Hello Rodinhoods,
I am a student entrepreneur, currently in the final year my engineering (VNIT, Nagpur). I have developed a website https://scholfin.com. ScholFin is a scholarship search engine which helps students to find perfectly matching scholarships in which they are eligible in just 3 clicks!
I launched the website 3 months ago. We have 10,450 registered users on the website who search for scholarships. We spent only a tiny budget on marketing and advertising.
The problem
No one will deny on the fact that searching for scholarships is one of the most boring and tedious tasks they ever did on the internet! I faced the same problem too. So I built ScholFin which makes this process easy, friendly and fast.
What is ScholFin?
For students: ScholFin is a scholarship search engine which helps students to find perfectly matching scholarships in which they are eligible in just 3 clicks! The total worth of scholarship on our portal is 9,458 crore (Government scholarships have very large budget and they give scholarship to many students, hence this number is soo large)
Our Vision
We want to become the India’s best resource to discover opportunities, which you might be unaware of and help you with tough financial conditions. We help you today so you have a brighter tomorrow!
Facts
We launched a local Nagpur scholarship on our platform. The scholarship used to be an offline process and usually very few students used to be aware about it. We launched the same scholarship on https://scholfin.com. There was an exponential growth of 700% in the number of applications. The scholarship was awarded to the most deserving student. This also led to widespread publicity and awareness of the NGO who launched the scholarship.
How can you help me?
1. The problem I am facing now is the customer validation of scholarship providers. In India, there are educational organisations, trusts, NGOs and companies who provide direct scholarships to needy students. As I am a student and from Nagpur, it’s getting quite difficult for me to have a customer validation of the scholarship providers (their needs, problems and the solution). How do I solve that?
2. Sometimes I feel demotivated as I am not able to find many scholarship providers (there will be mostly 2-3 scholarship providers from Nagpur, and they operate at a very local level). I start thinking that maybe the market is too small.
May be the reason of less number of scholarship providers is because there is no such organised platform which helps them to launch their scholarship. I have convinced myself by this thought. AM I THINKING WRONG?
3. How do I approach scholarship providers? Since it’s a B2B situation, what should be the right approach to show them our model?
4. Is there any window or platform where I can directly reach the scholarship providers? (like NGO Registration office etc.)
asha chaudhry
wow. you seem to have bitten quite a huge chunk shubham!! kudos to your enterprising spirit – just love the passion our student entrepreneurs show!
in 3 months to get so many users is incredible!! i find the idea appealing. are you sure no one else is doing this? [no harm even if they are!!]
let me ping mandar and priyadeep (chk his page here and feel free to share your link on this page – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/ask-priyadeep-about-ed-tech-student-entrepreneurship)
mandar is in the ed-tech space and is based in pune. he is well connected to many many educational institutes there. i honestly think you should make him your mentor (if he has the time!)
we have lots of rodinhooders in ed-tech – pls use the search engine.
and if you could pls add your twitter handle at the end of your post – that could help me mention u while tweeting.
all the best. let’s help people get scholarships!!
Mandar Joshi
Dear Shubham,
It is indeed an excellent idea. As mentioned by Asha I am working in the field of Education Technology past decade and have a little understanding of this market 🙂 let me visit your website and dig for some more info about your venture and then I shall post here with my observations and we shall take it from there.
Priyadeep Sinha
Shubham, you should get in touch with Ashutosh Burnwal who runs Buddy4Study.com. He is a good friend of mine and I can put you in touch with him if you are not yet connected.
asha chaudhry
hey priyadeep – pls share this link with ashutosh – he is a rodinhooder so can respond! thanks.
and shubham, try and connect with ashutosh on trh as well!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/buddy4study-com-startup-story-1
Nilesh Jadhav
On similar line there is an app which got funded in shark tank named scholly.. Make it big Shubham…all the best.. Its a good problem
asha chaudhry
shubham,
alok shared your post over social media on saturday. chk some comments on his fb – you might want to respond.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Bravo idea – the challenge is to get notices and used.
What’s your activation plan?
Sajid Khetani
Great idea Shubham.
10k+ users in 3 months is mind blowing.I will surely spread a word about your site.
We need many more student entrepreneurs like you. More power to you.
Shubham Agrawal
Thank you mam for your motivation. Yes, there are few competitors but we are pretty sure that our platform is more robust and scalable.:)
Shubham Agrawal
Hello! Mandar, please have an insight of our website and give us your honest feedback. Pointing out the drawbacks will be highly appreciated.
Shubham Agrawal
Sir, I have inboxed you the details.
Thank you.
asha chaudhry
shubham,
i really think you are solving a serious problem. and i think you should participate in the ISME startup contest. this would give you a great opportunity to get a profound set of investors listen to your pitch!!
DO APPLY!!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/participate-in-the-isme-startup-contest
asha chaudhry
shubham, pls add your twitter handle. it would help me promote your idea!