Kill the paperwork: how NoPaperForms is changing the face of college admissions in India
Delhi-based startup NoPaperForms' SaaS-based enrolment automation solution is helping streamline the admission process for universities, colleges, schools, and students.
The most tedious part of any admission process is often the paperwork. Marksheets, admission forms, certificates, multiple photocopies of documents...the pile adds up.
Delhi based ed-tech startup NoPaperForms is cutting through the clutter by providing easy-to-customise-and-deploy enrolment solutions for students applying to schools and colleges. This SaaS-based enrolment automation solution provider aims to transform the laborious process of college admissions – from enquiries to enrolment – into a smooth, paperless one.
Naveen Goyal, Founder, NoPaperForms
Scattered to streamlined
Naveen Goyal, Founder of NoPaperForms, was in charge of the digital wing of online education portal Career360 while Suraj Supra worked with Shiksha.com. In February 2017, he founded NoPaperforms to automate enrollments in educational Institutions.
Suraj Supra, Chief Strategy Officer, NoPaperForms, explains, “Institutes tend to spend a lot of money to advertise their courses and campus. Many of them deal with all the leads and data in an unorganised way. This can lead to lot of data leakages and duplication among other things.” Additionally, there are many different software for processes like application, admission, marketing, communication, post-admission processing, and others, he says.
Meanwhile, parents and students stand in long queues for hours to get an application form and then shuffle from window to window to get it processed. “The industry required a standardised one-stop software that could make the entire enrolment process streamlined, so that it brings lot of operational efficiency and economy. We built a comprehensive management system that is effective right from enquiry to the formal induction of students,” Suraj says.
The NoPaperForms applicant login dashboard (which has a mobile UI as well) allows applicants to submit their forms, make payments, generate receipts, admit cards, offer letters, schedule group discussions and interviews, and entrance exams - all in one place.
For educational institutes, NoPaperForms provides a comprehensive enrolment automation software, which covers everything from leads and marketing management, to admissions management, campaign management, and even call centre management. The software also helps in collecting fees by creating an online payment gateway for managing payments, apart from interpreting data and measuring returns on investment on a real-time basis.
Challenging the old school
NoPaperForms competes with IT firms that provide standalone ERP solutions for various stages of admission for colleges and institutions and also cloud-based software firm Salesforce. But what sets NoPaperForms apart is that it is holistic and covers all the stages of admissions on a single platform.
The NoPaperForms team wants to simplify the admission process.
Suraj says, “Educational institutes don’t think like other business firms. Their mindsets are different. The traditional method of paper processing is still widespread. Changing their mindset was a challenge initially, but it became easier when the larger benefit of being eco-friendly and efficient dawned on them.”
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Funding and revenue
NoPaperForms recently raised Rs 28 crore in its Series B funding from Info Edge at a valuation of Rs 100 crore. In November last year, Info Edge had invested Rs 5.66 crore. The startup is now an 80-member team and is planning to add another 50 employees by March 2019.
The revenue for NoPaperForms is based on a subscription-based model for the SaaS software. It also charges institutes based on the number of applications processed. Suraj declined to reveal the fees they charge, but the market rate for such automation platform ranges anywhere between Rs 10-12 lakh per admission season.
The startup’s client list has more than 190 schools, colleges, and universities across India, including SRM Chennai, Amrita Institute, Coimbatore, Shiv Nadar University, OP Jindal University, APJ School, and Delhi Public School among others. Last year, the startup helped educational institutes process more than 10 lakh applications forms. By June this year, NoPaperForms plans to process up to three million forms.
The way forward
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Talking about the market size, Suraj said, “There are about 40,000 colleges, more than 800 universities, and 1.5 million schools (40 percent of them are private). The current education market size is $500 million opportunity for us in India. By June 2019, we want to have a client base of more than 400.”
The startup also wants to make government exams paperless and is in talks with various stake holders. It is also hoping to enter Southeast Asia next year.