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Helping Students Make a Better Choice in Higher Studies

Ever thought of a single platform where you get reliable information about universities, courses, countries when doing research on studies abroad or for that prestigious institute of higher learning within the country?

Two youth from Kerala have attempted to build just that – an “Amazon” of student admissions and recruitment they call Edumpus, a social media education platform. This is a startup that promises to ease the process of scouting for admission to a good foreign university or an institute of higher learning in India. The startup was started in July 2019.

With close to two decades of experience in academics, in India and abroad, between them, the duo felt there was a need for a dependable platform offering all the relevant information to the students and connecting them with the academia and institutions.

Ajesh Raj, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer, Edumpus, told Tricity Scoop that “we wanted to simplify access to higher education. Our social communication platform uses artificial intelligence to connect all the stakeholders in higher education – the students, the institutes and the offline educational consultants.”

What the Edumpus has done is to expand the choices available to students by aggregating a large repository of universities across countries. Students are also given personalized suggestions regarding courses and streams to choose based on their aptitude and yearning. “Our system can suggest the best fit courses for the students based on their scores and capabilities,” he said adding, “our aim was to harness AI and machine learning to transform the student recruitment industry.”

What Edumpus has done is to create a vast database with up-to-date information on listed universities and institutions. We have a dedicated team that constantly updates the database whenever new information needs to be added or existing data needs alteration, he said.

Students can also use helpline numbers for advice from specialists.

To describe what they do, Ajesh Raj described their startup as “the Amazon of student recruitment” and a student can “order” what he wants from a list of our ‘offerings’ (list of courses, subjects, universities), which will then be processed and “delivered by the platform and specialist advisers.

When asked how he hit upon the idea for this social communication platform for education, he said that inefficiencies in the student recruitment sector needed a tech-enabled SaaS platform.

“We have tried to combine an AI-driven approach using predictive models with effective relationship management. For example, a student considers a limited number of variables when deciding on higher education – affordability, geography, etc. And in the post-pandemic world, the need for identifying the best fit for students becomes more important given the emergence of new educational dimensions.

Besides, there are other variables, such as budgets, academic requirements, scholarship availability, intakes, universities, etc. to be taken into account. “We factor in these variables and use AI to suggest the best fit for each student and that they get a full idea of what they can aim for.”

“Basically, we at Edumpus do all the research on behalf of the students and think of all aspects before advising them. “We also hand-hold the students through other aspects of the recruitment process like counselling, visa applications, guidance on offer conditions, accommodation facilities, etc,” he said.

India sends about 2 lakh to 3 lakh students abroad every year and out of this, undergraduate students make up about 10 per cent. Students from India take admissions in over 5,000 schools and universities abroad each year to study hundreds of different courses.

At present, the startup has managed to build a portfolio of over 500 institutions in more than 15 countries and has a strong 1000-strong network of educational consultants associated with the social communication network.

“Yes, the future belongs to a networked individual, and we at Edumpus will encourage all the students to stay networked, with each other and with the academic world, even after they walked out of the educational institutions into professional life,” the CEO of the startup said.

Lakshmana Venkat Kuchi, Consulting Editor, is a senior journalist with over three and a half decades experience in the profession at the national and regional level. For the longest duration in over three decade career, he was associated with Hindustan Times for 18 years in New Delhi, Jaipur and Chennai. Email id: kvlakshman@gmail.com & Twitter: @kvlakshman

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