When Rishabh Singh got accepted into Brown University, he was thrilled about his achievement.
Not only had he just got into one of the most prestigious universities in the U.S., but he was the first student from Bihar, India to get a full scholarship; even his plane tickets were paid for.
Although it seemed like the hard part of his college admissions process was over, he had no idea the challenges he would face as an international student preparing to relocate to the U.S. for the next four years.
Singh had to get health care insurance, find an apartment, get a loan in India, set up a bank account and complete a number of other tasks before he could make the trip. The process involved working with numerous companies for many weeks and also proved expensive.
“Because we are the students' concierge first and foremost, thousands of them are able to trust us, and this gives us the leverage that ensures that we only empower the very best companies to get international students as customers at scale."
After discovering he wasn’t alone in his struggles, the now Brown graduate set out to make relocation easier for international students in India.
His company Gradly allows incoming international students to complete the entire relocation process before their arrival in the U.S. digitally within a single web and mobile app, and without any paperwork or manual effort.
“I didn’t realize at the time the magnitude of the task ahead. I didn’t even know what a Social Security number was. The entire process was foreign,” Singh, who recently received the 2019 Brown Venture Founder award, told Rhode Island Inno. “Everything had to be done manually with a whole bunch of companies. Most of the time, you didn’t know how to find the companies or who was the best.”
Gradly partners with companies that specialize in different aspects of the relocation process to bring their products into its app and create a much more streamlined and simpler experience for international students.
Students can currently use the app to obtain health insurance, a phone plan and loans. The app also provides assistance with transferring money, shipping documents, setting up a bank account, finding an apartment and preparing to get a visa by doing things like getting vaccinations required by the State Department.
Additionally, the app helps international students plan out their financing for tuition and other expenses, and gives them knowledge on coursework and other important information about their university.
Gradly was born from a similar startup that Singh, a computer science major, launched while still at Brown. Having been the first student from Bihar to get a full scholarship to Brown, many incoming Indian students reached out for advice and assistance during the college application process.
After helping dozens of students, Singh found that each student went through the same pattern of problems in the application process. In particular, they had trouble shortlisting the best programs or universities to apply to based on their background.
This led Singh to build a prototype for a machine learning tool that matched applicants with graduate programs based on their research and curricular interests with the faculty as well as labs at a university.
But while the prototype was in beta, the users of the matching tool began asking Singh for help with things beyond the application process, like what banks to go to for loans, what insurance plans were the best for them or what debit card or bank accounts to choose when in the U.S.
Their feedback ultimately led to Singh to realize that the inconvenience that international students faced was not only just limited to finding the best college programs, but also extended through the entire process of relocating to the U.S. — which ultimately led to the creation of Gradly.
The company saves students money and speeds up the relocation process by finding partner companies that can provide the most affordable deals and that it can work with to more quickly process applications.
For example, If an international student wanted to take out a $30,000 loan, Singh said the process would normally take four to six weeks and require the student to physically walk into a bank branch.
Using Gradly, a student can scan the necessary documents through the app and get their loan approved in a week’s time.
It’s the same with health insurance.
Typically, according to Singh, students are left with a health insurance plan provided by the university or get exposed to shady carriers.
Gradly’s partners provide students with access to 60 to 80 health insurance plans. The company has students fill out a 10 question survey, which provides the company with high level information that allows them to recommend the best healthcare plan for each student’s needs.
Gradly is free for international students, but acts as a broker on the backend and therefore gets compensated by its partners for the business that it brings them. However, Singh emphasized that the company will never partner with a company or make a recommendation to a student that will in any way be suboptimal.
“This is certainly not the standard in the industry, where predatory ‘brokers’ are always ready to make a quick buck off of international students who do not have experience with the process,” he said. “Because we are the students' concierge first and foremost, thousands of them are able to trust us, and this gives us the leverage that ensures that we only empower the very best companies to get international students as customers at scale. It ultimately creates a win-win scenario for everyone."
Last year, Gradly had more than 2,000 students use its web-based platform. This month, the company plans to release its mobile app and bring the entire relocation process into an international student's pocket.
The app is currently only available to Indian international students, but eventually Singh plans to roll it out to international students from any country in the world.
“For international students and many other immigrants, the entire pre-arrival and relocation process resembles a high stakes obstacle course, punctuated by stressful deadlines and ends up being a huge hurdle to cross,” he said. “By bringing together everything in one app, eliminating paperwork and providing informed assistance at every step, our hope is that Gradly can simplify and digitize relocation for our users.”
Editor's Note: Gradly was named one of Rhode Island Inno's 2019 50 on Fire award winners. Read more here.
