On this episode of the Bourbon Friday Show, we had the opportunity to talk to Raj Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of Connexio.

Connexio—Helping International Students Connect with Colleges

Last year, about 1 million international students studied abroad in the United States—which brought in nearly $40 billion for the U.S. economy.

While this is good for the U.S., the process of being able to study internationally has proven to be challenging. With many roadblocks and outdated systems, international students often feel overwhelmed by the process and the steps it takes just to have an opportunity to study internationally.

Connexio aims to help solve this problem.

“Connexio is a marketplace for international students and universities to find each other,” says Singh. “This whole process is marred by brokers and agents, so what we are doing is we’re taking this middleman out of the picture by giving students an AI-driven mobile app, which acts as a personalized advisor.”

The algorithm behind this process is currently being taught through the one-on-one conversations between real people, the advisors and students, in order to give the best results possible to future Connexio app users.

Though it sounds complicated, it’s quite easy for students and universities to sign up. All students need to do is download the app and create their profile, for universities Connexio integrates with their current platforms.

Even though universities pay a membership fee to be a part of the program, Singh says that Connexio doesn’t push students towards going to any particular schools—their utmost concern is helping international students find the best university for them.

“We decided from day one that we are not going to sell students to universities. I know it just sounds very crude, but you know, we’re not going to make money off pushing students to particular schools.”

Connexio currently has an Android app for students to download on the Google Play store, with an iOS version coming out soon.

Additionally, if a University would like to partner with Connexio Singh recommends going to https://www.connexio.io/university for more information.

Bourbon Innovation

As always, the Bourbon Friday team does their best to choose a fitting drink for the occasion.

The bottle this week was Michter’s US*1 Bourbon. This bourbon was chosen because recently, a bottle of Michter’s Bourbon was sold at a charity event for $17,000. The story behind that is a man named Sukhinder Singh requested a special bottle to sell at auction from Michter’s. While this may seem an impossible request for most people. Sukhinder with his brother Rajbir run The Whisky Exchange one of the largest online spirits retailers in the world.