Edustoke Revolutionizes School Discovery with AI-Powered Search and Advisory for Bharat's Parents

For most Indian parents, choosing a school is the most consequential decision they will ever make for their child. Yet, in a country where schooling is largely driven by private trusts and hyper-local institutions, the "discovery" process has traditionally been a nightmare of manual visits, anecdotal advice, and total lack of transparency. While digital tools have revolutionized everything from food delivery to house hunting, the K-12 sector remained surprisingly analog.

Enter Rohit Malik and Pawas Tyagi, the founders of Edustoke. Having spent a decade collectively at Educomp, where they visited over 10,000 schools, they understood the pain points of both sides: parents drowning in anxiety and schools struggling to be discovered without massive marketing budgets. By building India's most comprehensive school search engine and combining it with structured advisory services, Edustoke has now served over 15 million parents, proving that information is the ultimate cure for enrollment anxiety.

From a "drunken walk" startup phase to managing over half a million monthly visitors organically, Malik and Tyagi’s journey is a masterclass in building a credible ecosystem for Bharat's education sector.

The Problem: The Hyper-Local Discovery Void

In India, schooling is a unique beast. Unlike other global markets, a large part of the sector is driven by private entrepreneurs, trusts, and societies who invest their life savings into land and infrastructure. Because schools are hyper-local—usually drawing students from a 5-kilometer radius—they often lack the scale or the budget to build a digital presence.

"India did not have any credible digital platform... to help parents find a school," Rohit Malik explains. "Schools being hyper local institutions, they really don't have either the liberty or the money to be really going gungo across the city." This lack of a central hub forced parents into a cycle of anxiety and manual search.

The Solution: The Google for Schools (and More)

Edustoke started by solving the foundation: Discovery. They put across verified information for over 25,000 schools, allowing parents to filter by location, budget, curriculum, and gender. But they soon realized that a list wasn't enough. School admissions are about "soft bits"—the human connection and advisory.

"We built the entire backend to start interacting with parents in a little more structured manner," Pawas Tyagi notes. Edustoke provides end-to-end support, from identifying options to arranging school visits and normalizing the "descent" between a parent’s high specifications and their actual budget.

Implementation: From Educomp to Entrepreneurship

The transition from corporate leadership at Educomp to a bootstrap startup was a shift into "loneliness." Malik and Tyagi were used to managing thousands of employees; suddenly, they were operating out of different cities, talking on the phone at 5 AM, and doing everything themselves—from tech to data collection.

"Any plan that you make... the shelf life is barely a day," Tyagi reflects. "The training we had to go through was that you should be okay with it... being very, very tactical on the ground." They initially risk-managed their careers by not hiring old friends until the Proof of Concept (POC) was proven, ensuring they didn't sink others' careers with their own uncertainty.

The Human Side: Empathy and Intent-Based Traffic

For Edustoke, the ultimate metric isn't just clicks; it's intent. They take pride in the fact that 7 out of every 10 "intent-based" users in India land on Edustoke when searching for admissions. This high level of relevance is achieved by maintaining a "Zen-like" focus on the parent's requirement.

"Our aim is to be the one place where all parents looking for anything under k12... can come down to Edustoke," says Malik. This requires an enormous amount of empathy—understanding that for a parent, this isn't a transaction; it's a legacy.

Future Vision: The 18-Month-to-18-Year Journey

Edustoke is scaling from a "school search engine" to a full K-12 lifecycle platform. This includes moving into the "daycare" segment (18 months+) and providing interventions for extracurriculars, hobbies, and sports. With operations already in 15 cities and a plan to scale to 45—plus a Middle East expansion on the cards—Edustoke is building the definitive gateway for Indian education.

Key Takeaways for EdTech Founders

• Solve the "Serious Decision" First: Admissions is the most stressful part of K-12. By solving this, Edustoke built the trust necessary to expand into lower-stakes areas like summer camps.
• Organic Traffic is the Best Moat: If you provide verified, legible, and up-to-date data that solves an anxiety, parents will find you without you spending a "single dime" on ads.
• Be Nimble, Stay Tactical: In the early stages, focus on the ground-level data. The founders personally reviewed the information for the first 5,000 schools to ensure credibility.
• Democratize the Supply Side: Use your platform to help budding entrepreneurs and teachers reach parents, creating an ecosystem that benefits every stakeholder.

As the Indian education market continues to digitize, Edustoke remains the credible digital bridge between parents and schools. For Rohit Malik and Pawas Tyagi, the journey is just starting. By turning "drunken walk" uncertainty into a structured advisory engine, they are ensuring that every parent in Bharat can find the perfect school for their child—one click at a time.