Speaking with The PIE News, Elms cited differences in short- and long-term objectives between the potential investor Inflexion and Hotcourses, as he looks to add education consultancy services to the already established university course directory Hotcourses and application service i-Apply.

“I felt Inflexion were too focused on short-term profits rather than investing in the longer-term business,” he explained. “We’re moving beyond providing students information to enabling them to do something with that information which is apply and enrol.”

“Not being accountable to an investor gives you a certain freedom to do these long term, more ambitious things”

Elms’ vision for long-term investment includes a virtual counselling service, set to launch this year, that will put students in touch with agents for online help with school enrolment and the visa application process.

Last year Hotcourses launched its application service, i-Apply, alongside its already established UK university study directory and HotcoursesAbroad listings for international study, which is available on a network of 20 local sites in 15 languages.

“We’ve got 1,000 university clients around the world and the online application service; now we’re actively looking for agents to provide counselling on the ground to marry the two,” said Elms.

One education agency in each market will work offline, in the traditional agency setting to use the front end technology – the course search and the online application programme – with students. Hotcourses will pay agents commission based on an agreed strategic financial relationship.

“A lot of agents are still acting as the traditional face-to-face shop front,” said Elms. “We think there is a new model which is effectively taking what we will be doing and applying it to those existing face-to-face agencies to extend what they do.”

Deals are in the pipeline with potential agent partners in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia

Elms expects the project will take two to three years to develop as the company builds the technological infrastructure and new customer relationship management tools.

The virtual agent service will be rolled out first in India where Hotcourses already has established operations. Deals are in the pipeline with potential agent partners in Hong Kong, China and Malaysia, but Elms stressed he’s keen to speak to agencies in any market.

The last fiscal year ending in July 2013 saw the UK-based company bring in UK£4 million in profits on UK£11 million in turnover. “It was our best year ever,” commented Elms, who confirmed he’s no longer interested in finding an investment partner.

“Not being accountable to an investor gives you a certain freedom to do these long-term, more ambitious things which inevitably do take a big investment without immediate return,” he said.

“That’s the road that we’ve set out on; we want to offer students the whole journey from course search to university enrolment.”