During Spring Quarter 2024, the UC Irvine ANTrepreneur Center hosted a new program called the Side Hustle Challenge. The Side Hustle Challenge offered students the training, resources, and networking opportunities they needed to turn their passions into bonafide ventures. Throughout the quarter, the students learned about branding, finances, legal considerations, e-commerce, and other key aspects of building a business. The program culminated in a Finals Marketplace where the UC Irvine and wider Orange County communities were invited to explore the various student-developed side hustles and shop their products and services.
To highlight some of the incredible student side hustlers who participated in the challenge, Ryan Foland, ANTrepreneur Center Director, invited these ANTrepreneurs for a series of informative interviews. Welcome to Side Hustler Stories!
In this interview, Ryan sits down with UC Irvine students Sovit Nayak (Computer Science and Engineering; Data Science), Manush Murali (Computer Science and Engineering; Business Information Management), Khushi Dave (Materials Science Engineering), and Sivanadian Al (Business Administration) to learn more about their side hustle Altru.
Ryan: Ahoy team! Thank you all for joining me for the second installment of the Side Hustler Stories series! To begin this interview, can you explain what Altru is?
Khushi: Altru is a platform that combines AI tools and peer support to help students navigate the admissions process more easily and affordably. Our AI-powered platform offers tools like an essay editor, portfolio builder, and a Chrome extension to streamline the application process. Our “U Connector” feature links high school students with current college students who can provide insights into different universities and help ease the transition to college life. Essentially, our AI, powered by proprietary data specific to college admissions, acts like a personalized college counselor.
Ryan: What inspired you to create Altru?
Sivanadian: We chose this idea because, as students, we experienced first-hand how overwhelming the college admissions process can be. After talking to high school students currently going through the admissions process and university students who had recently gone through the process, we realized they faced three main challenges: lack of organized resources, no access to peer mentors, and the high cost of counseling. We built Altru to address these challenges directly.
Ryan: Can you walk us through how Altru uses AI to replicate or enhance the role of a traditional college counselor?
Sovit: You can think of Altru as a team of AI counselors working together to help you navigate the admissions process. When you enter Altru, the Head Counselor takes your past data, analyzes it, and prepares a report for you. Then it sends the reports to the Essay Helper and Planner Counselors. The Essay Helper Counselor keeps track of your profile to help you craft essays and brainstorm ideas using your personal data and a library of useful sample essays. The Planner Counselor helps you build a timeline for your application process to keep track of your tasks and remind you of important deadlines. There’s also a Profile Builder Counselor that helps you build your college profile. All these AI counselors work together to enhance and strengthen your profile.
As Khushi mentioned, we also have a special feature that connects high school students with college student mentors that help review application materials and share their experiences on their campuses.
Ryan: That’s so cool! How do you ensure Altru provides personalized support for students while using automation?
Khushi: Every feature in Altru is connected with personal data. Unlike ChatGPT, we work on providing AI solutions based solely on the user’s data. The user’s data is analyzed, and all feedback, recommendations, and help is based on their unique information. This ensures that our platform isn’t just offering generic assistance.
Ryan: What unique features of Altru do you believe give it a competitive edge over other platforms or traditional methods?
Sovit: The quality of our AI tools and how we are targeting student needs offer us a competitive edge. While other solutions focus on providing data on colleges and helping students with their essays, we are trying to provide tools that help students on a more complete basis.
Whether students need help with crafting essays, keeping track of application requirements and deadlines, building profiles, tracking where they are in the application process, or getting information about different schools, we provide a solution that addresses all these needs under one platform, so students don’t get confused juggling various tools. And we are doing this at a lower cost than our competitors.
Ryan: What has been the most challenging aspect of building Altru so far, and how did you overcome it?
Manush: The most challenging part of building AI applications is figuring out the data. If the data is proper, then the AI will output proper data-specific answers, but otherwise, there is a chance of hallucination (when an AI model produces false or misleading information). We are still trying to build a better and faster data pipeline that gets us quality data that we can use to train the AI.
Another challenge we faced was developing four different AI LLM (large language models) agents and connecting them through a master counselor LLM agent. This was the most challenging in terms of engineering and complexities that could arise.
Ryan: How has user feedback shaped your platform, and can you share an example of how it influenced Altru’s development?
Manush: We did some beta-testing with our friends who were applying for college, and through that, we learned that we need to work on structuring our output a bit. Our LLMs give structured outputs so that students can easily understand. But we learned that we needed to make the Profile Builder more specific and user friendly.
Ryan: What have you learned about yourself and your business through participating in the Side Hustle Challenge?
Sivanadian: The Challenge taught us the importance of branding and marketing. We also learned how important it is to make good impressions on your users and how that can help you reach new heights in the market through hype. This is exactly how companies like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NVIDIA gained popularity and users.
Ryan: Where do you envision Altru in the next five years, and do you see it expanding beyond college applications?
Sovit: We envision Altru expanding into the education markets of different countries. We are starting with college applications but we hope to expand our AI to different parts of the education industry. The education industry is huge and ready to be tapped, especially when it comes to AI, and we are excited to see what we can do.
Visit the Altru website to learn more about the platform. Inspired by the Altru team’s journey and interested in other student side hustles? Then stay tuned for the next installment of the Side Hustler Stories series.
Want help developing and launching your side hustle or business venture? Then visit the ANTrepreneur Center website to learn more about programming, speaker series, Micro-Internships, funding, and more. You can also learn more about the Center’s collaborations with Blackstone LaunchPad, Tech Coast Angels, Tech Coast Venture Network, OC Startup Council, and SoCal Celebrates Entrepreneurship. Keep up with the Center’s latest news by following them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.