Ayush, at the age of 17, encountered the challenge for a student to choose the right career while guiding a domestic helper to get back to education. Later at the age of 22, he chose to quit his lucrative job in Investment Banking to solve this problem and founded iDreamCareer. He has spent the past 11 years in the space of career guidance and as a full-time entrepreneur for the last 10 years. He has successfully led iDreamCareer to become the largest career counseling social enterprise in India empowering close to 2.5 Crore+ students annually. Ayush was selected as India's top 10 Entrepreneur by the US state government to attend the GES 2016, hosted by US President Barack Obama. He has recently made it to the Business World Education 40 under 40 2020.

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About iDreamCareer:

With the World's largest young population, India must put its young students on pathways leading to sustainable careers and livelihoods. That is precisely iDC's mission - to increase the Gross Enrollment Ratio into the 'suitable career pathways' at senior secondary school & higher education across India, including for students from low-income families.

iDC offers a full-stack career pathways & college selection guidance offering that includes over 1047 hours of content on careers, colleges, exams, and scholarships supported by reliable psychometric assessments & personalized counselling. iDC has exhaustively mapped pathways to 1300+ white-collar professions and 1500+ pathways for blue/brown-collar jobs in India and worldwide.

With an outreach to over 20+ Million students via partnerships with 16 state governments, iDC is India's topmost socio-economic mobility tech platform for young students. Recognised as one of the World's top 200 Edtech companies at ASUGSV Summit 2020 & the top 100 EdTech companies in South Asia by Holon IQ 2020, iDC has partnered with top global & Indian corporate CSR/philanthropies like Hindustan Unilever, Hero Group, Shiv Nadar Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Kotak, Ernst & Young, McKinsey's Generation etc. and also with over 150 top private schools in India.

1 Could you share a little on iDreamCareer’s business model and how are you reaching education focussed solutions to underserved populations in India?

iDreamCareer offers career & college guidance program to students across the socio-economic strata, with major focus on students from low-income families.

We primarily operate in B2B business model which has two kind of institutions to partner with. One is with Corporate CSR/philanthropies where we work with students from low-income families. The second is with private schools where we work with low-middle income families via partnership with private schools. A third smaller model for us has been the B2B2C model where we offer very personalised college application guidance program for India & Abroad to students from private schools.

2 The Indian EdTech space has been observing a slowdown in the last two years, after the huge momentum it received during the Covid-19 pandemic wherein there was a mass transition to tech-enhanced learning.

In such a scenario, what is the key differentiator in iDreamCareer’s value proposition, that is enabling its growth and sustainability?

We always believed in two things. One that technology is an enabler in education and not the delivery itself & the second that the most important piece in sustaining an EdTech company is patience and deep madness about the tangible outcome one build for young students.

Unlike other EdTech who saw tailwinds in with respect to demand for EdTech solution, for us COVID was a bit challenging as school to college transitioning and specially the technology access for students in low-income families was low, we could not scale our solution immediately which was very much hybrid or offline pre-covid. However, we quickly adapted and transitioned to a fully online offering to students and that helped us grow in a slower space during FY’20 and FY’21 rather than seeing a decline in our business. Thereon when the COVID hyped cycle of EdTech died, we raised our largest ever round of funding led by Menterra, and with participation from Gray Matters Capital and Artha Impact. This funding helped us massively in setting up a strong advisory board, leadership team, technology advancement and most importantly restructuring our Monitoring & Evaluation process that helped us strongly in showing the outcome our interventions.

The key differentiator in our value proposition has always been the end-to-end transition offering for a student from school to higher education. Our value proposition is that we will help students in career exploration, further in self-awareness, finding a right-fit career pathway, entire college admission guidance and then finally to get the right scholarship. Our approach is a full-stack offering helping students get complete help from career exploration to college admission to financing. And that set us apart in the space.

3 The Uttar Pradesh government recently partnered with iDreamCareer to provide in-person counseling to support school students especially in tier-2 locations.

Could you share a little more on this partnership and the outcomes you are looking to achieve?

What are some of the other similar initiatives or alliances that you believe will be crucial towards extending accessible and affordable education solutions to rural and semi-urban locations?

We launched the Uttar Pradesh project with support from Michael & Susan Dell Foundation in October, 2023. The program aims to work with approximately 30,000 students of class 10,11,12 in approximately 100 government schools located in 5 Districts of UP. The program intends to offer end-to-end career & college guidance to students that includes career exploration through a technology platform, psychometric career assessment, multiple 1:1 counseling through counselor visit to schools and further outbound helpline counseling on telephone where counselors ensures students apply to colleges/vocational institutes and get the required scholarships. The program aim to increase the Eligible Enrolment Rate at class 11th and at college level by 5-10%. This will ensure lesser drop out rate while students transition from class 10th to 11th and class 12th to college.

4 What is the nature and quantum of capital that you are looking to raise in the current year?

Could you share a little on your upcoming growth plans and path to profitability?

We are raising a total of Rs. 30 Crore this year, out of which approximately Rs. 5 Cr has been already invested by our existing investors this month. We aim to close the rest Rs. 25 crore fund raise by Sep/Oct this year.

We grew our revenue 3x in FY’24 while also achieving month-on-month profitability in Oct, 2023. We are aiming for a further 3x growth in FY’25 with 6-7% EBITDA profitability. Building sustainable business with strong unit economics is our DNA and we will always be staying away from burn mode pathway in the future.

And by the way we still have money sitting with us from our last round of funding in Aug,2022.

5 For enterprises building impactful solutions in the space of education, what are some of the risks they need to be cognisant of - and how should one mitigate them?

The biggest risk I see is of not having patience. Burning money to buy revenue will backfire. Atleast in Education space, and we all have seen the harrowing experience of so many EdTech shutting down their operation just post COVID. Building an education business in Indian market require patience, showing concrete outcome, and then building credibility. No Superstar (the Khan’s as we saw) as brand ambassador can build credibility in EdTech space. Its always your solution delivering strong outcomes that comes back to you as referrals that work to build scale and grow. And this take some time and patience.

6 Going ahead, how do you see the EdTech sector panning out in terms of innovation and growth?

What are some of the solutions you see that have a high demand potential and can also create impact at scale?

I believe there are large policy change happening in Indian education sector which is fueled mainly by NEP and the NCF implementation in the coming decade. The spaces focused in these policies are some areas that will see high demand. For example: Foundation Learning, Mental Health, Career Guidance, Vocational Education are some of the areas where lot of innovation and growth is expected in the coming decade.