India Angel Network invests in IndiaCollegeSearch

Large percentage of over 1 crore students every year need to make choice of college based on variety of parameters

Indian Angel Network’s (IAN) incubatee company, IndiaCollegeSearch has graduated from the IAN Incubator and has raised investment from IAN. 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.

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. IndiaCollegeSearch (ICS) takes these students online providing them a wider variety and deeper understanding of colleges.

India’s higher-education ecosystem has about 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, an year ago, ICS is currently one of the country’s fastest growing education portal with over 700,000 lakh students using the platform every month. Its clients include large and small colleges with names like Amrita University, Jindal Global University, ICFAI Business Schools, LPU and Alliance School of Business.

"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," said Anupam Mittal, IAN investor.

IndiaCollegeSearch will use the funds raised to expand its existing user base of 10 lakh students and 1,200 colleges.

Anirudh Motwani, Founder and CEO of 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."

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.