Up to two dozen people will be hired for the new office in Lagos over the next few months, aiming to capitalise on newfound demand from the area.

The India-headquartered company already has “substantial traction” from Nigeria, with over 100,000 Nigerian students visiting the platform each month.

This aligns with growing numbers of students wanting to study in the UK from Nigeria, as the percentage of current students over the last year has risen by 83% – with over 17,000 now at a UK institution.

“Over the last three to four months, given the very high organic inbound reach from Nigeria on our platform, we’ve had the chance to counsel hundreds of students, so setting up ops there was just the next logical step,” said founder and CEO of Leverage Edu Akshay Chaturvedi.

The company has put their recent growth down to their “direct-to-consumer approach”, and being able to win trust from universities as well as registering “high conversion percentages”.

“We are thrilled to have the opportunity of serving Nigerian students up next,” Chaturvedi continued.

Shubham Bansal, an early employee at Leverage Edu, will take the role of general manager of Nigerian operations and will be based out of Lagos where the new employees will be hired.

“Setting up ops in Nigeria was just the next logical step”

It follows their foray into the UK market as they opened a London office in September, after spending a “lot of time in the UK”.

While we will be helping with their study abroad plans across the board, a large focus in this first phase will be on the UK and US as destinations,” Chaturvedi explained.

“Thanks to deeper relationships, we enjoy a fairly seamless tech-first approach that puts students at the centre of the whole process – something that is largely amiss in the Nigerian market today,” he added.