The Australia-founded, Singapore-headquartered company Adventus.io formed in 2018 and will use its funding – backed by Australian investment firm 333 Capital and capital from four co-founders Ryan Trainor, Lincoln Trainor, Victor Rajeevan and Richard Uren – as it drives ahead with its objective of making a big impact in student recruitment.
“The new player who is coming in, it’s hard to actually secure… university contracts”
A USP of its business model is that international education recruitment agency businesses can pay a monthly subscription fee to access the platform and process student bookings, the company said.
Once approved to use the platform, agencies receive all of the commission payments earned on a successful enrolment.
“For the last 18 months we have built a SaaS platform and rapidly changing the international student recruitment business globally,” president & co-founder, Rajeevan told The PIE News.
By 2023, the platform hopes to be recruiting 50,000 students worldwide, Rajeevan added.
“We’ll be passing 100% commission to the recruiters. And we get the subscription paid by them monthly.”
The aim is to transform a cottage industry in many countries into a business where smaller and mid-sized agencies with fewer than 20-30 university partners can place students in a wider range of institutions.
The company has 14 offices and 150 staff across Australia, the UK, India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and Nepal and is planning to set up offices in Africa, the Middle East, Indonesia and the US.
Its office in Sri Lanka will process applications and check students’ eligibility based on admissions requirements.
The Adventus.io quality and compliance in-country team will ensure the integrity of the applications coming through the system, explained Rajeevan.
In Australia, Andrew Smith, vice-president (students and alumni) at Swinburne University of Technology, commented, “Adventus and the Adventus Connect platform have the potential to transform international student recruitment globally.”
“From the day we have gone into the markets, we’ve actually been representing every country. We represent Canada, US, UK, New Zealand Australia, Malaysia and Europe in every market,” Rajeevan indicated, adding that the company’s AIRC-accreditation will be beneficial going forward.
“We’ll be passing 100% commission to the recruiters”
The advantage for smaller international education recruitment businesses is access, he continued.
“They are going to be in a position where they can place any of our partners on our partner list. We have got currently +500, but we are working towards to get it more and closer to 750 at the end of this year,” Rajeevan said.
Covid-19 has caused universities to “re-think how they look at their student recruitment”, according to the company.
Tech tools are an attractive prospect in circumstances where university staff are unable to travel but are still required to build relationships and make their institutions attractive, Adventus.io said.
The Adventus.io platform aims to help universities attract students from all over the world, without relying too heavily on any one country, it added.
March 2021 is a “high hope” for the Australian and New Zealand market in terms of new intake, Rajeevan predicted, while North America and UK may be ready for intakes in January or May, and student source markets will open at different times.
