A report by ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) suggests that the rates in the student housing sector are back to what they were before the pandemic in several cities as students have begun returning to their campuses. An analysis report by RedSeer strategy consultants in 2021 stated that about 8 lakh students were studying abroad and the report anticipates for the number to double by 2024 which will shoot up to 8.1 Lakh students.
Adventum Student Living (ASL) a Mumbai-based startup, launched in the year 2019 is aiming to provide accommodations for students who have moved abroad for education purposes. ASL has grown at 400% year on year in its first year of operation. ASL was founded by Amit Singh and Savantan Biswas and has also launched a platform offering financial solutions called “UniAcco”, a counseling service platform called “UniScholarz” and “UniCred” for student loans in the year 2021. UniAcco is operational in 9 countries and UniScholarz in 10 countries.
“The journey we are on is that we are building a student mobility platform for higher education. Any student who is on a journey to go abroad has these three buckets of challenges–starting with counseling, going to financing, and then when and where will they live. We are building a platform where once the students are in our ecosystem, they can avail of one or all three services,” says Co-founder Amit.
To secure funding, ASL currently has access to more than 10 banking partners along with over 10,000 properties in 10 countries such as the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Ireland. The students can connect with people offering accommodation which is listed on the website. Along with this ASL also assists students with their visas, airport pickups, and SIM cards. ASL gets its maximum revenue from UniAcco which is 70%, 20% from UniCreds, and 5% from UniScholarz.
ASL is planning to expand and conduct another round of funding in the coming financial years. In the month of May 2020 ASL received funding of $5 million from Suresh Pareek Founder of Ideal Curves, Vipul Jain through his investment vehicle Baaya International, Vikas Phadnis, Co-founder of EuroKids through his vehicle Auctus Capital, and Shreeji Brothers among others.
