Exclusive: StudyIn acquires Indonesian student recruitment agency SUN Education

The PIE News can exclusively reveal that higher education specialist StudyIn – previously known as SI-UK – has announced the completion of its transaction with SUN Education, a major student recruitment agency in South-East Asia.

With 27 locations and 230 employees, SUN Education places 2,000 students a year, primarily to universities in Australia. Founded in 2010, it has established itself as a leading player in South-East Asia’s student recruitment sector, led by its founders Fredy Subrata, Kevin Tan and Harianto Ani, who will continue to lead the organisation in this next chapter.

In a statement, the companies described the deal as a “milestone for the sector, creating a heavyweight multi-destination player with exciting growth prospects”.

“This transaction underscores StudyIn’s commitment to connecting students with the best universities worldwide,” commented Rob Grimshaw, CEO of StudyIn.

Subrata described it as an “incredible opportunity” and said that through their combined global platform and multi-destination network, the organisations “will create greater opportunities for students and deliver stronger outcomes for universities worldwide”.

The deal is set to benefit StudyIn by bringing a valuable footprint with Australian institutions, where SUN education has extensive partnerships. The company is also looking to deepen its engagement with Indonesia, where SUN Education was founded – a country with 280 million people and one that is seen as a strategically important source market with huge potential.

Speaking to The PIE, Grimshaw said that the two organisations are “in step with each other in terms of our perspective of the world”, with a shared belief that “doing the right thing” by your partners and students “is the road to success”.

Already present in 45 markets, Grimshaw said StudyIn is positioning itself for further expansion.

“We’ve got a winning formula here,” said Grimshaw, speaking about StudyIn’s work. “We see opportunity in markets where we have a less-developed footprint, such as in South America and Africa at the moment, there’s lots of space for us to expand.” 

We see opportunity in markets where we have a less-developed footprint, such as in South America and Africa at the moment, there’s lots of space for us to expand
_{Rob Grimshaw, StudyIn}

“We do the right thing both by the universities and by the students and we feel that maintaining high standards, having robust processes, being reliable as a partner at both ends has drawn volume to us and we think that the sector could benefit from more of that,” explained Grimshaw.

“There’s a virtuous situation here. Our success is the sector’s success and the obvious thing for us to do to build out the organisation is firstly to add more destinations so that we’re a preferred partner for universities across multiple markets worldwide, and also in parallel keep expanding our extraordinary footprint in source markets.”

Despite a tumultuous few years in international education for Australian providers, with a de facto cap on international enrolments and reports of dwindling interest in certain parts of the sector, Grimshaw is optimistic about the future of recruitment to the country.

“The message from the government behind the scenes seems to be there is going to be gentle growth here,” he explained.

“We just all have to do it in a sensible way. That’s a reasonable message. We’re certainly seeing that in the numbers from SUN. Their business has grown this year, and they’re expecting a good result as they come out of the end of their current financial year. We feel that actually of the major markets, Australia is in many ways the most straightforward right now.”

Collectively, StudyIn and SUN Education process over 300,000 student applications a year. By joining forces, the organisations have ambitions to increase their investment in people and technology “to make the student journey even better”.

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