AdmitKard: Student First Study Abroad
AdmitKard is building a student-centric platform to enable aspirants to study abroad
In the last eighteen months, the global flow of international students has roared back with a vengeance. Over 5 million students study abroad every year–and the number is growing 15% annually. Notably, India is overtaking China as the largest source of international students: India will send 1.8 million students abroad by 2024. Today these students primarily find their paths abroad by working with traditional offline agents. This legacy agency ecosystem is rife with friction and misalignment. AdmitKard’s goal is to solve the access, personalization, and trust deficits that plague the study abroad space in India today.
We are excited to announce that GSV Ventures is leading the Series A financing of AdmitKard. AdmitKard brings a student-centric approach to tackling the study abroad industry. The company offers an end-to-end platform where aspirants can learn about universities, prepare and submit applications, get mentored by other students, and access ancillary services.
AdmitKard was born out of the founders’ experiences in studying, working, and living abroad. Piyush Bhartiya graduated from IIT-Roorkee and worked at Schlumberger as a Field Engineer across Africa and Mexico. He then went to IIM-Bangalore and studied abroad at Tsinghua University in China. AdmitKard is the second company he co-founded with Rachit Agrawal, whom he met at BCG. Rachit graduated from IIIT-Allahabad and IIM-Calcutta. Before joining BCG, he worked at Microsoft and Adobe. He holds two patents from his time at Adobe. Together, Piyush and Rachit combine to exhibit a deep understanding of the pain points of international students, as well as to build solutions to solve those challenges.
The AdmitKard platform combines technology with deep industry expertise. When students first sign up, they build out their profile which enables AdmitKard’s AI-driven recommendation engine to help select the right university, course, and specialization for the student based on their interests. The platform subsequently maps out a full journey that is broken up into micro-milestones to help clearly structure the student’s application process with required documentation. Unlike other companies in the study abroad space, AdmitKard doesn’t depend on industry counselors. Instead, it matches aspirants with student mentors who studied at an institution that the student is interested in.
The study abroad market in India is large and rapidly growing. As students have experienced limited employment opportunities in India coupled with rising costs of domestic higher education, they are increasingly looking abroad to get educated at a reasonable price and with the potential for better outcomes. According to RedSeer, India sent 770K higher education students abroad in 2019 and will send 1.8M by 2024. Excluding tuition, those students will spend ~$27B to study abroad. The global market opportunity is four times larger: over $100B.
AdmitKard has best-in-class metrics, driven by its student-first approach. Agents can be focused on sending aspirants to the institution that will give the biggest placement fee. Other companies can be focused on getting a student to go somewhere within their small partner network. AdmitKard is connected to 4,000+ universities so that the student can find his or her best fit. This ethos is reflected in the metrics: Facebook reviewers give the platform 4.9/5.0; 68% of students who apply through AdmitKard refer peers; and the average applicant refers 2+ aspirants. A majority of AdmitKard users come to the platform organically, resulting in an impressive LTV/CAC of over 15x. In the coming years, the AdmitKard platform will enable thousands of students to study abroad.
“Our vision is to empower students to make informed career choices and use education effectively to achieve their goals.” — Rachit Agrawal, Co-Founder
At GSV Ventures, we are excited to partner with AdmitKard to help them achieve their ambitions of making international education more accessible and transparent. We believe that AdmitKard has the potential to become a global leader in the study abroad market and we are thrilled to support Piyush and Rachit early in this journey.
