Akala

About the offering

AKALA, tackling to the college admissions guidance crisis in America! Company AKALA is a woman and minority-owned college admissions counseling platform that provides technology, curriculum and bespoke guidance to high school students, maximizing their potential during the admissions journey to college. Mission To give ALL students, regardless of demographics, access to a holistic, best-in-class solution that allows them to navigate and excel in the complicated and highly competitive college admissions process. PROBLEM There's a big problem with college prep Kids start way too late (11th grade) Private counselors cost way too much ($200 to $1500 per hour) School counselors are stretched way too thin (1:500 ratio) Did you know? 17,000 high schools in America DO NOT have a dedicated college counselor. That's 2/3 of our entire public schools system! SOLUTION AKALA MAKES IT EASY TO NAVIGATE THE JOURNEY TO COLLEGE. All students need to do is open our platform and an awesome Ul appears with everything they need to do, and one-on-one support is available when needed. It's magic. One Platform - 3 Revenue Streams B2C - Private Pay: Individual families pay $75 per month Employee Benefit Program: Corporations offer AKALA as an employee benefit. $75 per employee per month International: Families pay $10-25K for a premium version of the product PATH TO SUCCESS GLOBAL TRACTION This year, we helped domestic students get accepted into all the top 25 schools. International students on the AKALA® platform have been accepted into UPENN, Emory, Barnard, Cornell, Chicago, UVA, UNC, UIUC, NYU, Duke, Brown, Emory and more. GLOBAL MARKET SIZE B2C MODEL: Based on demographics, we will target 9 million students grades 7-12 paying $900 annually = $8.1 Billion EMPLOYEE BENEFIT MODEL: Through corporations, we can reach more middle and lower middle class families. 2 million students at $900 annually. =$1.8 Billion International: 250 thousand students paying an average of $15K per student = $3.75 Billion USA TRACTION After Demo-Day at Google, we raised a $550K pre-seed round. Since then, AKALA joined the EdVentures and G-Beta incubators, was one of two big winners for USC Marshall's biggest competition, was a 43 North finalist (out of 500 companies!) and was designated an ASU-GSV elite 200 startup two years in a row. TIMELINE FINANCIALS 2023, YEAR 1 - $1.15M 500 Employee Benefit Students paying $900 each per year, 500 Private-Pay Students paying $900 each per year, 10 International Students paying $15K each with $30K-$60K bonuses for performance 2024, YEAR 2 - $2.9M 1500 Employee Benefit Students at $900 each per year, 1000 Private-Pay Students paying $900 each per year, 45 International Students paying $15K each with $30K-$60K bonuses for performance 2025, YEAR 3 - $13.95M 10,000 Employee Benefit Students paying $900 each per year, 3000 Private-Pay Students paying $900 each per year, 150 International Students paying $15K each with $30K-$60K bonuses for performance USE OF FUNDS Sales and Marketing $430,000: operations/sales director, regional sales (SoCal & NJ), Marketing/design director, Manager of all Youth Engagement Orgs. Engineering $415,000: Tech Lead, Al/Machine Learning Lead, ios/android developers, data Engineer General and Administrative $115,000 Legal $40,000 Total $1,000,000

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