ApplyBoard, a startup that helps worldwide college students discover alternatives to review overseas, introduced at this time that it has almost doubled its valuation in a bit of over a yr. The Ontario-based firm is now value round $3.2 billion after elevating a $300 million Series D spherical led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board.
ApplyBoard makes cash from revenue-sharing agreements with schools and universities. If a scholar attends a school after utilizing their companies, ApplyBoard receives a lower of the schooling. Meanwhile, the service, which helps college students search and apply to varsities, is free to make use of.
Co-founder and CEO Martin Basiri didn’t share specifics on income, however he confirmed that his firm is rising its gross sales at a 400% year-over-year charge in 2021. For context, gross sales in 2019 hit $300 million, which means that ApplyBoard is making a minimum of $1.2 billion in gross sales this yr.
These figures violate the prevailing edtech narrative from final yr: Higher ed is lifeless! Students don’t need to attend school anymore. Bring again the hole yr, however make it everlasting!
Instead, this firm is proving that the college tech stack is extra profitable than many assumed, particularly should you look past content material choices and into back-end advertising help.
My take: Startups that assist college students navigate institutional forms to allow them to get extra worth out of their academic expertise could grow to be a rising focus for buyers as shopper demand for digital personalised studying will increase.
‘Students want a seamless and pain-free application process’
ApplyBoard’s current fundraising efforts shed a light-weight on its technique to grow to be, successfully, a tech-savvy steering counselor for the roughly 200,000 college students that it has served up to now.
The firm raised a $55 million extension spherical in September to deliver on a associate, Education Testing Services (ETS) Strategy Capital, the enterprise arm of the world’s largest nonprofit schooling testing and evaluation group. ETS helps administer the TOEFL English-language proficiency check and the GRE graduate admissions check.
The synergies there led ApplyBoard to launch ApplyProof, a service that helps admissions and immigrant officers confirm paperwork that worldwide college students want to use to schools world wide. Today’s financing occasion equally brings in a strategic investor, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
“The demand remains high post-pandemic and we continue to see a strong, pent-up demand from students wishing to study abroad,” Basiri mentioned. “Students want a seamless and pain-free application process and be able to have all the information they need to make an informed decision.”
