Chapter in Life: CollegeAdviser

Why I started CollegeAdviser

For a long time, I believed something without questioning it. I believed that everyone knows what they want to become in life. Doctor. Engineer. Lawyer. CA. It felt obvious. People around me talked about these careers all the time. If I had some idea in my head, surely others did too. I never stopped to think where those ideas came from.

Until Class 10, life is fairly linear. Study well, score well, move to the next class. Board exams were the big event. Everyone prepares for the same finish line.

But Class 11 changes you. For the first time, you’re asked to choose a stream, and that choice starts deciding the direction of your life. Science (or as tier 3 city people call “Medical”) narrows you toward becoming a doctor. Non-Medical Science nudges you toward engineering. Commerce to CA and Arts comes with its own stereotypes. Career transitions exist, of course, but in a country like India, they’re still exceptions, not the rule.

Such a big decision of life - at the age of just 16!

Was the education system designed this way? Not really.
This is the outcome of history, culture, and most importantly, privilege.

I grew up in Sirsa, a tier-3 city in Haryana and the state’s largest district, with over 300 villages. I lived in the city and went to a school that had a healthy mix of students from the main town and nearby villages.

Over time, a pattern became obvious.

Most of my friends from the city had already “decided” what they wanted to become. Engineer. Doctor. Something familiar. For many of my friends from villages, that clarity didn’t exist. Their primary goal wasn’t a specific profession, it was stability. A government job. Financial security. Moving their family out of BPL!

The difference wasn’t intelligence or ambition. It was exposure.

I remember one particular incident clearly. A friend’s cousin from Mumbai used to visit occasionally. We’d all play together on the street, and he’d introduce us to new games that were popular in big cities. One day, he casually mentioned that he wanted to become a professional wildlife photographer.

It caught me completely off guard!

To me, photography was a hobby, not a career! That conversation planted a seed I didn’t fully understand at the time: what we aspire to become is often limited by what we’ve seen is possible. Exposure shapes ambition. Privilege determines risk appetite.

That’s when it became clear to me that not everyone knows what they want to become. And even those who think they do might just be operating within a very narrow window.

I wasn’t immune to this either.

Until Class 10, I was certain I wanted to become a software engineer and study Physics and Chemistry. Later, when I was exposed to Commerce, things shifted. I wanted to be a software engineer and a Chartered Accountant. I planned to become an engineer first, then a CA.

In hindsight, that confusion was the most honest phase of my thinking.

The core problem was simple:
Less exposure leads to a higher chance of picking the wrong career.

The solution, however, was anything but clear.

How do you give exposure to students in villages and small towns? Who tells them that careers don’t end at engineering and medicine? I didn’t have an answer.

Life moved on.

Year 2016 - when it came time to choose my own college for computer science, I found myself stuck between options like BTech and BCA, and an even harder question: which college actually matters?

I did what felt natural to me at the time. I cold-messaged software engineers from Google, Microsoft, Netflix, anyone I could find on LinkedIn or Facebook who looked remotely approachable. Surprisingly, many replied.

I got the advised I needed.

If you want to work as a software engineer in a good product company, focus on data structures, algorithms, and competitive programming. Tier-1 and Tier-1.5 colleges help because of placements, but beyond that, most colleges are more or less the same.

If you’re getting CSE at IITs, NITs, or places like BITS Pilani, take them.
Otherwise, choose a college that’s accessible, affordable, has decent faculty, good infrastructure, and gives you time and freedom to learn on your own.

I chose VIPS Delhi. It checked all my boxes: relevant curriculum, location in a tier-1 city, solid infrastructure, technical communities, good teachers, and enough breathing room to prepare on my own.

As I went deeper into research and conversations, another realization hit me.

For students genuinely interested in computer science but not getting IITs or NITs, there were several excellent colleges like Shiv Nadar University, Ashoka University, LNMIIT, Jaypee Institute that simply weren’t popular in small cities.

Instead, many students with decent ranks ended up choosing heavily marketed private universities with high fees, poor faculty, strict rules, low exposure, and campuses far from cities.

The question that bothered me was simple:
Why did I have to spend nights researching and messaging strangers on LinkedIn to learn this? Who was doing this work for everyone else?

That question became the beginning of CollegeAdviser.

Around that time, Quora was popular. Students asked endless questions about careers and colleges. I started answering them, sometimes obsessively. At first, it was just something I did during breaks. Slowly, more people started responding. Some thanked me and a few messaged me privately.

It felt good. In a quiet way. Like maybe I was useful. But it was also tiring. Same questions. Same confusion. Repeated.

I wanted something more structured. I wanted something that could stay.

That’s how CollegeAdviser was born: a platform to genuinely help students discover good colleges they might otherwise ignore.

I started with computer science aspirants, the problem I knew best. The idea was to replicate the same model for other streams later. We never planned to expand into Master’s degrees or Study Abroad, but that’s how things unfolded.

Scaling it

In the early days, I did everything myself. I answered messages. I researched colleges. I wrote content. I fixed website issues. I put my phone number on the homepage without thinking too much about it.

Things were little slow in 2017 but in 2018, we were getting like at least 2 student queries per minute, mostly from after noon to late evening. At peak, we were getting more than 2000 per day!

This did not stop here. People started calling directly on my personal phone number. Students. Parents. Sometimes parents who sounded more anxious than their children. I tried to help everyone. I moved to WhatsApp to control it, but that did not really help.

Every night before sleeping, I went through messages. I told myself I would reply to just a few. I almost always replied to all. Sleep slowly became shorter. I remember waking up tired and still doing the same thing again at night.

When I finally removed my number from the website, I felt guilty. It felt like I was abandoning people. But I also felt relief. I did not admit that part to anyone.

Co-founder issues

A few of my close friends joined and started helping me. It felt lighter to not be alone. It felt good to share responsibility.

But over time, conversations started feeling heavy. They talked about features, growth, rankings. I kept talking about intent and responsibility. We were using the same words but meaning different things. I remember sitting in meetings where I nodded, even though something inside me was uncomfortable. I did not want conflict. I wanted alignment.

Eventually, I realised that wanting different things does not make anyone wrong. But it does make working together painful.

I started alone and, in many ways, ended alone.

I learned, the hard way, the truth behind Sam Altman’s quote:
“It’s better to have no co-founder than a bad co-founder - but it’s still bad to be a solo founder.”

Execution limitations

CollegeAdviser was very content heavy. I took learnings from my past experience at DU Express and decided to work with students. I printed posters, visited DU North Campus colleges, shared hiring forms everywhere.

^ Original print. Later we started paid internships as well.

Soon, we had a team of 18 content writers and 2 editors. Articles carried the writers’ names. They shared their work proudly. Slack wasn’t popular at that time and we did everything over WhatsApp and GMail. That WhatsApp group was the most active group on my phone at that time. Ringing all day.

We printed CollegeAdviser T-shirts. Went to college fests together. Hosted meetups - first at Panditji’s Canteen, later at Kamla Nagar Starbucks when revenue jumped. Many of those students are still in touch today, doing well in their own lives. ❤️

^ year 2018

Our limitations

As traffic grew, colleges approached us to manipulate rankings. We refused. Eventually, we agreed to sponsored listings, with strict rules and my personal oversight. I rejected more deals than I accepted.

I only approved colleges which I thought were genuinely good for the students.

We also sold ad slots to brands like YourSpace, StanzaLiving, CoHo, etc. and signed them for deals year around.

Revenue was all time high.

But there was a structural flaw.

We were relevant only during admission season (March to August).

Once students got into college, we lost relevance. We tried expanding into Study Abroad, but the market was dominated by offline consultants with conflicted incentives and Shikha dot com left no online TAM for us. We couldn’t find a clean, honest entry point.

September came, and I still did not know. I noticed the change slowly. I stopped feeling kick in the morning. I started delaying opening my laptop. This did not feel good.

Killing the dream

I was friend with one of the senior leaders of our competitors and requested a 1:1. I admitted our business was only seasonal and I had no motivation left to explore more avenues. I did not expect what came next. They offered to buy the business xD

More than the tech IP, they were interested in the database we built over the years. Using our data, they could target students about to enter college, students seeking own accommodations (across India), students seeking internships and students about to graduate.

We discussed it. Thought about it. And finally went ahead. It wasn’t life-changing deal, but it gave me freedom. And more importantly, it gave closure.

CollegeAdviser ended, but it taught me more than any degree ever could - about exposure, ambition, systems, people, and myself.

Some chapters are meant to end. This was one of them.