Leaducate, an Argentina-based student prospecting service, wants to expand a model it calls profitable across Latin America and beat competition from better financed U.S. and European companies, the company COO said in an interview Friday.
The company wants to replicate a model under which the organization generates leads, or prospects, of potential students that it then directs to teaching institutions, which in turn pay for the service, said Santiago Seri, chief operational officer, during a telephone interview Friday.
¨In Argentina, during 2014 we generated 750,000 leads of which 630,000 were monetized to earn $1.5 million (US) dollars. What we are now seeking is to multiply by ten our revenue in a four-year horizon,¨ Seri said.
Leaducate has already taken the first step towards multiplying its revenue by starting to expand its operations to Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela during 2014. The network has been partially built in these countries, but is still being developed.
¨Our goal is to have commercial operations in those countries,¨ he added. The company has built a network of some 100 clients since 2006. At this early expansion stage, there are only some 10 new clients from other countries in Latin America.
Leaducate, which considers itself ¨the first step in the process of admission to higher institutions,” faces the biggest challenge of financing that expansion, he said. ¨Our main challenge is to face at a regional level a business which we know well in Argentina. Another big challenge is the financing¨ of the expansion, he added.
¨We are beginning to see interest from investors,¨ Seri said.
Other companies offering similar services like the U.S.-based Quinstreet, which is listed on the Nasdaq exchange, or Spain-based web organizations Educaedu and Emagister, lack the cultural advantages and the Latin American focus, he added. Other Latin players are too small, he added.
¨Our main focus is Latin America,¨ he said. Leaducate is made up of a group of 16 people with an average age of 30, he said.
The company sites are generating about one million visits per month, he said. Most leads are drawn into the company sites through Internet platforms after students write on search engines words such as ¨where to study¨ he said. Internet advertising, social media and email marketing also help.
The company is owned by a holding company that the Argentine founders established in the United States, he said. The U.S. location helps in part to decouple from Argentine political and financial volatility, he added.
