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Two college-search sites pulling 10-15 million visits a month, an AI chatbot doing the counselling, and private colleges on the other side of the transaction.
EBITDA positive in the January-March quarter, targeting 15-20% EBITDA next year on 100%+ growth · 80-100% year-on-year growth · over 70 lakh (7 million) students counselled and around 1,500 colleges · 10-15 million visits a month · $9M raised from Winter Capital on top of a $35M Series B
Ten to fifteen million visits a month across two college-search properties, which the CEO says gives them access to roughly 40% of all college-going students — at almost 80% gross margin.
Fewer bars = easier, cheaper, or faster for an AI-assisted solo builder. Editorial judgments based on the case details.
CollegeDekho started in 2015 and, by this February 2023 CNBC-TV18 interview, had counselled over 70 lakh — seven million — students and worked with around 1,500 colleges. The CEO and co-founder, Ruchir Arora, came on the show to talk about a fresh $9 million from Winter Capital, which had also led a $35 million Series B the year before alongside ETS Strategic Capital. The business is a search-and-matching layer over Indian higher education. It runs two college-search properties: CollegeDekho.com and GetMyUni, which it acquired the previous year. Between them they draw roughly 10 to 15 million visits a month, which Arora says amounts to access to about 40% of all college-going students in the country. Prospective students are channelled through that traffic to the right course and the right college, with proprietary technology and an AI-based chatbot doing the routing. The positioning is deliberately unglamorous. They are not chasing the top five percentile of school leavers heading to elite institutions; they work with the students below that line who are going to private colleges, which is where the volume and the marketing budgets both sit. The second act is selling to those students once they are enrolled: skilling courses and placement-guarantee courses delivered in partnership with the colleges, aimed at the employability gap that Indian graduates are constantly said to have. Arora describes a business at almost 80% gross margin, EBITDA positive in the January-March quarter, growing 80-100% year on year, that had gone from roughly 700 people to about 2,000 in twelve months and was hiring 500-600 more.
A two-sided education marketplace has to decide which side it pays for first, and for a college-search directory the answer is almost always the student side, because student traffic is what colleges are buying.
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Data credibility: A CEO interview on a business news channel during an announced funding round, so every figure is founder-stated and unaudited. The auto-caption is materially garbled on the two revenue numbers — the anchor says "112" for FY2021-22 and the CEO says they are close to roughly double that this year, but the currency unit is dropped in both places, so we report no revenue figure rather than guess one. The funding numbers ($9 million from Winter Capital, a $35 million Series B led by the same investor with ETS Strategic Capital) are read out by the anchors from the company's own announcement. The traction figures — 70 lakh students counselled, ~1,500 colleges, 10-15 million monthly visits, about 40% of college-going students, almost 80% gross margin, EBITDA positive in the January-March quarter, 700 to 2,000 headcount — are the CEO's own claims with nothing shown on screen. The CEO's name is rendered "Richard Aurora" and "Richie" by the auto-caption; the company's public record gives Ruchir Arora. The monetisation model is never stated explicitly in the interview and is flagged as our inference where we discuss it.
In a college directory the first dollar is almost never a subscription.
Three loops are visible in this business and they reinforce each other.
A college directory has a brutal feedback cycle built into the calendar. Admissions happen in a season, so a decision made in September is not graded until the following June, and a year with the wrong content bet is a year with no correction available.
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