In early July 2025, education agent aggregator Crizac conducted a successful IPO in India. The details were covered by The PIE and a host of Indian business media outlets.
The final offer documents lodged with the Securities and Exchange Board of India run to over 480 pages. While focused on Crizac’s business, they provide insight more broadly into the inner workings and economics of a large agent aggregator. Most of the other main agent aggregators are privately held businesses and detailed information on their business operations is not easily available. The data and commentary that Crizac provides on its sub-agent network is particularly interesting.
Crizac describes itself as a “B2B education platform for agents and global institutions of higher education offering international student recruitment solutions to global institutions of higher education in United Kingdom, Canada, Republic of Ireland, Australia and New Zealand (ANZ)”. It makes clear the critical role that sub-agents play in its business model.
Our business model requires us to establish and maintain a wide network of agents in India and in global markets…These agents source for us, on a non-exclusive basis, aspiring students who are looking for higher education overseas and are, therefore, critical to our business.
Nothing too surprising there, it is simply a statement of the key elements of the aggregator business model, but the supporting detail highlights a range of interesting issues.
Registered vs Active Agents
The ‘definitions’ section of the document contains two key terms:
- ‘Registered Agents’ – Agents who are registered on our proprietary technology platform.
- ‘Active Agents’ – Agents from whom our Company has received applications.
The document then sets out the relevant numbers:
| As at 31 March 2025 | As at 31 March 2024 | As at 31 March 2023 | |
| Active Agents | 3,948 | 2,532 | 1,819 |
| Registered Agents | 10,362 | 6,509 | 4,414 |
| % Active Agents | 38.1% | 38.9% | 41.2% |
Here we see the Pareto principle – aka the 80-20 rule – in action: a minority of Crizac’s sub-agents refer all of the applications. The majority – around 60% – appear to refer zero applications.
The document then breaks down the data further, focusing on the highest performing active agents.
Here’s where the Pareto principle really flexes its muscles. The bottom line shows that the top 10 sub-agents were responsible for approximately 10-15% of revenue in each of the last three years. To put it another way, and select just one year, in 2025 just 0.1% of registered agents, or 0.25% of active agents, were responsible for 9.93% of revenue. This creates a risk for Crizac’s business which it acknowledges:
Our ability to continue to generate revenue from our operations is significantly dependent on our ability to maintain our relations with our agents. If any of our top 10 agents cease to work with us or collaborate with us or choose to work with others, our business, our results of operations and financial conditions will be impacted. There can be no assurance that we will be able to retain our agents, in particular, our top 10 agents or we will be able to find suitable replacements for such agents or we will be able to offset any loss of such agents by having new agents.
Sub-agent infidelity
Another risk discussed in the document is that sub-agents play the field and work with other agent aggregators, seeking out the best commission. In some cases successful sub-agents may realise that they don’t need the aggregator any longer and seek to work directly with educational institutions.
Our agents also work with various other organisations which are our competitors. Our agents may also directly work with global institutions of higher education which are associated with us. In the absence of an exclusive agreement or arrangement, our agents may process the applications directly to global institutions of higher education or through such competitors which may also have an adverse effect on our business operations, revenue and financial condition. We cannot assure you that our existing agents will continue to provide students for enrolment in global institutions of higher education through our Company. In the absence of exclusive contracts or exclusive arrangements, our agents may cease to associate with us for better commissions from competing organisations as well as provide their services to competing organisations or global institutions of higher education. Further, we cannot assure you that we will be able to identify and work with qualified and trained agents to replace the existing agents. Our failure to meet such requirements may adversely affect our growth plans and have an impact on the financial results.
Sub-agent armies
The combination of the Pareto principle and shrewd, aggregator-agnostic sub-agents means that the business instinct of any education agent aggregator looking to become a serious player will be to build the number of sub-agents as quickly as possible. A bigger sub-agent army equals more referrals, enrolments and revenue. That’s precisely what Crizac has done over the last three years, growing the number of its registered agents from an already substantial base of 4,414 in 2023, to 10,362 in 2025 – an increase of over 130 percent.
Crizac – July 2025The due diligence debt mountain
The issue for an aggregator embarked on a headlong sub-agent recruitment drive is that each new recruit adds a layer of due diligence debt which must be serviced. Over time those layers become a significant burden. Any institution working with an agent aggregator will (or certainly should) expect that the aggregator will, with respect to its sub-agents, meet the same standards that the institution must meet with respect to the education agents that the institution works with directly. Over time a rough consensus on agent due diligence best practice has crystalised in the main student destination markets and can now be found in various jurisdiction-specific regulatory and self regulatory documents, in particular:
- UK – Agent Quality Framework
- US – NACAC Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admission, and AIRC Standards
- Australia – National Code Standard 4 – Education Agents
- NZ – Pastoral Care Code of Practice
- Canada – Manitoba – Code of Conduct and Practice Regulation
- CA – BC – Education Quality Assurance Code of Practice
- CA – Ontario – Standards of Practice for International Education
There are of course variations across the various schemes, but a common element is the requirement to conduct initial and ongoing due diligence on agents, and to avoid working with agents where there is knowledge or reasonable suspicion of misconduct.
That’s a significant burden of due diligence, and Crizac must meet it for all 10,000+ of its sub-agents. If it is prepared to accept a student referral at any time from any registered sub-agent, it must have confidence that they all meet the required standards of professionalism and conduct. Here again is the pesky Pareto principle. Given that in 2025 just 3,948 of Crizac’s 10,362 sub-agents referred a student, it would have had to spend time and resources undertaking due diligence on 6,414 sub-agents who referred zero students and did therefore did not generate a red cent of revenue for the company.
Boom and bust
These brutal dynamics apply equally to other agent aggregators and have in recent years led several of the big players to radically reduce the size of their sub-agent networks following periods of rapid growth:
- Between January and May 2025, the number of sub-agents reported by Adventus.io dropped from ‘8,000+’ to ‘1800+’ – down by 6,200 or a whopping 77.5 percent (See Adventus.io cuts over 6,000 sub-agents).
- Between July 2023 and January 2024, the number of ‘Recruitment Partners’ (i.e. sub-agents) reported by ApplyBoard dropped from ‘10,000+’ to ‘6,500+’ (down 35%) (See ApplyBoard cuts 3,500 ‘Recruitment Partners’).
- Between January and June 2023 the KC Overseas website reported a decrease from 9,000 to 3,000 sub-agents (down 66%). (See ‘Ups and Downs in Aggregator Sub-agent Networks’)
- Between January and July 2023 the Shorelight website reported a decrease from 7,000 to 3,000 sub-agents (down 57%).
It will be interesting to see if Crizac follows the same boom and bust pattern with its sub-agent network.
Other posts you might like…
- 2024 Annual Report: Agent Aggregators and their Sub-Agent Networks
- Crossing the edtech moat: aggregator disaggregation
- Ups and downs in aggregator sub-agent networks
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