Kavita Parikh is the founder-director of Disha Consultants, a Gujarat-based leading overseas education counseling firm, or as she prefers to call – a most effective enabler for students who aim to pursue studies in North America.

Ms. Parikh founded Disha Consultants in Ahmedabad in 2003. Over the years, the firm has helped more than 10,000 students secure admission in top universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, John Hopkins, and other leading US universities, as well as top Canadian universities including the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo, among others.

After completing her graduation from HL College of Commerce in Ahmedabad, Ms. Parikh pursued an MBA from Xavier University in Ohio, US. Her experiences as a student in a foreign country, the challenges she faced, the requirements for achieving academic success, the opportunities that came her way, were instrumental in her decision to launch Disha Consultants.

These experiences have allowed Ms. Parikh and her team to understand students’ education, expectations, concerns, and orientation, which they use to offer personalized guidance and handholding, right from creating the best-fit college list to preparing the student for the visa.

Prior to founding Disha Consultants, Ms. Parikh was Assistant Vice President with Gujarat Venture Finance Limited (GVFL) and had a variety of responsibilities including investments and due diligence, strategic planning, investor relationships, fundraising strategy, personnel & administrative functions, among others.

She also served as a professor at Som-Lalit Institute of Management Studies, and taught Entrepreneurship, Development and Managing New Ventures, and Strategic Formulation and Implementation to MBA and PG Diploma students. She was also a columnist at The Times of India and wrote the highly popular weekly column on foreign education, New Horizons.