IAN invests in IndiaCollegeSearch: a search engine for students

An Indian Angel Network’s (IAN) incubatee company, IndiaCollegeSearch has graduated from the IAN Incubator and has raised investment from IAN, Asia’s largest network of angel investors. This round of investment was led by IAN investor members, Vikram Kant Upadhyaya, Anupam Mittal and Varun Khurana. Vikram Kant Upadhyaya and Varun Khurana also join the IndiaCollegeSearch’s board.

IndiaCollegeSearch.com, founded by Anirudh Motwani and Parul Bansal in 2010, is India’s fastest growing education website with information about more than 7000 colleges and over 5 lakh admission seekers using its platform every month. ICS aims to be a student-centric portal which gives users access to updated and unbiased information about faculty, infrastructure, fees and placements that will enable them in finding the right college. IndiaCollegeSearch also allows students to apply directly to colleges and has processed over 50 thousand admission applications in 2013.

IndiaCollegeSearch is focused on a growing and recession resistant sector in India – education. Over 1 crore students in India enter college every year and a large percentage of these students need to make a choice of college based on a variety of parameters. ICS takes these students online providing them a wider variety and deeper understanding of colleges.

India’s higher-education ecosystem is the most diverse in the world with over 30,000 institutes (US has 7,000 & China 4,000). Keeping in mind the potential and magnitude of opportunities in the space, IndiaCollegeSearch was founded in October 2010 by Anirudh Motwani and Parul Bansal. From 1 lakh users a month, a year ago, IndiaCollegeSearch is currently the country’s fastest growing education portal with over 7 lakh students using the platform every month. Its clients include large and small colleges with marquee names like Amrita University, Jindal Global University, ICFAI Business Schools, LPU and Alliance School of Business.

IndiaCollegeSearch joined the IAN Incubator in 2011 with Vikram Kant Upadhyaya as their IAN mentor who guided ICS to scale up the business. This mentoring and the IAN incubator efforts resulted in ICS morphing into an investible venture – catering to a sharp niche in the value chain, high growth market driven by passionate and execution focused founder team.

Anupam Mittal, IAN investor and lead commented on the company’s growth strategy “IndiaCollegeSearch solves an important problem faced by number of college aspirants and scale around this. Ventures in sectors like matrimonials, jobs and property, following a similar approach have been successful in India. Marketing spend in education is amongst the highest when compared with other verticals and this is a category that lends itself to being cannibalized by the online medium because the target audience is educated and aware.”

IndiaCollegeSearch will use the funds raised to expand its existing user base of 10 lakh students and 1200 colleges while continuing to improve the quality and depth of the information it provides.

Anirudh Motwani, Founder and CEO, IndiaCollegeSearch said, “IAN is our alma mater – helped us build ICS from a concept to a live and growing business. IAN’s trust in Parul and me has been hugely reassuring and I am sure we will build ICS amongst IAN’s star companies.”

Vikram Kant Upadhyaya, an IAN investor who has mentored the startup over the past 2 years and is joining the board, said that “Anirudh is extremely passionate about this venture and it was a brilliant experience to work with him in building the venture. The revenue growth for IndiaCollegeSearch has been strong over the past few months and the execution level is also getting stronger with time. There is considerable upside potential in this opportunity.”

IndiaCollegeSearch is an example of a successful venture advancing from the IAN Incubator and raising funds. In its continuous endeavor to work for seed and early stage entrepreneurs.