“I was never studious,” Gulati tells The PIE News, recalling his struggles with school exams. “I could never relate myself to the education system.”
Despite these early challenges, today, Gulati is a recognised leader in international education, with a reputation as a trusted voice in the industry.
As the founder and CEO of two highly successful companies, he has pioneered innovative tools that are transforming the education sector. One of his ventures, Ascent One, is a powerful agent management platform – a comprehensive ecosystem for the education industry, enabling institutions to efficiently manage agent networks, admissions, and marketing through a single unified portal.
Meanwhile, BPO Intelligence specialises in the global warehousing and distribution of educational promotional materials, helping institutions reach audiences worldwide.
He was fifteen when he started his first venture – selling candles during the Diwali festival in his hometown of Chandigarh, India during Diwali.
Gulati would try his hand at several business ventures over the next few years. But while some were financially successful, he found them unsatisfying.
Looking for direction, he approached his uncle, who was working at Pfizer at the time. “He said to me, ‘Look, I can get you a job, but you need to learn computers,’” Gulati recalls. Computers were just beginning to enter everyday life in India, and he saw an opportunity to upskill.
He enrolled in a computer course – and despite being the least qualified person in the room, surrounded by professionals with years of experience, he excelled. “It was the unused brain put to use,” he says.
Inspired by this success, he started a computer training centre of his own. It proved to be successful, but Gulati wasn’t done yet. He had his eyes set on Australia.
With financial support from his father, who borrowed money to help him go abroad, Gulati travelled to Melbourne to study towards a graduate diploma in applied information systems at RMIT University.
During his studies, he worked long hours in Indian restaurants – dishwashing, waiting tables – and took on a series of other odd jobs, including door-knocking for a roofing company. “I had to book free roof inspection bookings and I failed to make even a single booking,” he remembers.. “The guy wanted to pay me. I said, I can’t take the money. I haven’t delivered anything and I don’t think I can do justice to you paying me.”
After completing his degree, Gulati quickly secured a job in IT. But he soon realised that many international students weren’t as fortunate. Misled by agents about the opportunities awaiting them after graduation, they faced a far more uncertain reality.
Gulati returned to India with a clear purpose: to build the kind of support system these students should have had. He founded his own education agency, Oceanic Consultants – an operation that rapidly scaled. But Gulati, never one to settle, was already thinking ahead.
He noticed a growing challenge in the international education sector: the delivery and distribution of promotional materials. Spotting a gap, Gulati launched BPO Intelligence – with an initial investment of just AUD $800.
“We delivered year-on-year value to our clients,” he recalls. “From one client it became three. Three became five. And then today we have almost every university in Australia and the largest private colleges as well in New Zealand.”
From one client it became three. Three became five. And then today we have almost every university in Australia and the largest private colleges as well in New Zealand
Naresh Gulati
That footprint has since expanded to the UK and North America, establishing BPO Intelligence as a global player in the space.
Gulati’s instinct for spotting problems and crafting practical solutions would become the driving force behind his next venture.
While working closely with education providers, he had identified another persistent pain point – software overload. “For every problem, universities kept buying another software, another software, another software,” he explains. “While that solves one problem, in my view, that has actually multiplied the problems for the providers.”
Every new system required separate logins, data entries, and workflows – adding complexity rather than reducing it. “Now every time they update into one place, they have to update every software. That is humanly not possible,” he says.
This insight led to the creation of what is now known as Ascent One – a unified ecosystem launched in 2024, designed to streamline how institutions manage agent networks, admissions, marketing, and more. Rather than fragmenting operations across multiple platforms, Ascent One centralises it all into one cohesive hub.
“We came with end to end solution there. Another problem I saw in the industry was people had to buy the full system. I don’t think that’s a fair way to do business.”
That’s why it was important for Gulati ensure Ascent One is a fully integrated, modular ecosystem. Clients can start with just a few modules and add more as needed. Each module communicates with the others, both from the start and as new ones are added, ensuring continuous data exchange internally and with external systems, without the need for manual intervention.
For universities working with hundreds of agencies – each potentially operating across multiple locations – keeping agent information accurate and up to date can be a challenge. Offices open, close, staff move, and maintaining those records can quickly become unmanageable.
Agents face a similar problem. By bringing both institutions and agents into the same digital ecosystem, Gulati explains how he seeks to simply this process with his product. Updates made by agents are automatically reflected across all connected providers, significantly reducing administrative overhead and helping maintain data consistency across the board.
And while similar products exist, Gulati says he welcomes the competition, viewing it as motivation to keep refining his offering for the international education community.
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