This engineer wants India’s kids to make the best choice of college

Collegedunia founder Sahil Chalana

After graduating from BITS Pilani, India’s premier engineering institute, Sahil Chalana launched a startup to make it easier for students to apply to universities. However, he soon realized that what students really needed was a website with in-depth information and counseling related to their next step into college.

Such a site would help students identify the best career choice as well as detail practical things like entrance exam and college admission schedules, fee structures, virtual tours, cut offs, reviews, and placements. These could help them make a better decision on college selection. To fill the gap, he started up Collegedunia.

College admissions is a US$45 billion opportunity with 27 million students in the nation enrolling for higher education each year. Three quarters of the enrollment happens in private colleges that generally spend around one-fifth of their overall budgets on marketing. Collegedunia is aiming for a large slice of the market.

Taking a new course

The Collegedunia team

Collegedunia was launched in July 2004 with just college information and then went on to add more features. Earlier this year, it added a campus ambassador program connecting current students with newcomers.

Since more than half the site’s traffic comes from mobile, the startup is developing a mobile app for providing assistance during admissions.

“We have grown more than 10-fold since December 2014. More than 1,000 students register with us every day and all this is purely organic,” says Sahil.

He adds that getting detailed information about colleges was the toughest part of filling the information gap. That’s why the startup set up a research team of about three dozen to gather data. “Getting information like reviews of students and alumni becomes really important. [Information on] loans and scholarships are not available anywhere on the internet,” he says.

“We plan to go international as more than 100,000 Indian students choose to study abroad every year,” Sahil explains. “We would go a similar route and collect information on courses, fees, details on visa chances, and reviews – which would be a great value add to not just Indians but also global students aspiring for higher education abroad.”

The startup also plans to provide solutions to colleges and coaching institutes, such as application management systems, customer relationship management tools, and online counseling tools.

Beating older rivals

Collegedunia competes with large companies like Shiksha, run by publicly-listed Infoedge, and the Hindustan Times’ HTCampus. Sahil says the startup stands out by providing more information than its peers.

“In the next phase we will become a personal admissions assistant rather than just an information play. Nobody in the world has ever provided 24×7 counseling the way we would do,” says Sahil.

Collegedunia last year secured US$150,000 from Cardekho’s president Umang Kumar. It claims to be profitable after clocking revenues worth US$90,600 per month.

Today, the Collegedunia team is pitching the concept to judges at Startup Arena, the contest that serves as the highlight to the Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015 conference. After hearing the pitch, the judges posted questions on growth, revenue, business model, and new features on mobile.

The team responded by stating that college admissions is a seasonal business and so the traffic drops slightly post admissions. However, it claims to have maintained a hockey stick growth in terms of traffic and is on track to touch US$1 million in revenue. The startup makes money by sending leads to private colleges.

Collegedunia aims to keep the app free for students even though it plans to launch features like aptitude tests.

This is part of the ongoing coverage of Tech in Asia Tokyo 2015, our annual conference taking place on September 8 and 9.