Edukhoj Success Story: An extensive search engine for the students, parents, and education industry players

Company Profile is an initiative by ListMyStartUp to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Edukhoj.

Edukhoj Success Story

In today's fast-paced world, almost everyone is running a race to learn something new and achieve success in their lives. However, it is a known fact that the very first step towards any journey is the hardest, and oftentimes, people get sceptical about their career options just because they cannot find an appropriate source for their educational research.

Edukhoj - Company Highlights

Startup Name-Edukhoj
Legal Name-Edu Educational Services
Headquarters-Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
Industry-Education
Founder-Abhishek Porwal
Founded-2020
Areas Served-India
Website-edukhoj.com

Edukhoj - About

Edukhoj.com is a one-stop, data driven & technology- based educational platform which helps in connecting students to education Institutes & making informed decisions. Empowering learners worldwide with community discussions, counselling & educational blogs on various test preparation, skill-based, distance learning or college-level courses. An Artificial Intelligence web-based education institute tool for nurturing inquiries to admissions and more.

Edukhoj - Industry

PAM (Potential Addressable Market): The Indian education market is expected to grow 2x to $225 billion by FY25 at a 14% CAGR over FY20-25.
TAM (Total Addressable Market): The education sector in India is $117 billion worth, the Education Market size in FY2020.
SAM (Serviceable Available Market): $68 billion
Indian Higher Education Market Size $35.03 billion by 2025 - India Tutor/Coaching Market Size $26 billion.
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) is $3 billion - The share of SAM that the company believes it can and will win.

Edukhoj - Startup Story

Since the growth of the education (test preparation platform)/edtech in pre-Covid and post-Covid times, Abhishek observed that education was being sold by creating a monopolistic education market by big brands who hold billion-dollar valuations or huge funding. What he always believed about education was that the education market should never be monopolistic as education is for all sections of society. Learners should not be deprived of education just because of price tags. Education should be bought; it should not be a forced sale. All this encouraged him to build an education marketplace where learners across the globe can compare, search, apply, and inquire about education as per their requirements with probably all the details.
The initial people with whom Abhishek talked about the company were the leaders in the education industry, colleagues, institute owners and even to students & parents, the core team and his family members, who were highly positive and impressed as it was going to bring positive change in our education ecosystem the way it's being searched.
The team even did a short survey with a few of the institute's owners to understand their pain points. And with students too, on 'Factors deciding why they select the particular institutes’ and how they search for the education in which they are interested.
Working with an education test preparation platform with different companies at different locations helped the company get validation of its idea.
Being a bootstrapped startup and building out of savings, the journey of ideation, designing, and prototyping is filled with passion and experience to connect learners to educational services and product providers across the globe, which is still a challenge.

Edukhoj - Name, Logo, and Tagline

The team was looking for a name that should have no limitations to geographical boundaries. Long calls with the core team, meeting on a few occasions at cafes or having tea or coffee and maggie, as both the snacks have maximum geographical acceptability by humans with fixed ingredients. They also thought of the same aspect/pattern as they were targeting only one sector, which was education, and what they were building was an education platform that understands two languages, Hindi as an Indian and English as a global language, so they combined Hindi and English terminology to give it a name, Edukhoj, where Edu is defined as "Education" & khoj means "Search".

Edukhoj - Mission and Vision

Edukhoj's mission and vision is to build an education ecosystem for learners and academic institutions across the globe.
Company Motto: Search Education

Edukhoj - Products/Services

The platform deals on the basis of a subscription model. The products/services provided by the company are:
Branding & CPL option to educational institutes.
A mix of online advertisements and institute partnerships.
They have a simple working formula that is: Search-Shortlist-Apply.
Edukhoj's USP:
First to build an education marketplace.
They have their own CRM for institute partners, which saves their extra costs in CRM.
Verified Leads.
A detailed listing of academic institutions: Coaching, Professional institutes, Colleges and Universities.

Edukhoj is a one-of-a-kind educational marketplace aimed at connecting learners to educational services and product providers across the globe. The platform provides solutions to various problems for both students as well as educational institutes.

Students Perspective:

Lack of reliable information on global educational institutes and career choices.
Absence of an integrated platform addressing all educational-related queries.
Poor decision-making due to insufficient information on studying in India and Studying abroad matters.
Education Institutes and Content Creator Perspective:
Limited market visibility and reach worldwide.
High cost of marketing and CRM.
Unavailability of verified organic leads.

Edukhoj - Business and Revenue Model

Business Model: Branding & CPL (lead basis).

Edukhoj.com earns its revenue from paid advertising, which allows institutes to promote themselves on the site. A Cost Per Lead (CPL) approach where they will obtain a CPL from the institutes. A mix of online advertisements and institute partnerships.

Edukhoj - Customer Acquisition Strategy

Building a bootstrapped startup is hard, but in reality, it's just like searching for life on the moon with limited resources, or you can say, just like studying a whole year for one examination, and the result is not known unless you appear for the examination. Edukhoj members as a team pinged each other at any point in time to get the task done, working hard day and night to build the smallest of features to their best.
As usual, moving ahead with daily routine, the team with their superb coordination just rechecked each aspect placed in the best way as per tech standards or as required and, after almost working for around a year on Edukhoj, they made the website live and waited patiently for the first user on the website, which happened in a couple of days, and the rest is the journey of sustaining in Covid and generating revenue with month on month growth. Closing the first subscription deal through cold calling was the best motivation factor for the entire team.

The following are the prominent strategies that the company used for acquiring the first 100 users:

Cold Calling
Direct institute visits
Traditional Marketing Methods
References

And yes, for sure, every business has its own secret of success.

Edukhoj - Marketing

As of now, the company has not run any marketing campaigns. However, they prioritised and relied on the following strategies for their marketing:

Delivery of commitment to institute partners
Trust
Timely delivery of services
After-sales services

Being bootstrapped, they had a limited budget, so they stuck to the basics of sales and marketing.

All this brought good word of mouth for Edukhoj, which helped them to grow month on month and sustain in the tough times of Covid.

The company started with coaching and professional institutes and, in a span of 1.5 years, they have grown to include Edukhoj in higher education too, and they are soon moving ahead with study abroad and e-learning services.

Edukhoj - Achievements

Participated in the Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive by IIT Kharagpur.

Sold their services in 11 states.
Bootstrapped the build to revenue-generating stage and sustained the Covid period.
Onboarded a few national institutes.

Edukhoj - Challenges Faced

Building a bootstrapped startup is itself a challenge. Building the best products/services for consumers, but being the best, the team never knows how the users will react/behave or how the platform will be accepted in the respective sector ecosystem. What worked for Edukhoj in the initial days was following business basics, moving patiently, and acquiring customers and a user base.
Team, patience, and persistence are the keys to where Edukhoj is today.

Edukhoj - Competitors

The following are some of the competitors of Edukhoj:

Shiksha
Collegedunia
CollegeDekho
Careers360

Edukhoj - Future Plans

Edukhoj's current operating locations are Lucknow and Delhi NCR. The company is generating month-on-month revenue and has tie-ups with national-level institutes that have multiple branches across India and with local city-based institutes too in the education sector.

The company's future plans include:

Getting Edukhoj to reach learners across the globe & getting all educational service/product providers on Edukhoj's platform.

Building a sustainable education ecosystem for learners across the globe.
Edukhoj to be each learner's search priority for education.
To have each educational institute on Edukhoj's platform.
Unicorn status, IPO listing.
AI-based CRM for academic institutions

FAQs

What is Edukhoj?

Edukhoj is a one-stop, data-driven and technology-based educational platform which helps in connecting students to educational institutes and making informed decisions.