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Helping students soar abroad: The AdmitKard story

If you’re a student who is not one of the select few pursuing admission to Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, then you’re a lot more likely to face challenges in your college counseling journey. 

These challenges include: 

  • Lack of access: Extremely limited options for credible counselors to start and guide students with the process of admissions. 

  • Low personalization: The local counselors available to students have limited options of universities in their knowledge pool and frequently recommend the same universities to students with different profiles

Data shared by the government recently showed a 68% increase in Indian students going abroad for higher education over the past year - 750k students in 2022 as against 444k in 2021. AdmitKard aims to become the go-to ‘friend’ for these students, as a platform providing a holistic tech solution in overseas education.

AdmitKard is providing a seamless end-to-end admission services platform for students to study abroad. “Most graduates coming out of Indian universities are clueless about their careers. But students of foreign universities have a more rounded approach to their careers. This made me realize that our career objectives are molded by the opportunities that lie in front of us. I also realized that Indian students going abroad have a greater chance of establishing themselves with proper guidance. That inspired me to come up with AdmitKard, a tech platform, to help those students with the help of data and social networks”, said Piyush Bhartiya, co-founder. 

AdmitKard’s platform is focused on making the process as frictionless as possible, and instead of leaning on counselors and agents to advise the students, bringing in student-mentors is the primary way that students really learn about the university experience. They are taking a student-first approach as opposed to the agent-led model that dominates this industry. They have integrated the use of machine learning in their product to ensure that students are matched with the right Universities basis their requirements. 

The founders, Piyush and Rachit,  recognized the challenges that students faced when selecting the right universities. To bring a human touch to it, they have a personalized career counseling and mentorship program where the mentors are primarily Indian students studying at foreign universities. AdmitKard facilitates communication between the current and aspiring students which helps students clarify the smallest of doubts that they have about the journey. Aspiring students can get holistic responses to their questions by connecting with mentors who belong to the community of Indian students already studying overseas. These mentors are also help aspiring students think through their SOPs and evaluating post-education plans and goals. 

The company has recently closed its Series A round, led by global edtech investing firm GSV Ventures. They plan to use these funds to expand to more services, hire more people across departments, and become an end-to-end admissions services provider by launching education financing and scholarships as well. 

Bharat Founders Fund is excited to back founders Piyush and Rachit early in their journey to build AdmitKard into the premier overseas education platform for Indian students. We are huge believers in their vision to transform study abroad through technology and mentorship.