AdmitKard Selected in Top-20 of GSV Cup, the World’s Largest Pitch Competition for Edtech Startups

Will Compete Live at ASU+GSV 13.0 for $1 Million in Prizes at World’s Largest Pitch Competition For EdTech Startups

AdmitKard, Edtech that simplifies access to higher education opportunities, has announced getting shortlisted to the acclaimed GSV Cup Top 20 — the world’s largest pitch competition for EdTech startups.

The companies shortlisted to The Top 20 come from the top pre-seed and seed-stage startups fraternity in digital learning across the “Pre-K to Gray” space. Further to the selection, AdmitKard will now compete for up to $1M in cash and prize at the ASU+GSV Summit to be held in April this year, in San Diego. The annual edtech event is jointly hosted by GSV Ventures and Arizona State University.

AdmitKard is selected from an initial applicant pool of 750+ global companies, which further narrowed to The Elite 200 semifinalists. Over 175 judges hailing from leading venture capital firms including the likes of Accel, Reach Capital, General Atlantic, and Owl Ventures, among others, based on rigorous criteria identified the Top 20 most promising companies. The selected finalists would further compete on Stage X at ASU+GSV.

“We are overwhelmed to bag the esteemed recognition, and to get the opportunity to participate at the reputed ASU GSV. It's a celebration of Technology in Education and we are looking forward to showcasing our disruptive platform to the global community of EdTech leaders. The recognition certainly highlights the edge that AdmitKard boasts in the market, and we are affirmative to making it even bigger on StageX,” said Mr. Piyush Bhartiya- CO-Founder & CEO, AdmitKard.

“GSV is so proud to recognize an epic group of global edtech founders as our final 20,” said Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner of GSV Ventures and Co-founder of ASU+GSV Summit. “These companies have been rigorously evaluated by a judging panel exceeding 90 top venture investors. Congratulations to all!,” she added.

The Top 20 companies play learners from Pre-K to Gray, alongside companies across the categories- K-12, Higher Education, Early Childhood, Adult Enterprise Learnin, Adult Consumer Learning etc. The GSV Cup is powered by Google Cloud, HubSpot for Startups, HolonIQ, and GSV Ventures.

See AdmitKard and the rest of the companies selected to the GSV Cup at https://www.asugsvsummit.com/gsv-cup-elite-200

ABOUT AdmitKard

AdmitKard, a venture capitalist-funded EdTech startup, was founded in 2016 by IIT-IIM Alumni (Piyush Bhartiya & Rachit Agrawal), with an aim to mentor students in the college application process. AdmitKard boasts of a robust technology platform to make the entire application

process effortless and to enable you to apply from the comfort of your home, hostel, or wherever you are in the world, to make your dreams come true!

ABOUT GSV VENTURES

GSV Ventures is a female-led, multi-stage venture capital firm focused on the $7+ trillion education sector. The fund is currently investing out of GSV Ventures Fund III and backs innovative entrepreneurs around the world in the "Pre-K to Gray" Arc of Learning. GSV manages over $675 million in global EdTech investments. Portfolio holdings include Andela, Class Technologies, ClassDojo, Coursera, Course Hero, Degreed, Guild, MasterClass, Outlier, Photomath, Quizizz, Lead School, Brightchamps, and ClassPlus, among others.

Admitkard Announces 150% Increase in the Talent Pool

(L-R) Mr. Rachit Agrawal Co-founder & Mr. Piyush Bhartiya Co-founder and CEO

AdmitKard - Edtech that simplifies access to higher education opportunities, has announced its plans to increase its workforce by 150 %. The brand currently boasts a strength of 100 + people. The startup plans to hire enthusiastic professionals across departments including - Tech & Product, Growth, Student Guidance, Mentorship and Business Operations. With new hiring the brand plans to cross a figure of 250-300 employees by the year end.

The brand had recently raised funds from key edtech players in India, and announced exhausting the same in expanding and onboarding talent.

“Indian edtech sector has only risen in the last one year. We ourselves witnessed a 110 percent rise in the number of queries. The platform has already processed over 10,000 applications, and counselled over 50,000 students. In order to grow , and refine the service further we need to add quality resources to the team. During the pandemic, a lot of talented professionals were seeking jobs. This might be an opportunity for both the sides, professionals and AdmitKard,” said Mr. Rachit Agrawal, Co-founder of AdmitKard - edtech enabling higher education opportunities.

With this hiring announcement, AdmitKard opens its doors to ambitious professionals including fresh graduates, and those with over 6-7 yrs experience in the required fields. The fresh joinees would majorly be based out of NCR.

This is the brand's second hiring drive in a single year. The brand had boarded over 50 entry level candidates in its last drive with the idea of onboarding young resources with energy and ideas.

The platform is a technology first company. It implements AI, Machine learning and data analytics in order to provide finest edtech solutions enabling higher education prospects. The brand has also developed Proprietary guidance methodology purely on technology basis.

AdmitKard Raises INR 10 Cr in Pre-Series A Round from the Clutch of EdTech Startup Founders

AdmitKard, an EdTech platform that simplifies accessing higher education abroad has raised INR 10Cr in Pre-Series A Round . The round is majorly raised by founders of ed-tech platforms only that have participated in their personal capacity. 

The funding round witnessed participation from the founders of renowned ed-tech start-up-like -Vamsi Krishna & Pulkit Jain of Vedantu, Mayank Kumar of upGrad, Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini & Sumit Jain of Unacademy, Tanushree Nagori, Aditya Shankar & Ravi Sekhar of DoubtNut, Akshay Saxena of Avanti, and other prominent investors including Pankaj Chaddah (ex-Zomato), Suhail Sameer & Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl of BharatPe ,Vijay Arisetty (MyGate), Anand Chandrasekaran (ex-Snapdeal, Facebook), Sameer Guglani of Morpheus Gang, BCG Partners, MD of JPMorgan and others.

The pandemic certainly wreaked havoc on the start-up industry, however, ed-tech has been one of the sectors to witness growth in traction. The sector moving towards holistic growth has exhibited a mutually beneficial approach in this fundraise where ed-tech founders have come forward to participate in fundraise by AdmitKard.

"During the pandemic, we realized that students were not able to travel abroad due to the closed international borders. Hence we doubled down our effort on ensuring the students’ experience in our long drawn funnel gets better. To enable that we realized the guidance to the students’ needs to be product-driven instead of being dependent on humans. We sought guidance from our mentors from other EdTech companies and de-skilled the entire counselling process, solving a major problem of counsellors in this industry." said Mr. Rachit Agrawal – Co-Founder, AdmitKard.

"I have been a mentor to Rachit & Piyush for a long time now and have seen the journey of AdmitKard. Their focus on productizing student guidance and de-skilling the role of a counselor is a big win as it solves a very fundamental problem of talent quality and standardization at scale. I am happy to be a part of their growth journey" said Mr. Vamsi Krishna – Co-Founder, Vedantu

“AdmitKard has chosen the right category that has been waiting to be disrupted and addressing it with great service, unlocking desired value for students. The team is well placed to disrupt the space which is unorganized and dominated by offline players with a great PMF and strong plans to scale and hence have decided to back it” said Mr. Ravi Shekhar KV, Co-Founder DoubtNut.

"As someone who has studied abroad extensively and understands the challenges one faces from discovering the right program to arriving on campus, I am excited about what AdmitKard is building. Their product-first approach to democratising access to global education is what our youth need today” said Mr. Dhruv Dhanraj Bahl – COO, BharatPe.

"We witnessed a 1100 percent hike in the number of queries pouring in. We have seen spectacular growth and kudos to our automation, we were able to handle them well. Now the focus is on growth and hence we would be raising a bigger round. This is more like a mentors and well-wishers round. We are fortunate to have credible names from ed-tech sector itself and other marquee angels backing us today. We have touched ARR of USD ~2Mn in the month of June 2021 and are on track to hit ARR of USD ~8Mn by March’22." said Mr. Piyush Bhartiya- Founder & CEO, AdmitKard.

Including the current round, the startup has raised a total of INR 17 Cr. It has created a strong community of international students and students looking to study abroad. They have already served students from 26 states in India through their platform and have also served few students from multiple other countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Vietnam. The company is scaling at a fast pace, having counselled over 25000 students, processing around 12000 applications, and boasting a strong portfolio of over 2300 universities across the globe.

About AdmitKard

Launched in 2017, AdmitKard is a funded Edtech that simplifies access to higher

education opportunities. Incepted by IIT-IIM Alumni (Piyush Bhartiya & Rachit Agrawal), with an aim to mentor students in the college application process, AdmitKard boasts of a robust technical platform to make the entire application process effortless and to enable aspirants to apply from the comfort zone.

Noida-based Startup AdmitKard Raises $1 Mn in Funding led by Australian EdTech Fund Growth DNA

Noida-based study abroad admissions startup AdmitKard on Tuesday announced it has raised $1 million in pre-Series A round led by Australian EdTech fund Growth DNA. The round also saw participation from other investors based out of Australia and India.

Speaking about the investment, Piyush Bhartiya, Co-founder, AdmitKard, said, “We will use the capital to enhance our product, strengthen our AI-driven counseling algorithms, and blockchain managed partner contracts. We also plan to rapidly expand our presence across 100+ cities in India through our already thriving partner network.”

Founded by IIT and IIM graduates Piyush Bhartiya and Rachit Agrawal after their successful exit from their first startup “LifePad” in 2016, AdmitKard provides a “course to career” solution for students who are looking for cross-border admissions into universities and colleges. The startup uses the concept of “near-peer” mentoring and AI/ML to assist in decision making. It connects students aspiring to study abroad with the students already studying in universities overseas through the AdmitKard platform for advice.

“AdmitKard is a data-enabled social platform which helps in eliminating information asymmetry and building trust among aspirants,” said Rachit. "It is a socially active platform by the students, for the students. Current students are passionate to guide aspirants on AdmitKard as they feel they were misguided when they were applying to study abroad,” he added.

AdmitKard has already partnered with multiple service providers ranging from test prep, student accommodation, education loans, banking, forex, etc., making it a complete solution for every student seeking to study abroad.

The startup helps students for applying to 1,000+ universities and colleges in countries including the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many more. With over 100,000 courses listed on AdmitKard, it claims to cover 95 percent of the global requirement of international students.

Dheeraj Bhatia, Co-founder of Kips Learning Solutions, who led the deal from India, said, “Student experience for college admissions both for India and international and allied services are broken and underserved. The AdmitKard approach of product and network is the key to solve the scalability issue of this domain, and will enable us to serve students from around the world.”

In a statement, the startup said every year, more than five million students seek cross border admissions with the majority of them traveling to the US, the UK, Europe, Australia, and Canada, collectively paying more than $100 billion in fees and another $25 billion in allied services.

Not surprisingly, India is a key contributor to the student out-bound flow, only second to China. With multiple new countries promoting themselves as an education hub and India too joining the race, the total number of students going abroad to study is expected to double by 2025, it added. At present, AdmitKard competes with Indian and global players like SchoolApply, CollegeVine, CollegeDekho, Collegedunia, Shiksha Abroad, Kings Learning, and Hotcourses Abroad among others, which also help students fulfill their overseas education dreams.