UPBROAD
By: Somil Yadav
Tags: Study Abroad, Technology, Startup, Blog, Students

The Problem:

In today’s world many students are willing to go to abroad for higher studies and to get better job opportunities and lifestyle but most of the consultancies in present time are not loyal to their work and are doing fraud with their customers and misguiding them.

The Solution:

The idea is to create an online consultancy that would not cheat with its customers and provide them the best support and help they could get and go abroad for a better future they deserve.

What is UpBroad:

Upbroad is an online study abroad consultancy that guides the student in the right direction and provides the student a complete roadmap to his/her favourite university and in the desired country they want. As we all know every country has different visa processes as well as different requirements for their universities and in that too many universities also have different admission criteria, our company will help the student in each and every step be it visa, be it admissions or be it accommodation.

Market Demand:

According to Times of India India sends 71000 students abroad in first two months of 2021, and according to India Today 94% Indian students say they are more eager to study abroad in 2021 than in 2020, and in addition to that according to Careers360 in 2019, a total of 10.9 lakh Indian students had travelled overseas for higher education. These numbers are not few they are a lot and they are increasing at a high rate. While doing research I have found out that majority of the off line consultants are not doing their work honestly, so it’s a great opportunity for a company like ours in this digital era.

Relevant Products in The Market:

There are some companies that are providing similar services as we are like Shiksha, LeapScholar but the difference is that that their services are not affordable for everyone as on the other hand we are going to provide basic services for free and a custom roadmap for every country according to their requirements and in the premium services we will provide a personal counsellor, Coaching for the Exams like IELTS, TOEFL, Aufnahmeprüfung custom designed practice exams that are required for the admissions in the desired university. And also, many of these companies had been started not so long ago, like LeapScholar was started in 2020 so it will not be very difficult to overtake them.

Target Audience:

Our target audience are those students who are willing to go abroad after their high school or those students’ wo have recently completed their graduation and are willing to grab better opportunities and lifestyle for them abroad, as countries like USA, Canada, Germany, Australia, etc. are developed and pays better and provides better work life balance than India. In addition to that we will organize large scale counselling sessions for parents as well to connect with them and make more familiar with our counsellors.

Required Expertise:

1. Hardware — The strategy is not to buy our own servers to provide servers, but rather to hire servers that will reduce operating costs per ton. The maintenance of these servers will also be handled by rental companies which also saves us the cost of repairs. Therefore, there are no hardware requirements like those of the idea to be implemented.

2. Software — As our company is basically a based online, we would need employees who have expertise in programming languages like Java, Kotlin, C++, C#, Python, HTML, CSS, Java Script, dart, for a very optimised app which would provide the user great experience.

3. Human Resource: We would need counsellors with great past experience so they could guide student in the right direction to their desired university and country, and send the customer happy back with a good experience.

Estimated Budget:

This project would require the estimate budget of ₹ 4,00,000, which would cover the development and maintenance of our app (estimated budget for developing and maintaining a great app is around 1 lakh INR) and would also cover rented servers (estimated budget for renting server is 1 to 1.5 lakh INR) in which we would host our app and also it will cover the salary of our start-up team members(In the initial phase of our company the salary will range from 15 to 30 thousand INR per month), and beyond that it is also sufficient to cover the rent of our working space.

Product Pricing:

To keep it affordable we will keep different segments in our premium membership so that everyone can get those services which they want despite of getting services they don’t want.

First Segment — This segment would include a counsellor that would guide the student in the right way till the end and this would cost 10,000 INR consultancy fees only.

Second Segment — This segment would include a personal counsellor and custom set test papers which would prepare the children for the challenges they would face abroad, and this would cost 50,000 INR.

Third Segment — This segment would include a personal counsellor and a full course of the exam the student will be giving with practice test papers which would prepare the student for his best so the student could increase his/her chance of getting into his/her favourite university, and this segment would cost 70,000 INR.

Marketing Plan:

In this current world marketing does not cost a lot thanks to digital marketing in this digital era. We could do the marketing of our product by running ads on YouTube videos, by running ads on Instagram and on Facebook, which would cost us around 8 thousand to 10 thousand, and also, we could hire and sponsor influencer so that they could influence their audience to trust us and we could also give special discounts to those people who are trying us after watching our promotion in their favourite creator’s video, by this we will be able to build a sense of trust among the customers and this would nearly cost around 50 thousand to 60 thousand INR. After this with just a little effort word of mouth will do its work for us.

Risk Analysis:

If anyone starts something there is always a chance of failing down but in our case the chance of failing is very less because all the facts and figures are in our favour, the rate of India in sending students abroad is increasing at a high rate and it does not feel like that this rate is going to slow down in near future. For now, this field is not that competitive in online mode so it’s a good chance for us to step into this now because many new start-ups are stepping into this field and getting success by being a well-established company.

Milestone and Timeline:

December 24th, 2021 — January 24th, 2022

This will the time period of the research, during which all the research work will take place, these 30 days of planning would enable us to think ahead of time and would allow a smart implementation.

January 25th,2022 — March 25th,2022

This will be the time when the development of our well optimised app will take place to serve our customers.

March 26th,2022 — April 10th,2022

This phase will include setting up of the servers which we would rent to run our app.

April 10th,2022 — April 15th,2022

During this time period the testing of the app will be conducted, if we will find any bug, we will fix tat bug in this time period.

April 16th,2022: The Launch of UpBroad

After April 16th,2022, The app will be available for Public and the marketing of our product will be started.

Milestone:

After sometime when our company will be well established our next aim will be to expand in different nations in all the 7 continents.

Conclusion:

This app will bring a change in the market as this will completely end the scams and frauds done by offline counselling companies, and we will be a symbol of trust.