RISE-Pocket Cousnelor

Statistics show upto 68% of tertiary education applicants opt for private counseling.  Market research for student discovery revealed that 79% of services users have described them as incomplete, misleading, time-consuming, and expensive. Even after spending 200$/Hour for premium counseling and   approx. $10-12000 for Test preparation classes, students and parents put a combined effort of 200-400 hrs in this exhausting exercise of perfect university course selection and admission application. Students have to hop from one service provider to another in search for complete set of services. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that low-income students are often steered toward commission yielding or less-selective colleges, even if they have the academic qualifications to attend more prestigious institutions.

On the other hand, Universities often discover mismatch among students expectations and their offerings. Institutional audit reports are now detecting increasing number of incomplete and misaligned applications resulting in unsuccessful attempts. Upto 38% of seats in universities and colleges run unfulfilled each year. Not to forget, millions of $ are spent on marketing of programs in anticipation of reaching out to qualifying applicants as well.

What if we solve this? What if we built a product that bridges this gap to give students their right to intuitive counseling. We are talking about a student-centric platform empowered by seasoned counselors and coaches offering holistic, data driven and unbiased admission solutions to dream universities and colleges worldwide.

 and all this with No cost to the students, students can save a fortune and utilize it towards paying for their Education. We will be working as Enrolment assistance by universities to help recruit better prepared students compensated by admission commission per enrolment.

We are automating the repeated mundane tasks so counselors can focus on brining quality to students profile. There will never be a time in which AI bot will be drafting students Sop and admission essays

Product
Currently, there are around 275 million tertiary education students in the world. Out of these
61.71M students are in US and India having income potential of $7.29B. With the right
Marketing strategies, we are projecting to benefit 0.3% of international student based in
India and US and 0.1% of Domestic student base, totaling 66000 students with overall
Income Potential of $10.05M at the end of First Application year.
Business Model
There are 2 kind of service providers now- Direct and Indirect competitors who either offer
limited Free services or paid premium services to either domestic or international students
but not usually both. We have created this hybrid Freemium model after studying the
industry trends and journeys. We are combining the benefits of premium and free counseling
patterns to mitigate the any ill effects. This will give us an advantageous edge from our
direct and Indirect competitors who either offer limited free services or paid premium
services to either domestic or international students but not usually both.
Future
Higher Education is a fast-paced, evolving industry. Even after the pandemic and some
country shutting their borders for international students, this industry has defied all odds
and have stood tall.
This will also aid in much needed boosting employment in Education sector which is
suffering from high surge in opportunities resulting in current providers involuntarily exiting
the industry in search of better paying jobs in different domain to sustain their living.
We will be extending our services to other countries one by one in subsequent years and
will move from Online only platform to setting up branch offices in next 5 years to reach to
ARR of $140M.  

Principal Members
Aakriti Jain – Founder & CEO
The founder being an awarded pioneer Education Counselor will be utilizing all her decade
and a half experience and skills owing to accreditation and certification from PIER, ICEF,
IDP and British Council to lead a team of seasoned experienced counselors and continue
helping students achieve dream of studying in Top Tier Universities globally.
Kunal Vijan – CTO
Technical Co-founder working as UI Architect hailing from 16 years’ experience in web
development is all committed to offer data driven solutions facilitating international and
domestic admissions.
Advisory Board:
Currently our advisory board members have EdTech Pioneers having 11 years of exp and 3
exits. We have also identified key team players who will help us through this MVP Product
development journey.
Legal Structure
Rise Higher Education is an LLC Corporation, incorporated in the state of North Carolina.
Delaware C Corp Registration is applied, and we are currently awaiting out Registration
documents. We have also incorporated a subsidiary in India. We will be expanding our


Rise Higher Education B
services and utilizing appropriate registrations and approval in other destinations as well
while headquarters and base office in US

I myself is a Pioneer admission education counselor with 15 years of Higher Education EdTech Industry experience and accreditation from governing bodies PIER, ICEF, IDP and British Council.

My journey started after my brother got admission into a California state university campus for his masters. Our whole family was very happy and proud as he was first in the family to go abroad for higher education pursuits. I on the other hand, was fascinated with the sharp contrast in Indian and US education system and so  My inquisitive self switched to Education counseling.

But as I dug deeper I realize how he was mislead by his counselor, how his interest got directed towards lesser selective commission yielding institution even though his academic profile and GRE score have potential to get admission in much higher ranked University. He was under an impression that he got admission in one of Top 5 Comp SC Universities of that time which infact was nowhere true. My parents also did not imply any financial limitation even though we were from single earning Indian middle class.

This affected me, It was an eye opener on how unethical practices are followed in this noble profession that even meritorious students with paying capacity wellbeing are defeated by business needs. Since then I have made it to point to help students identify the true potential of their profile and uplift and polish it in such a way to maximise chances of acceptace. In the last dacade and a half while working with various established counseling houses, including both analog giants and startups, I have helped more than 10,000 students achieve their dreams with Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 9.2+ with 46% placement in top tier universities. In this journey I understood students pain points very well and also saw similarity among Indian and US students expectations.

Now in this AI tsaunami, I would like to utilize technology to better service tertiary education seekers by empowering their profile.

Making Education Counseling accessable to all students irrespective of border, caste, color, sex, creed, category, financial status, annual income, location, accessibility to internet, dependence on school counselors. 

We are aiming to build a student-centric admission platform empowered by seasoned counselors and coaches offering holistic, data driven and unbiased admission solutions to dream universities and colleges worldwide.

As a business committed to creating a positive impact on society, our impact goals for the next year and the next five years are centered around providing accessible and affordable education counseling to individuals from all walks of life. Our solution, Rise Higher Education, aims to make education accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial status or location. 

Over the next year, our primary impact goal is to provide access to education counseling to at least 66000 individuals who might/might not be using other education counseling provider services. With our no bounding platform, students can continue to process with their school counselors and use our services to compliment and complete their requirement lifecycle. We plan to achieve this by partnering with educational institutions and organizations to offer different verticals of our services. We are in process of launching our first Vertical of scholarship search called ScholaRISE.

ScholaRISE is a free platform that provides students with a personalized scholarship database, powered by an AI-powered matching algorithm. Our platform takes into account a wide range of factors, including academic performance, extracurricular activities, financial need, and other relevant criteria specified by scholarship providers. Our goal is to help students find the most suitable scholarship opportunities for their academic and personal goals, and we believe that your scholarship program can provide valuable support to students who meet your eligibility requirements. With our strict data protection policies, we ensure the security and confidentiality of our users' information. We aim to develop and launch all verticals till August of this year so first batch of early applicants can be benefitted. We aim to service base in India and US for initial 2 application years before extending the support and apply marketing activities to other countries one by one. 

Over the next five years, our impact goals are even more ambitious. We aim to provide access to education to at least 1M individuals across the globe. To achieve our impact goals, we will employ a multi-pronged approach that includes developing partnerships with educational institutions and organizations, leveraging technology to create innovative solutions, and building a strong team of educators and professionals who are committed to our mission. 

In terms of traction, we have already established partnerships with 1400 universities globally and 15 education loan providers and served 160+ students in our test run of Offline Pilot. 

We are only leveraging technology (AI) towards servicing the students. Creating AI Bot and 24*7 Natural Language Processing Counseling Rooms will help the students to get their answers as and when they need it and eradicate the need of appointment wait times. With this we are automating the repeated mundane tasks what a counselors perform on everyday basis so they ca focus on bringing quality to students profile. We do understand the importance of empathetic counseling and ethical code of conduct and there will never be a time in which our system is writing admission essays on behalf of students. 

Impactful:

Students and parents-

•Save up to $40k and 400 hours

•Unbiased advice, anytime and anywhere

•All services on one platform

•Compare universities/courses and save on fees

Universities and Colleges

•Access polished applicants

•Targeted faculty/marketing team

•Save time and money

•User-friendly database for students

Counselors/Education Enthusiast

•Remote setup for resources

•Non-sales platform for quality services

•Reduce high school counselor burden

Societal Impact

•Equal treatment for all students on one platform

•Motivate and prepare students to maximize their potential

•Worldwide service for domestic and international students

•Honest role in guiding students' important decision of higher education

To measure progress toward impact goals, we use a combination of quantitative and qualitative metrics. We have developed a framework that includes key performance indicators (KPIs) for each impact goal, which allows us to track progress over time and make data-driven decisions.

For example, for our goal of increasing access to higher education for underrepresented communities, we track the number of students from these communities who enroll in our programs, as well as their retention and graduation rates. We also gather qualitative data through surveys and interviews to understand the impact of our programs on students’ lives.

For our goal of reducing student loan debt, we track the amount of debt that students are able to reduce through our financial aid and scholarship programs. We also track the percentage of students who successfully complete our financial literacy program and report an increase in their financial knowledge and skills.

Our aim is to increase employment in education sector which at the moment if facing huge serge. With our remote setup employees dont have to migrate leaving their family behind and students can take advantage of quality counseling without traveling at a remote area

Overall, we believe that a combination of quantitative and qualitative data is necessary to fully understand the impact of our work and make informed decisions about how to improve our programs and services. We are committed to continuously evaluating and improving our measurement and evaluation processes to ensure that we are effectively achieving our impact goals.

I am an education counselor as profession and passion. Worked for 15 years with various Counseling houses including Analog Giants and startups in founders offices. I have seen people joining the industry from all walks of life and drastically failing as they are unable to understand the market need and students point of view.

This has made more and more students repel from Education Counselors and as a result there is a considerable dissatisfaction among students.
With technology, I am empowering students with correct knowledge to identify the true potential of their profile, uplifting and polishing it to maximise their chances of getting an admit in the dream university their profile deserves, rather than governing students with my decisions and viewpoints of their profile.

With the increase in demand, we are  digitalizing our services so more and more students can take advantage. With correct business knowledge, I am making our platform more scalable and sustainable. 

The Education Counseling Business as it should be-by a Student Counselor

Rise Higher Education is world’s first automated Education Counseling provider.
It is one-of-a-kind innovation which will act according to whims and fences of students,
optimizing Cloud Infrastructure and services, AI, ML driven data techniques chatbots, deep
learning, decision trees to provide personalized counseling solutions to the students even in
rural and far-flung areas.
Introducing our Effective Counseling facilitated through computer adaptive multilingual
humanoid robot which personalizes and deliver verbal results and associated transcripts
from our state of art cutting-edge ML methods which responds according to keywords input
by students during profile form filling.
Our multilingual demonstration will give an option to change the counseling language and
closed caption in listeners preferred language/mother’s tongue. Developing NLP using java
and python technologies speech recognition which will facilitate students in verbal and
written communication with the bots.
Cloud based database and multi-region data storage to ensure user will get faster and
accurate results from HTTP based APIs to facilitate course selection.
Perfecting the Art of shortlisting using official records from university resources and data
banks like US NEWS, IIE Open Doors, Times Higher Ranking, QS, etc. to provide cross
functional data based on student’s profile and matching eligibility, feasible data along with
practical life competitive scores, admission predictability score, profile competitiveness for
students to take calculated risks. By providing accurate data we are empowering students
to take informed choices and not push them to choose among our array of partner
universities only. This is the major impact will bring game changer innovation.
Developed the Digital Coaching Avatars will test students’ readiness using mock tests and
offer customized preparation classes accordingly for most common tests like
IELTS/Toefl/GRE/GMAT/SAT/ACT/LSAT. Continuous progress tracking and evaluation will
ensure students’ progress.
Scholarship and Education Loan feature allow students to find their eligible options and
plan better for finances. This will be done through linking their APIs on our platform
Introducing our AI enabled 24*7 Bot services - Students will get an answer to queries as
and when they require with no dependency on providers working timeframe. Our Intelligent
Bot can understand and give results based on keywords and sentences both. The Data
security system will keep all student’s information intact and secured visible to student
only. The explanation of each application requirement and document ensures error free
application to mitigate any refusal chances

Research Team: 23 + Interns
(5) US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Dubai/UAE, India Germany, Asia, Europe ROW Process
Expert
(5 + Interns) US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Dubai/UAE, India Germany, Asia, Europe ROW
College/University Partnership and Engagement Specialist
(1+ Intern) Scholarship Database Associate
(2) Education Loan Specialist
(2) Finance Team (to assist in Offer Acceptance and tuition fee payment)
(1) Visa Team
(1) Ticketing and currency Exchange
(2) Editors (SOP/LOR/Essays)
(2) Job Portal
(2) Mentor/Buddy Connect
Technical Team:9
(1) Dev Ops
(1) Architect
(1) Testers
(4) Developers
(1) Designers
(1) Project Manager
Marketing Team:5
(1) Content writers
(2) Social media and Outreach Manager + Interns
(1) Video Creator and Editor
(1) University and Organization marketing
Business Team: 5
(1) Founder/ CEO
(1) CTO
(1) CFO (Finance and Legal advice)
(1) Media and Outreach manager
(1) Business Analyst
With this we foresee to being and increase employment in US, increase our wonderful
female equally or more talented education industry employment, reduce gender biased
income disparity, increase education sector reach.

B2B2C

Our Revenue source can be bifurcated as below:
• Admission Commission (80%)
International Student: $500
Domestic: $100
• Education Loan (10%)
$50 per invoice
• Value Added Services (10%)
o Ticketing, Accommodation and Currency Exchange
o Media Influence YouTube and Instagram
o Marketing and Advertisement
$50 per invoice 

Service Line
Counseling
• Country Selection
• Course Selection
• University Shortlisting
• Process Counseling
• Financial Counseling
• Visa Counseling
Coaching
• IELTS/Toefl/GRE/GMAT/SAT/ACT/LSAT etc
University Applications
• Application fee waivers
• SOP/LOR/Essays
• Application submission and Tracking/follow-up
• Mentor/Buddy Connect
Finance
• Offer Finalization and Acceptance
• Scholarships
• Education Loan
Pre-Departure
• Accommodation
• Ticketing
• Currency Exchange
• Insurance
Post Departure:
• Part Time and Full-Time Job listing 

Selling Education Counseling Services-Admission+Value Added

University placement commission

Premium Fee for a counselor contact

x

I decided to venture out as independent education counselors in Charlotte, NC in 2022, we served over 160 students and made a revenue of 42000$. Along the way, we've built a network of 1400 universities and colleges, as well as 15 education loan providers. Now, as we transition from a small-scale operation to a startup, we're excited to digitalize our services and reach even more students in need.