Open Talk @DSIM
An Interview with Isha Sharma, Senior Manager- Marketing & Content, Collegesearch.in
IndiaCollegeSearch rebranded itself as CollegeSearch.in. It was founded in 2010 by Anirudh Motwani. CollegeSearch is a vertical search engine for students. It attempts to aggregate information about the 30,000+ colleges in India and allows users to find colleges that match their chosen criteria.
Q1. Hi Isha, it’s a pleasure to be doing this interview with you. Thank you for taking out the time. We are very curious to know about your business? Kindly tell us something about it?
Ans. Our vision is to simplify the college selection and admission process in India. CollegeSearch provides in depth information including faculty, placement, facilities, fees and alumni reviews that allow a student choose from among thousands of options relevant to them.
We also improve the admission process by allowing students to apply directly to the colleges. Currently, 3000+ colleges and universities accept online applications via CollegeSearch.
Ans. We do not spend heavily on marketing. We have 3 million+ users and surpassed 30K daily visits in 2015 which has happened organically via word of mouth generated by solving the students’ pain point rather than marketing. However, good content also has to be visible – we are active on social media and ensure that our site is well indexed and discoverable by search engines. So if you type in “colleges in India” we appear first on Google.
As an aggregator, it’s a virtuous circle – we generate the most admission applications so we have the largest number of colleges using our platform. As the college number grows, students naturally prefer to come to the place where they have most choice.
Ans. It’s at a very nascent stage. Indian colleges and universities currently spend around $600 million per annum in application generation but less than 3 percent is currently spend for online (even though 80% of students prefer applying online). By 2020, we see $200 million per annum in online application generation spend and $400 million per annum in online admission management spend. So in the medium term the Indian market is around $600 million/annum (where we aim to be the market leader with 25%) and the global market will be over $5 billion/annum.
Ans. If by clients, you mean students, we have found that the information sought by students and parents varies a great deal from course to course. For professional courses such as B.Tech & MBA, the #1 factor is placement – both salary information as well as the names of companies which recruit from the institute. For a degree course (BA, BSc, B.Com), the affiliating university is very important whereas for medical courses (MBBS & MD) students go by the reputation of the hospital attached to the institute.
Some factors are similar however such as fees (students want to avoid taking education loans), approvals (AICTE, MCI, BCI & other approvals and recognitions are a very important criteria for students from Tier 3 cities & smaller towns) and location (closer the better).
The issues faced by colleges are of course entirely different and a lot more complex – they vary from filling seats and attracting the best faculty to increasing the quality of students admitted, improving placements and even ensuring relevance of curriculum going forward. Building a lasting brand (as expressed by Harvard University) and a strong alumni network are also challenges.
Ans. The plan is to expand. Both geographical expansion as well as expansion of our offerings.
We recently dropped India from our brand name on two counts – for domestic students who are considering foreign universities and in order to attract an audience outside India in the future. Starting next year, we plan to launch the product in markets such as the UK, Germany, Japan and Hong Kong where students face similar difficulties in college selection.
Indian SaaS products are gaining currency across the globe and with over 3000 colleges and universities already using our application management software, we’re confident of launching similar offerings globally which will help increase admission efficiency on the institute front.
In terms of offerings, we have just added features such as Education Loans (eligibility check & rate comparison), Collections, a Preparation Scheduler for MBA aspirants giving multiple exams and College Recommendations.
Ans. We raised INR 20 million in funding from IAN in 2013 led by Shaadi.com founder & Grofers CTO.Since our business model is not built around heavy discounting and marketing, it was easy for us to turn profitable.Although we have been approached by VCs post our angel round, we feel that companies like Tripadvisor have set a good precedent of doing only one round of funding a few years before its IPO as has Naukri.com in India. While our margins are lower than Tripadvisor (~40%) & Naukri (~30%), they are similar to other profitable internet companies such as Google (20-30%), Facebook (15-25%) and Shaadi.
Unfortunately, very few internet companies in India have a solid revenue model or path to profitability which does give the sector a bad name, but we’re already doing more revenues than the likes of FoodPanda without burning millions of dollars.
Ans. I’ve always recommended two things to those starting this journey:
- Create a product or service to solve a problem rather than trying to find problems that can be solved by the business you want to create.
- Try to focus on problems which you have faced personally since this will put you in a unique position to solve it and make decision making instinctive.
“Thanks for taking out time. Our readers will really get benefited from your valuable suggestion. Best wishes to you and CollegeSearch from DSIM.”
