Indocanadian’s startup makes int’l students feel welcome on arrival

TORONTO: When Ganesh Neelanjanmath arrived in Canada from India as an international student in 2010 to pursue a course in project management, he had a strong feeling of loneliness as he walked out of the airport .

This year, as thousands of such students arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, many haven’t faced that problem because of icent, the startup founded by Neelanjanmath.

Neelanjanmath said there is “a little bit of an emotional connection” to this project, which was launched in 2017, but only limited to Terminal 1. Terminal 3 was added this year after he noticed that many cheaper flights, which appeal to students, landed there.

For a period of two weeks, Neelanjanmath, 34, and his team of eight have been spending 12 hours at the airport, holding up signs to direct incoming students to their booth offering a welcome kit to familiarise newcomers with the environment.

This initiative has 10 Canadian universities and colleges as partners. The icent team, which includes members that speak Mandarin, Punjabi and Spanish, provides a digital handbook to students and offers services that appear simple but are meaningful, such as free phone calls to their families back home.

Nearly two-thirds of the students are from India or China. In recent years, the number coming to Canada has burgeoned, topping 125,000.