Mumbai: There are several students in the country who wish to study abroad for a bright future, but the path from deciding the course, university, procedures to get admissions, fees, scholarships etc,. has been challenging with complications and complexities involved, especially for Indian students and their parents. As per recent data from the MEA, over 10.9 lakh Indians are studying in around 85 countries, as of January 2021. The graph of international students studying in the western countries is constantly going up. International students studying in the United States are more than 14 lakhs per year and in the United Kingdom are more than six lakh per year and these numbers include a large number of international students from India and China.
Amidst difficult and testing pandemic times, it’s a double whammy for students, as several students planning to go abroad for education had to stall the process due to several issues related to proper guidance on application process, statement of purpose, Covid situation in specific areas, relaxations of lockdown, quarantine period etc. In this Covid situation, two Indian students who themselves are studying abroad have come up with the solution to this problem—Inforens (www.inforens.com). The first ever students’ chain, of students, by students and for students. With personal experience of struggle, founders Yash Gulati, a 24-year- old student of Queen Mary University of London, and Devika Ghosal, a 20-year-old student of the University of Warwick, both currently studying in the UK, have come up with a platform to provide an opportunity for aspiring students to consult on their CVs, providing statements of purpose and application forms from students already studying at elite universities. So they have set up a start-up called Inforens to help potential students gain access to better universities, that too completely free of cost.
Yash, who has perviously interned with Social justice and empowerment committee, GOI, and an engineer from Pune university currently studying International Business and Politics at Queen Mary university of London, said, “Inforens ensures that potential students receive only genuine and customised advice. Inforens has team members from more than 50 top ranked universities including the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science and from 18 countries.” Yash said a lot of money is charged by private educational consultants, so only rich people reach up to them, whereas talented students who have skills but are not rich don’t even dream to go abroad for education, “so we want to change this and help them get scholarships in good university across the world. At Inforens we also aim to secure scholarships for talented students as education abroad is expensive and a lot of students miss out on scholarship opportunities despite having great scores as they are not aware of the right procedures.”
With belief that, “experience is a great teacher and no theory can compensate for that”, their goal is to create an integrated platform that connects prospective students independently with international students studying abroad. This will ensure that potential students receive only genuine and customized advice. “Inforens is offering free advice to potential students,” says Devika Ghosal who is currently an intern in Corporate Banking at Citi Bank at London and is completing Accounting and Finance at the University of Warwick.
Inforens connects prospective students independently with students studying abroad. Their ultimate aim is to create a platform that connects international applicants to a current student studying the degree and in the university that the applicant wants to apply to. “Thus it’s mutually beneficial as the applicant pays much lesser than large consultants charge, receives customised advice, and helps a current student cover his or her part-time expenses,” is what they say. “Till now, we have given free consultation to 400 students. Our basic service is free of cost as we are lucky to have a team of international students who are happy to volunteer and share a similar vision like us to help future international students. Eventually, our vision is to become ‘Uber for education consulting’, which means that we will create a platform that connects international applicants to a current student in studying the degree and university that the applicant wants to apply to. We have student ambassadors from most of the top universities to share advice with prospective students throughout the process of applications that will make procedures easier,” Devika said.
According to a recent survey by iSchoolConnect, a Google Cloud partnered startup with a simple one-stop shop for anyone wanting to study abroad, 36.5% of Indian students want to study abroad despite Covid-19 concerns. Amidst such challenging process and difficult times, there is a rise of student-to-student platform that offers advice for applying to international universities during the Covid-19 pandemic and Inforens comes as a relief in this situation. “In this pandemic, it has been very difficult for students trying to apply abroad for education as examinations have been postponed and students are helpless in the absence of personalized advice for the country and universities they are planning to apply. So Inforens is giving free consultation to help prospective students select the right university as per their courses and future prospects as well as help with CV and Statement of Purpose to get into their dream universities they deserve,” Yash said.