Minglebox: Matching MBA Aspirants to Business Schools

By Durga Raghunath

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Beginning with high school students, Minglebox offers a network for every kind of educational qualification.

Minglebox, an online startup that began as a campus networking site in 2006, has morphed into an “education platform” that connects students with campuses and counselors. This week, through their first event directed at admissions, the four-year-old startup is hoping to capitalize on the enormous small town interest in post-graduate business education in India.

“We were surprised to see students calling us with a high percentile in the Common Admission Test, (conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management), and who still didn’t have admission into a business school,” said Kavita Iyer, CEO and Co-Founder Minglebox.

Sensing a huge information gap, Minglebox wants to connect aspirants, institutions and counselors face-to-face, through an unusual offline interaction that is to be held on May 22-23 in New Delhi.

“We have registrations even from Ambala, Meerut and Kota,” added Ms. Iyer. The event is a walk-in for students who will have to bring mark sheets, photographs and their scoresheets from the admission tests they have already taken, like the CAT. They will be able to speak to institute representatives at the venue and counselors promise to help them make the right decision.

If offered a spot, students will have to pay 25,000 rupees ($550) to ensure that they hold a spot for them. While the institute list is hardly star-studded, it does feature some of the mid-ranked, infrastructure rich, local Delhi institutions like Amity and IILM.

While engineering has had a traditional counseling process for the large numbers of high-school applicants countrywide every year, Ms. Iyer pointed out that business education is still lacking that student-campus match counselling and network process.

With three million registered students from 290 cities in India and 5000 signed-on campuses, Minglebox is aiming to attract everyone in education – high school aspirants to specialized post graduate students to study abroad applicants. Ms. Iyer sees vocational training around health sciences and hospitality as the next big growth areas.

Minglebox has venture backing from Trident Capital, Sequoia Capital and Silicon Valley Bank.