Education technology startup CollegeDekho has announced the appointment of Nikunj Bhatter as Head, Product & Engineering. His new role at CollegeDekho will be focused on expanding both the Product and Engineering teams, with a goal of scaling current offerings of the company as well as product development for new business verticals. The main emphasis will be on automation of processes to achieve scalability along with improving user experience across platforms.

Before joining CollegeDekho, Nikunj has worked with Aakash Digital as AVP of Product and Innovation, where he was leading their product team to help scale Aakash Educations digital division, both in terms of revenue and also active users. With more than a decade of experience, Nikunj has worked extensively across the Education sector and has been associated with names like Monster.com and HT Media, amongst others.

Nikunj has also lent his expertise as Advisor to McKinsey – Digital Practices, where he led a cross-functional team to enable the digital transformation of one of the largest banks in India.

A product innovation expert, Nikunj completed his M.S. in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA) and is armed with an MBA (PGPM), in Finance and Marketing from Indian School of Business (Hyderabad).

Ruchir Arora, Co-Founder and CEO, CollegeDekho said “We are happy to have Nikunj onboard. His expertise and innovation in product development will be invaluable. Since we are already on a fast-paced expansion trajectory, we are very excited to have a leader who can work with the team to build scale and enhance user experience through process automation.”

Commenting on his new role Nikunj Bhatter said “I am thrilled to join the CollegeDekho team. The concept is new and is trying to solve a grass root issue that students are facing in India. There is a huge latent need for institutionalized education counselling. At the core level the problem of not finding the right career exists with both masses and classes. With CollegeDekho’ unique proposition, students across SEC categories are going to benefit.”

CollegeDekho has recently raised US$8 Mn in its Series B funding led by existing investors GirnarSoft, London based Man Capital and others. The funds are being used for expansion, research, product development, technology. As a part of the growth strategy, in the month of July, CollegeDekho has acquired Delhi based student’s guidance overseas business – Scholarship Facilitation Services Pvt. Ltd. (SFS) for an undisclosed amount.