About Us
Vittana's mission is to graduate a generation beyond poverty through the power of education.
We enable anyone with $25 to lend directly to ambitious students in the developing world. When you lend, 100% of your money goes directly to the students and more than 99% of students repay their loans upon graduation.
Vittana exists because, in many places, student loans do not. Even when there is a demand for skilled workers, millions of students in the developing world find it impossible to save for higher education. In many cases they are kept from their dreams by only a few hundred dollars.
Our lenders empower students to fulfill those dreams and lift themselves out of poverty. After graduation, the average Vittana student triples their earning power. In practice, this means a girl who was selling food on the side of the road now knows how to give vaccinations and goes from living on $3 a day to $9 a day.
Vittana works with carefully selected partners in more than a dozen countries. These partners work to find students who are motivated to continue their education and they help to prepare them for success.
Vittana's Story
Vittana was founded in 2008 after our CEO, Kushal Chakrabarti, left Amazon with the determination to build something meaningful. Working out of a bar with a group of friends, Kushal was convinced that helping students afford higher education was the best way to make a difference in the world. He embarked on a journey to South America to learn everything he could about student loans in the developing world.
Kushal learned in his travels that in many places student loans simply didn't exist. Vittana then pioneered crowd-funded small loans for students as a way to help ambitious students who didn't have the means to pay for their education.
Since our founding, Vittana has grown and expanded our programs into more than a dozen countries, with more on the horizon. We've helped thousands of students and expanded how we help them, but we are still focused on our core mission of graduating a generation beyond poverty through small student loans.