Shiksha

About Shiksha

Shiksha.com is an Indian online education portal based in Noida, publishing at shiksha.com. Launched on 19 May 2008 by Info Edge (India) Limited, the company behind Naukri.com, it serves as a comprehensive resource for students researching colleges, courses, exams and admissions in India and abroad. The portal connects education seekers with education providers, combining institutional listings with community features, expert counselling content and decision-support tools, and it remains one of the longest-running education portals in the Indian internet market.

Launch by Info Edge

Shiksha.com was launched on 19 May 2008 by Info Edge (India) Limited, the parent company of the job portal Naukri.com. The launch was announced through a company press release in New Delhi, with Hitesh Oberoi, then chief operating officer and director of Info Edge, stating that the education market in India was pegged at over Rs 120,000 crore, with more than 10 million people registering for higher education every year. The company said it planned to invest $5–10 million in the portal over three years. At launch the site carried more than 70,000 listings covering institutes, courses, events, admissions, results and scholarships, with information on graduate, postgraduate and vocational programmes from colleges in India and in countries including Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Info Edge set up a sales force of 50 people across eight cities to reach out to institutes.

Info Edge: the parent company

Info Edge (India) Limited was founded by Sanjeev Bikhchandani in 1995 and is one of India's earliest internet companies. Bikhchandani started Naukri.com in April 1997, followed by the matrimonial portal Jeevansathi.com in 1998 and the real-estate portal 99acres.com in 2005; Shiksha.com, launched in 2008, was the group's education vertical, followed by FirstNaukri.com in 2009. Info Edge went public in 2006 under the ticker symbol "Naukri". The company later became known for early investments in startups including Zomato and Policybazaar. Within this portfolio, Shiksha represented Info Edge's bet that the education classifieds and information market could be organised online in the same way it had organised recruitment, matrimony and real estate.

Listings and coverage

The portal's core is its database of educational institutions and courses. Later company profiles described it as a repository of information on more than 14,000 institutions and over 40,000 courses, with a registered database of more than 3.5 million students — figures reported by third-party company profiles. Users can find details on professional, overseas, executive and short-term courses as well as test preparation, with information on career choices, exams, colleges, admission criteria, eligibility, fees, placement statistics, rankings, reviews and scholarships. The site also provides alumni employment statistics powered by data from Naukri.com, giving students salary and recruiter data for institutions.

Community and counselling features

Shiksha built community features alongside its listings. The site hosts an "Ask and Answer" section where users get education-related queries answered by expert counsellors and fellow members, and Shiksha Café serves as a discussion forum for students. At launch the portal tied up with Kum Kum Tandon, a leading career counsellor, for a special section hosting her books. The Campus Connect platform enables direct interaction between higher-education aspirants and current students across colleges in India. These features were designed to turn the portal from a listings directory into a place where students could research, discuss and decide.

Decision-support tools

Over the years Shiksha introduced a suite of student-oriented products and tools: Career Central, a Common Application Form, Top Colleges rankings, a College Compare feature, Alumni Employment Statistics, Campus Connect, College Reviews, College Predictors and MyShortlist. The College Predictor tools help aspirants estimate their admission chances based on entrance-exam scores, while College Compare lets users evaluate institutions side by side on fees, placements and other parameters. These tools address the central anxiety of Indian college admissions — choosing among thousands of institutions with incomplete information — and they differentiate the portal from pure listings sites.

Business model

Shiksha's revenue model is based on advertisements placed by colleges, institutes and universities seeking student enquiries. Info Edge's own description of the business identifies three broad client categories: Indian education players such as universities and institutes, test-preparation and coaching institutes, and overseas universities and colleges targeting Indian students. For institutes, the site offers a channel to attract high-quality admission enquiries; the portal also enables educational institutions to upload videos, presentations and documents to communicate with students online. The business is supported by offices across several Indian cities, with its headquarters in Noida alongside Info Edge's other operations.

Study-abroad coverage

From its launch, Shiksha has covered overseas education alongside domestic admissions, listing programmes and institutions in countries such as Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. The portal provides information on foreign universities, application processes, scholarships and test preparation for exams used in overseas admissions. This international coverage positioned Shiksha to serve the large and growing segment of Indian students seeking undergraduate and postgraduate education abroad, a market that expanded significantly in the decade after the portal's launch.

Editorial and content operations

The portal publishes articles, guides and news on exams, admissions, education policy and careers, supplementing its listings database with editorial content. Its content operations include exam preparation material, admission notifications and career guidance, produced by an in-house team and contributors. The site's community-generated content — reviews, questions and answers — adds a layer of peer information on top of the institutional data. Info Edge's description of the portal emphasises that it connects the education seeker with the education provider primarily as a platform for information exchange.

Position in Indian education media

Shiksha entered the market in 2008 as one of the first large-scale education portals backed by an established Indian internet company, and it has operated continuously for more than fifteen years. It competes in a crowded segment that includes Collegedunia, CollegeDekho, GetMyUni and Careers360, but its longevity and its parentage give it a distinctive position: the education vertical of the company that built Naukri.com. The portal's evolution from a listings site with 70,000 entries at launch to a multi-tool platform with community, counselling and predictor features mirrors the maturation of India's online education market from simple directories to decision-support ecosystems.

Rankings, reviews and verified institutional data

A distinctive element of Shiksha's offering is its emphasis on verified institutional data. Info Edge's description of the business notes that the site provides access to credible, verified data on top recruiters and alumni salary, powered by information from Naukri.com — a data advantage that flows from the portal's position within the Info Edge group. Alongside this institutional data, the site publishes college reviews written by students and alumni, rankings of top colleges, and detailed placement statistics, giving aspirants multiple lenses on an institution: official figures, peer opinion and employment outcomes. The combination of listings, reviews, rankings and salary data is designed to address the information asymmetry that makes college choice one of the highest-stakes decisions Indian families make.

Events, admissions and scholarship listings

Beyond static institutional profiles, Shiksha has always carried time-sensitive listings: events, admissions, results and scholarships were part of the 70,000 listings at launch, and admission notifications remain a core content type. The portal publishes updates on application deadlines, exam schedules and scholarship opportunities, and its Common Application Form product lets students apply to multiple institutions through a single interface. These transactional features move the site beyond research into the application process itself, closing the loop between discovering a college and acting on that discovery.