In 2013, Ms. Bakhtawar Krishnan joined a Mumbai-based international education test-prep company as Partner. By 2017, she had acquired the business and Inspirus Education was born and shaped into one of Mumbai’s premier centres for international education counselling, test-prep, and advisory.

With a clear vision to be a student-centric institution and not a commission agent, Bakhtawar ensured that Inspirus was founded on the strong principles of making quality higher education accessible to every deserving child. It meant widening the horizon of targeted universities, understanding evolving industry needs and relevant course curricula, working with schools, parents and students to prepare for a changing global workplace, and most of all, planning the blueprint of an inclusive institute. It also meant building a team of like-minded professionals, investing in training and adapting to a tech-based outlook and infrastructure.

In the last 8 years, Inspirus’ growth has not just been defined by an exponential increase in student placements across international universities but also by its evolution as one of India’s most trusted higher education counselling institutes.

From a purely US-centric institute in the early 2000s, today, Inspirus students are excelling in universities across Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, UK, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Australia and recently even India, besides the length and breadth of the United States.

Its reach has grown beyond the three centres in Mumbai to centres across three cities in India. Inspirus was the first to create a footprint in Assam and more recently a branch in Pune city is making in-person counselling also a possibility for students of this education hub. Most recently, Inspirus has just finalised opening a centre in Indore.

With its vision clearly set on reaching larger number of students and schools across India, especially in tier II cities, Inspirus had set course on a digital transformation journey early. The pandemic only accelerated the process and ensured that Inspirus’ students did not suffer due to the changed circumstances.

“A unique digital student-classroom management system, designed exclusively by the Inspirus team was ready for roll-out almost as soon as the lockdown was announced,” said the Founder-Director of Inspirus Education – Bakhtawar Krishnan. “Since it was designed by our team, teacher training and student learning challenges have not been roadblocks and early adoption of the system has kept our students a step ahead of the rest,” she added.

Shareable digital documents, tests, concept books and work books and online quizzes are just some of the tools the students at Inspirus work with. The institution noticed a push towards integrating audio-visual and digital aid in teaching and learning on platforms such zoom and google meet, and integrated the same into its own ‘iSMS’ program.

The Central Idea

An organisation must have its heart and soul in place, and that thought must permeate across departments. While value generation is the prime responsibility of any organisation, for an education-based company like Inspirus, creating value through human capital is a critical priority.

Vision:

“We focus on education as a medium to inspire young minds to explore and discover their best selves and achieve amazing things. We are passionate about our business, and work closely with all stakeholders and draft out individualized solutions for all your study abroad dreams.”

Mission and Philosophy:

Thrill, don’t just fulfil!

Act with integrity.

Constantly Evolve.

Constantly Innovate.

Remain Childlike – always willing to learn!

Bolstering Careers

“Profile building is a professional art which is at the core of Inspirus’ counselling process for Bachelors, Masters, and PhD admissions. When to start a particular extra-curricular activity? In which school or college year and how to get involved in a summer or winter program? When and how to get a good internship? Which in-school co-curricular activities and out-of-school community service programs to partake in? Which academic activities provide the best value for a successful career and for admissions? When to calendar these activities in a school or college year? Some of these questions are constantly asked and discussed with each student, thereby creating a comprehensive road-map for the student, which the students themselves develop while counselling team guides, much like a parent with their new-born child,” said the VP Business Development of Inspirus – Abhinav Gogoi.

What connects all of these questions in today’s world is tech-driven creative solutions, which forms the core of Inspirus’ philosophy. This in turn enhances the student’s involvement in these activities thereby improving their skill, make them more enterprising to find solutions to problems on their own and importantly as well in building a strong CV.

The Academic Rollout

Unlike other similar institutions, Inspirus Education is an independent counselling centre that aims to help students achieve their study abroad dreams in the top globally ranked universities. They provide the necessary coaching and guidance to do well in multiple aptitude tests.

• Coaching for SAT, ACT, PSAT, GRE, GMAT, LSAT, LNAT, UCAT, CLAT, IELTS, and TOEFL
• Classroom as well as live, online coaching
• Unbiased Counselling for UG, MS, MiM, MBA and PhD programs
• Official coaching partner of premier schools in India for SAT, PSAT, and CLAT
• Renowned for personalized touch in all programs

Inspirus helps students identify the right path and subject strengths before preparing them to walk that path with self-belief, confidence, positivity, and an open mind. The team helps students prepare for UG and PG admission tests, in global universities, with a keen focus on individual learning abilities.

To ensure that Inspirus always has the best to offer its students in terms of mentorship, the team undergoes regular training to keep abreast with evolving counselling and academics-oriented approaches and methodologies.

Standing Apart

Inspirus is committed to be student-centric and that means the team works with each child at an individual level post understanding their respective strengths and weaknesses. Its focus on counselling ensures that children are not just prepared to face the required admissions test each university stresses upon, but that they are prepared to face the challenge of a different learning-teaching approach that international universities adopt.

Looking at the large number of students keen on applying to international universities, Inspirus has designed unique models that work with schools to build in-house strengths and programs to prepare students at the middle and high school level itself.

“Our vast alumni network work like cohorts keeping us abreast with the evolving needs of industry and the corresponding academic changes across faculties in global universities. It is to our advantage that this network remains eagerly connected with our counsellors and founder, ever willing to mentor the incoming student base,” remarked Ms. Bhaktawar Krishnan. 

The Inspiring Chief

Bakhtawar Krishnan, Founder and Director of Inspirus Education, set the foundation of this institute after a two-and-a-half decade long corporate career, helming the top job first as a banker and then as a ‘Global Head’ of human resources for a leading consulting firm.

This first-time entrepreneur, sharpened her skills on ground, building a network with international universities and understanding the need gaps that students would have to bridge on campus through regular visits to university campuses. On the other hand, she regularly engages with leading schools across Indian cities, conducting workshops with parents, students and teachers to help them align with international teaching-learning methodologies. She works closely with heads of schools to design in-school programs that help prepare students early.

Bakhtawar’s ‘people first’ attitude is what has made Inspirus the best training ground for teachers and counsellors wanting to build a career in this field. This helps Inspirus attract some of the best minds in the industry and add value to its innovation led thinking.

Noteworthy Achievements

Some of the noteworthy achievements that Inspirus Education has amassed over the years are:

• 9000+ students from all over India, Middle-East and South-East Asia, have been placed in prestigious institutes of higher education, across the globe.
• 10% of the students are placed in the ‘Top 10’ universities
• 50% of the students are placed in ‘Top 50’ universities
• 90% of the students are placed in ‘Top 100’ universities
• 94 Cr worth of scholarships in the last two years
• India’s first 340/340 in GRE is an Inspirus student.

Nevertheless, the most decorated accomplishment of this institute is the growing number of high scores and top admits.

The EdTech Implementation

“Recently, Inspirus has fully integrated live online mode of learning and counselling and, to that end, adapted and developed their own digital student and classroom management system within their existing CRM – ‘iSMS’. This system facilitates a tonne of resourceful material such as shareable digital documents, tests, concept books, and work books and online quizzes. Push towards integrating audio-visual and digital aid in teaching and learning on platforms such as zoom and google meet which have been integrated into our the institute’s iSMS,” says Sanjay Agarwal, VP Operations.

Scaling the Future

Going ahead, Inspirus Education wishes to continue in the same fashion with its core values, mission, and philosophy intact. The only change it wants to bring is to constantly evolve into the digital medium for AI-supported training in its live classes as well as create a reliable and smooth user-interface for counselling sessions.

“We are launching Inspirus India soon catering to profile building, career consultancy and admissions to top universities in India. We are also investing time and effort in building infrastructure and training personnel to cater to an increase in annual student numbers to 3000 next year and 27000 in the next four years,” concluded the astute leader of Inspirus, Ms. Bakhtawar Krishnan.