by choice? Or are they waking up saying, "Oh, I need to go to work." So that's something that... That is ingrained. That's set up is something I've been working in for a very long time. So it's very hard to even shake that off. So that's something that's very natural. So ensuring that... or even in the back of the mind questioning if everybody really enjoys what they do, that's something that we keep asking ourselves in Anthem. Running a tech company is definitely very, very different from running a school in terms of... It's just worlds apart, if you think, but there are a few things when it comes to the culture of Anthem that we are really, really particular about.
Pavee Ramanisankar (16:43):
One thing is, with our customers, we always want to offer value more than what we promised. We want to make this a platform that's affordable but at the same time provides cutting edge technology to educational institutions, something that otherwise would have been very, very difficult to access. This access is something that we want to provide, so offering value over and above what we promise is something that we always strive for.
Pavee Ramanisankar (17:09):
Another thing that we keep talking about in Anthem is that our support is always better than sales. As a startup, we work with many, many organizations as well, but we've always seen people being so aggressive in sales, but once the sales is done, then people just disappear. And I always tell my customer success team that we are building an exceptional sales team, but deep inside, I always want my customer success team to be better. So that is always how it would be at Anthem.
Amee Parbhoo (17:41):
No, that's great. And the customer success piece has come across so clearly, both when we were doing diligence on you all at Venture Lab, but also since. Your customers all speak of how easy it is to reach Anthem and to receive the service that they need. So it's great to hear that.
Amee Parbhoo (18:01):
So to wrap things up, just one last question. I wanted to get your thoughts on the funding environment right now. Most women founders struggle to get capital, as you know, at comparable rates and amounts as their male peers. What was your journey like? And how do you think we can start to close this gap to create a more equitable entrepreneurial system?
Pavee Ramanisankar (18:25):
Amee, I think that is one thing that's very, very obviously on your face. Like when I initially started going into fundraising meetings, majority of the times I would be the only female component of the meeting, and this never happens, where the conversation that we are having, that kind of gender presence or... That never happens in a usual VC or a fundraiser environment, but to someone who's fundraising as a woman, I would always also many times come across a situation where you would want to present your arguments, but then they would... If you have a male co-founder, which is good and bad, but then usually people prefer having conversations with the male co-founder. So it's not a natural air time, if you want to call it, that you tend to get in these kind of meetings.
Pavee Ramanisankar (19:16):
But I think there are a lot of conversations. I think recently the Accion meeting that I was with, where we had a conversation around women and the funding space, I think that was quite interesting to hear a lot of people talk about similar experiences and what that we can do. And I think... I always... I think I remember mentioning it then as well. So one thing is that probably just have more women representation on the other side of the table, so I think that would really help, from the investor side, because that's the easiest way to bring in that perspective. It just balances things out.
Amee Parbhoo (19:52):
Yeah. Any other advice for aspiring other women entrepreneurs out there?
Pavee Ramanisankar (19:58):
I think it would really help if all the women entrepreneurs out there have a good hold over their numbers, the finances. When you speak finances... Anybody who speaks finances gets attention. That's what I've realized. So even if you're not great with finances, I think I would highly recommend that you learn and you present the data and the numbers. I think that's one way of definitely cutting through the not so balanced population or representation that we have in the investing, in the fundraising space. So I think just getting really good with data and finances helps because that is something that gets attention. That doesn't have gender bias. I think that finances precedes gender.
Amee Parbhoo (20:40):
It's a more neutral language.
Pavee Ramanisankar (20:41):
It's a more neutral language.
Amee Parbhoo (20:44):
Yeah. Well, thanks for that. I think a lot we all can be doing, as you say, on both sides of the table, as investors and for entrepreneurs who are looking to get funding in this space. So thank you, Pavee, for the time today. It's been really great and really inspiring to hear about your journey and about what Anthem is doing in this space. I really appreciate your time today.
Pavee Ramanisankar (21:07):
Thank you, Amee.
Amee Parbhoo (21:11):
Join us next week to hear from Sofie Abdulrazaaq, co-founder and COO of Goodfynd, a vertical payments company here in the US that targets food trucks, which is a greatly underserved and fast-growing small business segment.
Sofie Abdulrazaaq (21:25):
Our technology will continue to bridge the gap for them, to help them be more visible and to increase revenue, because that'll help them grow their businesses beyond hopefully their wildest dreams, right? We really want to be a catalyst for change in this industry and make it more accessible to as many people as we can, because the industry is so deserving. And it is consistent of diverse individuals. And the impact that people can generate when they're their own business owners, when they're able to bring value into a community is... You can't put a price tag on that, right?