ForeignAdmits, a career counselling and study abroad guidance platform for students and working professionals, has raised INR 3.26 Crore (around $423,000) from Unicorn India Ventures (UIV), a Mumbai-based early-stage fund.
The round also saw participation from other investors like Bengaluru-based SEA Fund. Beerud Sheth, founder of Gupshup, Zishaan Hayath, founder of Toppr, and Keshab Panda, former chief executive officer of L&T Infotech.
The Bengaluru-based startup plans to utilise the fresh funding for enhancing its tech platform to provide a better experience to students and partners along with furthering its ongoing business development efforts.
Started in 2020 by IIT Bombay graduate Ashwini Jain and IIT BHU alumnus Nikhil Jain, ForeignAdmits is an end-to-end study abroad platform for students and agents that gives peer-to-peer mentoring by international graduates and alumni network. The platform enables students to connect with graduate students and alumni for mentorship. It helps students in applying for college applications digitally and undertakes post visa and pre-departure services such as education loans, forex, health insurance, credit cards, and bank accounts.
Speaking about the platform, Co-founder and CEO of ForeignAdmits, Ashwini Jain, said:
“Students especially in tier II and III cities don’t enjoy exposure and guidance when compared to their metro counterparts. With the use of technology, we aim to transform the overseas study industry with better, efficient and trusted technology products.”
The startup has a vast network of successful mentors to guide students to make the right decision and choices for their studies and careers. They assist students with their own experiences and journey and help them. The company is currently present across Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata.
Commenting on the funding, Managing partner of Unicorn India Ventures, Anil Joshi, said:
“As the world opens up and students look for higher education opportunities in top global universities, we want to back the company as it goes full steam ahead with foreign admission season.The platform presently has over 250 agent partners network. ForeignAdmits with a team size of close to 100 is currently serving students in India and ten other countries and has over 35 university partnerships.
Some of the well-known networks that ForeignAdmits works with are Columbia, Duke, CMU, Monash, University of Toronto, and ASU. The Company has also launched the Integrated Study Abroad Guidance Product which offers financial and career counseling, admission, and post-admission support.
ForeignAdmits has a “Mentor Mentee Connect”- a personalized mentorship product for aspirants from quality and verified mentors of top universities of their choice. The aim is to make processes transparent, organised, and data-backed. This ensures that students not only land up with multiple admits but also land in their college with better awareness of their chosen career paths and colleges.
According to the company’s statement, it has grown 10X in the last 12 months across various business growth parameters. Currently, the platform sees 2 lakh monthly traffic organically, which is growing at 25% month-on-month.
This is Unicorn India Ventures’ second investment in ForeignAdmits after the company raised INR 3.5 Crore in a seed funding round led by the early-stage investor in October last year. The startup’s total funding raised so far is around $1 million.