Rohan Pasari on Cialfo: Making College Journey Accessible to High School Students.

college matters what college matters what college matters really for sure college matters you know you don't choose which country you're born in which city you're born in in most cases which high school you would go to. And the first major decision that you can take as a human being almost is which college you would go to. And that if you make that part of the journey accessible at scale for millions of students, you can make a profound impact on the world. You can change the world. That is Rohan Pasari, co-founder and CEO of Cialfo, a global ed tech company based in Singapore. Hello, I'm your host, Venkat Raman. When Rohan was getting ready to apply to college in Kolkata, India, his high school did not have a college counselor to guide him. Three years later, while he was still at NTU in Singapore, his sister was preparing to apply to college, and going through the same pains and anxieties he had gone through without a college counselor. Rohan stepped in and helped his sister and her friends with college guidance. Reflecting on his own college experience and its profound impact, he felt it was an imperative to make the college journey accessible to the tens of millions of college-bound students everywhere. Rohan joins us on our podcast, to tell us how Cialfo got started, the difference they make to students, schools, counselors, and colleges, their goal of serving 100 million students by the year 2030, and advice for college-bound students. Now, before we jump into the podcast, here are the high fives, five highlights from the podcast. ♪ ♪ We started an independent education consulting practice, IEC. It was a service-based, it ended up being a very service-based business, you know, one thing led to another. And really the first student that we helped in Singapore ended up getting into Wharton in the US, and we were like, wow, this is wonderful. Students, as they're affiliated to a high school, can now use Cialfo. So, they can use Cialfo. They can use it for whatever they want. So, they can use it for whatever they want. in something that Indians do when they realize engineering is not for them, which is investment banking. So I did that. That was seemingly the natural course for a lot of engineers, at least from India at the time. So I did that and I was lucky. I got an internship at Barclays Capital and I learned two things about myself. I hate investment banking. And money was not such a key driver for me. Of course, it's important, but it is not something that I wanted to just focus on. And this was the end of my junior year. So I was a rising senior in college. I came back to Kolkata for my summer, for the remainder of my summer. And I was working with my sister on her college apps. And she was graduating high school. She was going through the same pains and anxieties that I was going through. And that made me reflect on my education experience. You see, you don't choose which country you're born in, which city you're born in. In most cases, which high school you would go to. And the first major decision that you can take as a human being, is which college you would go to. And that, if you make that part of the journey accessible, at scale for millions of students, you can make a profound impact on the world. So that's how I was thinking about it. This is very meaningful. I love helping my sister. I loved helping her friends. And how can I do this at scale? How can I do this and earn a living out of doing this? And what I thought was really meaningful to me. So I went back to Singapore for my final year. I completed that. Met with my friend at the time, who has now become my co-founder over the last 10 years, Stan Lee. And he apparently had a very similar experience as I did, but growing up in Singapore. And so we were both passionate about solving this problem. But, we were like 21 years old, not knowing how to actually solve this. So we said, let's try to help a bunch of students in Singapore, navigate this college experience and see whether we can earn a living out of doing this. So we, what ended up happening is we started a independent education, consulting practice, IEC. It was a service-based, it ended up being a very service-based business. One thing led to another. And, really the first student that we helped in Singapore ended up getting to Wharton in the US. And we were like, wow, this is wonderful. This was so satisfying. And I guess we can do this. We can help more and more students. And so that's, that's what we did. You know, a few years, a couple of years, a few years down the road, we were helping 200 students, who are graduating high school and looking to get into colleges. But, you know, I realized while that was very meaningful to me and Stanley and the team that we had built, we wanted to not just be able to help 200 students, but be able to help millions of students and really help students that needed the finance and needed that access. So we ended up selling the education consultants or consultancy, which by the way, when could, I did not know was actually possible. I go to the service business. Right. I mean, it was not a, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Asset. Yeah. So we ended up doing that. And we used all of the money that we got to start Cialfo as you see today, which is a technology company connecting high schools and students and universities in one platform. So, so yeah, so here we are. That's, that's why we started Cialfo to really make higher education accessible to students globally. And that is, you know, it's really based on my own journey. You know, I see the problem, right. And how do you make it, you use the term accessible. What do you do to make it accessible? What do you do to make it accessible to the high school students? Yeah. So this is a platform that isn't used by high schools on one side and universities on the other. So when we look at the high schools, we offer a SAS based solution to high schools, a software solution to high schools. And these high schools are the ones who pay us a fee, who started by paying us a fee. Now we also have a free version of the software for schools that don't have a software. So we have a free version of the software for high school students. So, we have a free version of the software for high schools that don't have a technology budget. So students don't pay anything. Whether the high school pays us or high school does not pay us, students don't pay us anything. Students as they're affiliated to a high school can now log into Cialfo and manage their career exploration and college application journey. So a typical student joins Cialfo in grade eight or grade nine as mandated by the high school. They would take a, you know, a bunch of tests and you know, we have localized a lot of these aptitude tests, not just, you know, something that I took, which told me to take up engineering, but a little more robust, a little more based on behaviors and localized for different, you know, regions. How a student in America looks at it is very different from how a student in India or China looks at it. So that's how it starts. That, spits out a few not just career opportunities, but what kind of specializations in university you can consider and it comes up with a bunch. Yeah. And there's a series of tests that you start. Then you start entering your profile, your academic profile and your extracurricular profile on Cialfo. And then we have a algorithm that starts suggesting which universities can be a good fit for you. Which is also divided into three categories, a academic fit, a preference fit and a demonstrated interest. Now you can be a student that is very well accomplished and can get into a UC Berkeley, but UC Berkeley may not be a good fit. It's a large institution, you know, and you may want to get into a more liberal arts kind of an experience and maybe a Harvey Mudd is a better fit. So what is an academic fit for you is very different from what is a better fit for you as a student. So what is an academic fit for you is very different from what is a preference fit for you. So we churn those suggestions out to the student. Students can start looking at those options and start applying to those universities on Cialfo itself. So we have, I mean, I gave a couple of examples of American institutions, but we in fact have 15,000 college profiles across a hundred over countries. So students can search for universities across these different countries. And really what we've seen on Cialfo, students are applying on average to three different countries, not three colleges, three different countries. Yeah, they want to hedge their options. They want to consider, you know, America, but UK and Canada and Australia and the domestic, you know, country. And then they can apply to these institutions directly through Cialfo, through our latest feature called DirectApply, our latest launch called DirectApply. DirectApply is a singular platform where you can use to apply to universities around the world, which has never existed when students could use the common app to apply to the U.S. They can use the UCAS to apply to the UK. But these are all systems that sit outside. And students have to keep entering the information again and again and again. So we built this common app which connects all of these systems and allows the students to apply to universities in Canada and Australia and UK and India and in the U.S. And then they start receiving offers and then they make an informed choice now along this entire process. They can apply to all of these different universities in Canada and Australia and UK and India and in the U.S. schools where the ratio of college counselor to a student is 200 is to 1. But again, schools like I went to where there was no dedicated college counselor, but they take up Cialfo to be able to help the student. In those cases, the student, you know, can self-navigate through this journey on Cialfo in the process of getting into a best fit university. So that, you know, hopefully gives you an understanding of what Cialfo does for students. You mentioned the last part, which was someone like you who didn't have access to a counselor, they basically, it's a do-it-yourself for them, right? You provide all the sort of smarts and the help and the match and the fit. So any thoughts on providing the help and the match and the fit? So any thoughts on providing the help and the fit? Are you providing them with counselors from that network, or are they all dedicated to schools at this point, and hence they're not available? Yeah, so that's a great question, Venkat. We are not offering any individualized college counseling service to a student at a fee. That's not the model that we are going into. But we are getting a lot of requests from high schools that don't have those dedicated college counselors, but to provide that to them. So they're saying, "Hey, can you also help place a college counselor in my school?" Or can we, in some ways, I don't want to use a word, but essentially outsource the college counseling element to Cialfo. They're like, "We love your platform. You understand what this is. We don't have a setup. We don't have a history of doing this. So instead of us trying to figure this out, can you just set up everything?" Mm-hmm. So, Mm-hmm. We've started doing that in countries that we are getting those requests, where we set up a college counseling lab almost, or a college counseling cell, where we can set up those accounts for them. We can streamline the transcripts and the school profile, which is needed by institutions in the US and UK, and just set up that infrastructure for them. Also, place college counselors for those schools, which can then serve the students. So that is what we started enabling. Because really, when you see the international schools and the independent schools that really serve the 5% of students that are going to colleges, or even less, 95% of students in the world don't have access to a dedicated college counselor. Absolutely. And how do we solve this problem and this journey without doing that? And I strongly believe technology cannot replace a human being, in our situation at least, right? It can enhance the experience for students and the counselors. It can enhance the ratio, but it cannot replace completely. So as much as we're trying to help the student self-navigate this journey, but you still need a college counselor to provide that experience. So that's what we're trying to do. So I think, you know, we need to personalize that experience. And we're working with schools to also enable that. Okay, now, I understand schools, I understand students. Now, why are institutions playing with you? Why do colleges think this is good for them? Yeah, so this was also, you know, sort of something that led, one thing led to another. We always wanted to work with universities around the world to create more meaningful engagements, you know, for the students. However, we were not quite sure how we would go about it. And we were forced into that by our counselors, actually. So we've always, you know, been very obsessed with the student experience and the counselor experience. What can we do beyond our means to be able to help this community? So that, that obsession got us to talk to college counselors, you know, who were struggling in the beginning of the pandemic, who came to us and said, look, we need a way to be able to engage these universities in the absence of a college visit. Universities can't travel to my high school, you know, and I want the students to be able to get access to them. And you, and that was so important for me, you know, if I went to NDU because of the college visit, so I knew the impact a college visit can have. Right. So we were like, okay, let's try to figure out how can we, you know, replace the physical college visit. So we, we actually just, you know, brought, brought Zoom in to the picture and enabled universities to organize virtual fairs and virtual college visits in Seattle for itself. In 2020, it was a raging success, very high engagement. Every student in our school wanted to engage with these universities. Until it was not in 2021, these engagements, you know, fell for a number of reasons. People were Zoomed out, you know, Zoom fatigue across, you know, industries and across sectors. We saw this, but also students started realizing that these, this content that universities are sharing with them is not unique. It started seeming very similar from one, you know, college fair to another college fair. And a lot of the information they could find on the internet itself. So they were talking to this individual, they were not having this physical connection, but the content that was being shared was all, was already available. And, and that, you know, dropped the engagement even further. So in, in those experiences that we were creating, we started noticing a pattern and a problem. And we had by then late 2020, early 2021, we had already engaged about a thousand universities around the world on a platform. Now I said we had 15,000 college profiles, but we had a thousand universities actively engaging with students on a platform. So, so we said, there is clearly a problem. Our mission is not to take college fairs online. Our mission is to make education accessible. And that means meaningful connections between high schools and universities. So we started talking to universities. So especially the international admissions teams, also the global admissions teams. And my US tour that I just completed, a four week tour was talking to these institutions in America. And I, we realized that, you know, they're still figuring out how to engage with students online in this pandemic slash post pandemic. Hopefully I can say that now, don't want to jinx it, but you know, in this world, they're still trying to figure out how to create meaningful engagements. So, so here we are trying to learn from the students, what kind of engagements they want, how do they want content to be fed to them? And what are universities capable of doing and really, really helping them educate on how to engage this Gen Z because the way, you know, when could you and I consume content is very different from how the Gen Z consume content. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, so that's what we're doing now. I know there are lots of successes, lots of growth, and you guys have done amazing and, and, and congratulations on the huge investment recently. Yes. Well, I, how, how, you know, characterize some success stories or, you know, are there some vignettes, are there some things you want to point to saying, you know, this is happening because of Cialfo? I mean, I'm sure there are millions of things, but, you know, maybe a couple of vignettes that might tell us a story. Yeah. First of all, thank you for those kind words. Really the investment is a means to an end. Yes. You know, we're not, you know, we're especially in the tech world, it becomes a measure of success itself. Yeah. It's not an end. Exactly. Agreed. Yeah. And really, you know, I want to reflect on one of the students that we have recently helped, you know, it's fresh in my memory. So there was a student in India who wanted to really go to Australia and the borders have been closed as we are aware in the beginning of the year. So he didn't end up applying. And, you know, he said, okay, you know, he'll try to figure this out. Six months in, he had no colleges that he could go into. He had no college placements. And again, he was, you know, in a school which didn't have a dedicated college counselor. So similar to my experience. Yeah. So he was navigating through a platform, you know, he got in touch with the team. We directed him to apply to the universities through direct apply. He applied to all his dream institutions in Australia, because that's where he was focused on. And he got a conditional offer from the University of new south wales uh he then took a styles because that's a requirement completed his statement of purpose um and uh and really uh then just got in and we again he went to a school which had no college counselor um so this is not part of a natural service and we don't charge for it uh but we our team ended up you know just helping the student with the statement of purpose um you know guided him towards a visa process visa was approved and now he's studying in australia and very happy and this is um you know why we exist to be able to help students like the student get into universities that they would not have otherwise gotten into would not have access to you know to and again it's multi-generational impact that this would have you know that this would be for the student and the family and uh and these and the and he's one of the you know thousands of students uh on seo so this is you know a very pandemic uh driven journey that is close to our hearts um but what we've seen overall in seo has been a lot of adoption of technology on the high school side uh earlier especially in asian countries uh technology is seen as a good to have now it is the need to help even if they don't have a dedicated college counselor like the student that i mentioned still schools are adopting technology very rapid pace that has allowed us to go from like about 500 schools pre-pandemic to over 2 000 schools uh globally um that we're working with um and then on the other side with universities we're working with you know over a thousand universities to be able to create these meaningful engagements you know with with these students now out of those thousand universities we have long-term partnerships with about 400 of them globally that we are engaging a little more closely and helping them understand how they should be engaging with these students across the journey from you know grade 11 grade 10 up till you know post application and enrollment um and and uh so there's been faster adoption of technology on both sides on the high school side and the university side um i wouldn't say students are using more technology the idea this is uh this is you know digital native generation they've always been using technology um but at least on the high school and university side we've seen massive adoption which has you know garnered more investor participation and funding in this space as well you you mentioned a thousand you know educational institutions uh so 400 that are that you're closely aligning with or partnering with what is the geographic distribution of these uh colleges maybe the thousand i mean across us australia canada that kind of thing i mean yeah rough percentages whatever if we can share just yeah absolutely so it is a closed reflection of uh the interest of our students and the destination that they want to study uh the four key study abroad quote unquote destinations is u.s uk canada and australia yeah um and then the fifth uh key destination is india um because we just have a lot of students in india that we operate with by the virtual of the high school adoption and India is still seen as one of the destinations that they would consider and India you know has also opened up a lot of education institutions which are very different from your traditional you know IITs and NITs which are offering you know new age system of education which is quite similar to study abroad so it has become a very specific or a very clear alternative to a study abroad destination and then of course we have universities in Western Europe so Netherlands being a key one and some institutions in Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea but again the first five that I mentioned it's up 80 percent or maybe even more 85 percent of our university members, university partners. Here you are all this going on what's ahead where you know what is the next five years what happens and I don't mean in business terms I'm just sort of talking impact to students and education. Yeah right now you know the way we look at impact is the number of students we can help get into universities and can make those changes. Right now we have 300,000 students on a platform you know we are targeting about 100 million students on a platform by 2030 so that's a key goal you know it's a number it's a battle cry it is a number that we aspire towards to be able to show and project ourselves the impact that we want to create for students around the world. We are working with a lot of schools in Asia so India you know South Asian countries Bangladesh Pakistan Middle East and then Southeast Asia so that's Singapore, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and then China. We want to continue going deeper in those markets this is where 75 percent of the students are going to go to school. We want to continue going out of their home country so we want to go deeper in those markets but we'll also be expanding into Africa and Latin America in the coming months and years to be able to help students in those countries as well in terms of just our solutions we will continue connecting these students to university options globally we want to be able to get more universities that we want to help them with and really understanding how to integrate those students into the community. we want to be able to engage with these students better and then be able to create those meaningful engagements for them and I can I can go deeper with that the next the next the next aspect of the offer would be making education in itself more accessible so right now we're creating these engagements but if a student is you know being offered a course or a place in a university which is quarter million dollars and they're not able to get scholarships they will not be able to actually get scholarships. make use of that opportunity so it's not only about creating those connections and helping students get offers but a student needs to be able to take up that offer so the financing element is a key aspect for us and there are different ways that we are solving that problem student debt and education financing is not the only option and there are other options that we are working with. we are working with. our university partners to be able to offer to the student to decrease the cost of tuition for these students and as we launch you know I'd love to share more. And then you know students really care about being the experience of studying abroad, you know, safety is big on their minds diversity housing and how we can help them in all those areas is again the the third aspect, we will mention. So giving them the full experience. What would you tell. What would you advise me for college bound students who are in their junior and maybe senior years getting ready to apply. We question for students, I would say. You know. When you're applying for university. When you're applying for universities be open to change diversifier options of the universities, you would apply to and the countries that you would apply to, you know, you're not, you don't have to choose one destination, one university, what do you think is a dream university may change based on what you learn about how these institutions operate. So, you know, be open, and how you think about colleges once you're in college also remain open to change. are one of the most um uh important years of your life that your worldviews will be challenged so reflect on that you know be open for you know your world to be shaken in good and positive ways right um create meaningful relationships create meaningful experiences you would have heard as students these could be the best years of your life it's certainly you know you don't want your college years to be the best years of your life which indicates that all the following years are not good are not good enough but uh you know hopefully those are the best years of your life to come um and you know those are better than the lives years that you spend in high school and have a lot of fun um but in a meaningful way um and um so that's that that would be my advice to the high school students so rohan um as we start winding down here um fun question for you if you weren't doing cialfo what do you think you might be doing oh gosh um what would i be doing if i'm not doing cialfo i know it's not i know it's not engineering i know it's not investment banking so that's right that's right not going into those two areas um i think i'll be a college counselor um in some capacity i think really i find meaning in helping students if i'm not doing this at scale you know which is what cialfo is trying to do um i would you know go back to the most fundamental way of helping a student which is you know as a college counselor so i'll probably do that and uh or uh if i if i can um you know i will do some investing um in this space um back more entrepreneurs like myself uh to be able to make this difference you know in different ways cialfo making a difference there are other companies in you know in different ways they're making a difference in this space and uh and really in education technology in general across age groups and i would love to back entrepreneurs in creating that meaningful difference and changing the world through education so one of those two very different uh but uh both meaningful absolutely but but but it sounds like education is very hard um very good so rohan this uh has been fantastic um first of all i want to congratulate you again for all that you've done and all that you're doing for the students for the parents and for their futures and um continue the great work and i'm sure there's a lot more to come and i'm sure we'll talk again more but for right now take care be safe and thank you so much thank you thank you this was a pleasure thank you for having me sure thing i'll talk to you soon bye hi again hope you enjoyed our podcast with rohan passari of cialfo cialfo is clearly very personal to rohan his commitment and drive to meet the goal of serving a hundred million students by the year 2030 is fueling their progress in particular cialfo offers a platform that allows students to research colleges and universities in different countries help determine college fit or match based on student skills and interests a single application to apply to colleges and universities in different countries empowers counselors and high schools everywhere and a partnership with a thousand institutions to enable high school students to apply to colleges and universities in different countries with high levels of engagement with potential applicants i hope students parents and schools check out cialfo for their own college process for your questions or comments on this podcast please email podcast almamatters.io thank you all so much for listening to our podcast today transcripts for this podcast and previous podcasts are on almamatters.io forward slash podcasts to stay connected with us subscribe to apple podcasts google podcasts or spotify or visit anchor.fm forward slash almamatters to check us out till we meet again take care and be safe thank you college matters almamatters