3 ms·

What is the company?

zeynalov 15y ago
The company is partly online service for foreign students helping them to apply to the academic institutions in Germany. Sounds stupid but, Germany is 3rd most applied country in the world for academic studies but also they have one of the most complex and hard bureaucratic application process which foreign students can't figure out and ends with frustration. For example, if only 0.01% of students from all countries applying to German universities/courses/other academic studies would apply through our service it will give us - 300.000 euros annual profit. For now, I have only offices in Azerbaijan and Russia, hence only russian and azerbaijani students can be admitted by us and we already got 10% of students from these countries. We're going to open our branches in China, South Korea and Kazakstan in the next 5 months.
- camz 15y ago
  This isn't stupid. Students from China, Taiwan and Hk alone make this a huge market. The students that do this are usually rich kids who've been unable to get into prestigious school locally so the parents are ashamed of them and send them away. A perfect niche because your clientele is rich and they don't care. Think an employee with a corporate credit card. Whoever can let the student be laziest is the one that will get all the business regardless of the price. I've seen 10k being paid of people providing these services. To put this into perspective, I've had english schools ran in Taiwan (super small country) generate 500k in gross income with 50% margins (250k net profit in pocket). This is just teaching english where margins are lower because you need teachers. The business he's talking about can get up to 75 to 80% margins if you're sales force is baller.
  - zeynalov 15y ago
    I wrote stupid because I thought it can sound for people in US weird paying a service for the applications etc. Yes it's a big market, and it's nice that noone do that job in Germany. For example only from Azerbaijan (a 9 millions small country) we get 40-50 students every month. That's true that most of our costumers are rich people, and they don't care. Last month we had a costumer asking us for the application for Master degree in Germany. We explained him the process and said that he should pay 950 euros for the service. He said: "I'll give you not 950 but 10.000 euros, just do all the work for me. I have no idea what should I do." And he paid.
    - camz 15y ago
      lol I know exactly what you mean. they don't know the process and they don't want to know. their only goal is that you fill the application, write the essays, get the recommendations, create a resume if necessary. if you could take their toefl and any other standard exam for them, they'd pay you 5 times that amount. i've done a similar business in the past. its great moneys short term but its a bitch long term because its so draining dealing with these people. I definitely agree that you wont be able to keep the sales up long term with you being part of the company because no one cares. The only two options you have is to get a partner who'll work on commission that's desperate (not likely) or just slash the company down to as lean as possible and just accept much less in revenue. Otherwise you're going to just have to suck it up haha.

The company is partly online service for foreign students helping them to apply to the academic institutions in Germany. Sounds stupid but, Germany is 3rd most applied country in the world for academic studies but also they have one of the most complex and hard bureaucratic application process which foreign students can't figure out and ends with frustration. For example, if only 0.01% of students from all countries applying to German universities/courses/other academic studies would apply through our service it will give us - 300.000 euros annual profit. For now, I have only offices in Azerbaijan and Russia, hence only russian and azerbaijani students can be admitted by us and we already got 10% of students from these countries. We're going to open our branches in China, South Korea and Kazakstan in the next 5 months.

camz 15y ago
This isn't stupid. Students from China, Taiwan and Hk alone make this a huge market. The students that do this are usually rich kids who've been unable to get into prestigious school locally so the parents are ashamed of them and send them away. A perfect niche because your clientele is rich and they don't care. Think an employee with a corporate credit card. Whoever can let the student be laziest is the one that will get all the business regardless of the price. I've seen 10k being paid of people providing these services. To put this into perspective, I've had english schools ran in Taiwan (super small country) generate 500k in gross income with 50% margins (250k net profit in pocket). This is just teaching english where margins are lower because you need teachers. The business he's talking about can get up to 75 to 80% margins if you're sales force is baller.
- zeynalov 15y ago
  I wrote stupid because I thought it can sound for people in US weird paying a service for the applications etc. Yes it's a big market, and it's nice that noone do that job in Germany. For example only from Azerbaijan (a 9 millions small country) we get 40-50 students every month. That's true that most of our costumers are rich people, and they don't care. Last month we had a costumer asking us for the application for Master degree in Germany. We explained him the process and said that he should pay 950 euros for the service. He said: "I'll give you not 950 but 10.000 euros, just do all the work for me. I have no idea what should I do." And he paid.
  - camz 15y ago
    lol I know exactly what you mean. they don't know the process and they don't want to know. their only goal is that you fill the application, write the essays, get the recommendations, create a resume if necessary. if you could take their toefl and any other standard exam for them, they'd pay you 5 times that amount. i've done a similar business in the past. its great moneys short term but its a bitch long term because its so draining dealing with these people. I definitely agree that you wont be able to keep the sales up long term with you being part of the company because no one cares. The only two options you have is to get a partner who'll work on commission that's desperate (not likely) or just slash the company down to as lean as possible and just accept much less in revenue. Otherwise you're going to just have to suck it up haha.