When Joy Prashant Mehta (Questrom’25) applied to colleges in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, he noticed a stark contrast in the application processes. While the US and UK had streamlined systems like the Common App and UCAS, applying to Indian institutions meant visiting each college’s website individually and repeatedly entering the same information.
“The way it works right now is that when I want to apply for a college, I go to each college’s website individually and fill all those details multiple times,” Joy explains. “Because it’s such a strenuous process, I will just end up applying to the most popular tier-one colleges.”
This personal frustration sparked the idea for CollegeBuddy, Joy’s venture that aims to revolutionize the college application process in India. As a finalist in the New Venture Competition, Joy is developing a comprehensive platform that allows students to complete one application and submit it to multiple institutions with just a few clicks.
Joy sees this as addressing two significant problems: students face a burdensome application process that limits their options, while tier-two and tier-three colleges struggle to attract qualified applicants beyond those who can dedicate excessive time to applications.
“The biggest thing that will happen is that there’ll be a significant boost for tier-two and tier-three colleges,” Joy says, explaining the potential impact of CollegeBuddy’s success.
The platform goes beyond just simplifying application submissions. CollegeBuddy plans to incorporate an acceptance predictor that uses machine learning and historical data to estimate a student’s chances of admission to specific colleges. Additionally, the platform will create communities of applicants to the same institutions, connecting current applicants with each other and with enrolled students and alumni.
“If I am applying to let’s say BU, but I don’t know anyone else from BU, I don’t know any alum, I don’t know anyone else that’s applying the same cycle, this will help me create a sort of a mini cohort or a mini Reddit,” Joy describes.
The market opportunity is substantial. Joy notes that India is the second-largest education hub globally, with approximately 140 million students studying each year—four times the number in the United States. If CollegeBuddy captures just a fraction of this market, the impact could be enormous.
“Out of that 140 million, if 40% study in private colleges, that brings me to a figure of 56 million students as my serviceable addressable market,” Joy calculates. “If I’m just able to get even 10% of that, that’s around 6 million students.”
Joy has assembled a team including two co-founders in India—one with a technical background in computer science and another with business expertise. The team is focusing initially on liberal arts colleges and private institutions that are adopting standardized admissions processes similar to US models, rather than targeting the more rigid government-regulated public universities.
“The reason why this hasn’t been picked up in India is that there is no specific one standardized test that exists that you can use to apply to all these colleges,” Joy explains. “Most of these colleges are public regulated and they have their own proper timelines, own process, it’s very tough to create a one-size-fits-all solution for that.”
Through participation in the New Venture Competition, Joy has gained valuable insights from pitch coaches who’ve helped refine the business strategy and focus on determining the ideal customer profile. The next step is deciding whether to initially target students directly or focus on partnering with colleges to build the network effect.
“When I go back to India, I want to go and speak to a lot of these colleges, see what is the reason why they have not implemented something like this,” Joy says, outlining his immediate plans.
With government policies increasingly supporting private liberal arts institutions in India, Joy believes there are significant tailwinds for CollegeBuddy’s approach. If successful in India, Joy envisions expanding to neighboring countries with similar education systems.
“This is what excites me the most—why something like that hasn’t existed in India. This actually came out of my need,” Joy reflects. “If we are able to do that, it’s going to make life a lot easier for students and reduce that stress level and anxiety that they might have at that phase.”
“Even a drop in the ocean is so big that if this were to take off, I think it would be extremely successful.”
