Skoodos: The one-stop shop for school search

Shruti Verma, an enthused entrepreneur with over nine years of experience in the education sector, and a master in international business and international marketing from University of Jaén, Spain currently oversees the execution and marketing for Skoodos and Skoodos ventures. In an interview Bizz Buzz, Shruti Verma, co-founder, Spherion Solutions Pvt Ltd, describes her business model

Since its launch in April 2020, Skoodos has grown to host information about 15,000 private schools, both play and k-12 of all the categories, boards and even virtual schools across India. The platform integrates school information, user ratings, and offers a user-friendly microsite format to provide comprehensive details about each school. Skoodos has also implemented artificial intelligence to enhance the school selection process

Dr Siya Seth identified a significant information gap when searching for a school for her son. The scattered and unverified information made the process challenging. To address this problem, she founded Skoodos to provide a verified platform where parents can find, compare, and select schools based on their preferences

What is the business model of your enterprise?

Spherion Solutions Private Limited aims to build an ecosystem and digiverse for the education sector globally. We offer a range of digital solutions and services to create a thriving and continuously evolving educational environment. Our company utilizes digital tools and techniques to provide accessible and human-centric digital solutions. Skoodos operates as a school search aggregator, providing a platform for parents to search, compare, and rate private schools based on various parameters and criteria. The platform aims to streamline the decision-making process for parents and offer schools an opportunity to showcase their strengths.

What prompted you to start a business of this nature?

Dr Siya Seth identified a significant information gap when searching for a school for her son. The scattered and unverified information made the process challenging. To address this problem, she founded Skoodos to provide a verified platform where parents can find, compare, and select schools based on their preferences.

What is the rationale behind the name Skoodos?

The name "Skoodos" is a combination of the words "school" and "dhoondo," which means "search" in Hindi. The name reflects the platform's objective of assisting parents in finding the best school for their child's needs.

How has the business evolved?

Since its launch in April 2020, Skoodos has grown to host information about 15,000 private schools, both play and k-12 of all the categories, boards and even virtual schools across India. The platform integrates school information, user ratings, and offers a user-friendly microsite format to provide comprehensive details about each school. Skoodos has also implemented artificial intelligence to enhance the school selection process.

What are your plans to grow the business?

Spherion Solutions Private Limited has plans to become the nation's first one-of-its-kind education system and Digiverse. We aim to open offices in Bengaluru and Kolkata before branching out internationally to the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates within three years.

Does the business have an all India footprint?

Yes, we do, all our brand ventures, under Spherion Solutions Private Limited are spread across India.

Does this business have good prospects internationally?

Our SELIN Club (Scholars Educators Leaders International Network), initiated by Spherion Solutions Pvt Ltd, is a thriving global community of education leaders dedicated to fostering growth and collaboration within the education industry worldwide. Through its diverse initiatives such as meets, assembly, education response forums, accessible events, and activity tours, SELIN Club serves as an invaluable platform that connects education leaders with exclusive international communications and unparalleled opportunities. With its commitment to cross-cultural learning and meaningful collaborations, SELIN Club holds strong prospects for success internationally, making it a highly promising business with significant growth potential in the education industry.

What is the turnover of the company?

Skoodos clocked a net revenue of Rs 11 crore and a net profit of Rs 29 lakh in FY22. It aims to register a net revenue of Rs 20 crore and a net profit of Rs 38 lakh in FY23.

Are you looking at strategic tie-ups?

Yes, we are forming strategic partnerships with relevant stakeholders to enhance our services, expand our reach, and achieve our goals. In fact, we are also building these tie-ups.

How is the business funded?

Ours is a bootstrapped and was founded with an investment of Rs 4.8 crore from personal savings and a loan.

What is Skoodos all about? What does it do?

Skoodos is helping to bridge the gap between schools and their prospective students, by streamlining the decision-making process for parents and giving each school an equal and fair chance to showcase its strengths to the appropriate audience. Digital search has been optimised for both urban and rural schools in India thanks to this curated platform. Skoodos has everything a school could want to boost its online visibility. The intuitive design of the school finder makes it simple for both parents and students to access numerous educational options and compare them based on the data provided. Like we said, every child is different. So are schools. Every school has a unique perspective and values to share and shape a child’s future.

How does the platform make the school filtration process easier for parents and students?

Finding a good school for your children is a top priority, so we've developed our own methods to evaluate schools using a comprehensive set of criteria (42-45 in total) (fees, distances, reviews, infra, etc). Users are not required to provide any personal information (apart from name, contact number and email - for user account) to Skoodos in order to view the site, download the mobile apps, or contact the schools that are featured on the site. It is our hope that any interested parent or student can quickly and easily form an impression of a school based on a few mouse clicks. Skoodos maintains that in today's era of instant gratification, we can locate and select any institution we desire at the click of a mouse, and that it would be pointless to pass up such a convenience.

How many schools are currently working with/on the platform?

To date, Skoodos has partnered with over 14,000 schools across India, including 260 new schools in 742 cities across nearly all of the country's states and union territories and this number is growing rapidly.

What is your USP over your competitors? What makes you different from other players?

Our USP is providing verified information to the parents and students and making sure the schools get the best visibility according to the facilities they offer. The technology enables us to share and consume every information there is but the information is of no use without a purpose, we are making sure everything we are providing is verified and serves the purpose of the best school search engine platform.

What are your future plans?

♦ Product development: In next three months we will be onboarding over 1,50,000 schools on Skoodos.

♦ User onboard: We are looking to onboard over 10 million users in 2023.

♦ Expansion plans: We are already present pan India but our country is big and diversified, our plan is to get each and every school of this nation on board.

Any particular challenge that eventually helped you improve your business?

As soon as we started the development of skoodos web app, Covid had hit India and the process of our research was intensified because now we had to make sure the parents and students could actually shortlist and select the schools without even visiting them physically. It helped us make the app and web app more effective. We ran our R&D for over two years before officially launching.

How many students and parents have boarded or used the platform?

Till date we have over two million outreach.