India’s T20 captain takes a strategic stake in the AI-native group that guides half a million students a year turn talent into opportunity across 150 countries.
SINGAPORE/MUMBAI: Manifest Global, a Singapore headquartered AI-native Talent Mobility company, on Wednesday announced that India’s T20 captain Shreyas Iyer has made a strategic investment in the company. The investment by Shreyas Iyer represents a significant step forward for Manifest Global in its goal to provide innovative solutions to students in India.
Manifest Global is an AI-native group that helps close to half a million students a year discover, fund and reach education and career opportunities across more than 150 countries.
The partnership began with Mahesh Toshniwal, spiritual and life coach and founder of Just Imagine, who became the bridge between Rohan Pasari and Shreyas Iyer — bringing together two very different worlds, sport and entrepreneurship, united by a shared belief in human potential.
“India has the world’s largest youth population and no shortage of ambition and talent. What’s missing is the timely guidance, and the right direction at the right moment, in a world where opportunities don’t come easily and competition keeps rising,” Shreyas Iyer said, adding, “This is where I believe Manifest Global with its AI-native approach closes the gap and has the potential to positively impact the generation.”
“Every student carries ambition. Every country needs talent to grow. Manifest exists to connect the two,” said Rohan Pasari, Founder and CEO of Manifest Global. “Shreyas did not lend us his name. He took a position, and that is the only kind of endorsement that interested us.”
Iyer’s own path runs through the gap Manifest is built to close. He was picked out as a schoolboy in Mumbai by a coach who saw something in him before he had achieved anything, and he is direct about what that meant.
“Someone believed I was worth backing before I had done anything at all,” he said. “Every child needs one person like that. Most of them never get one. That is the problem worth solving.”
India produces more ambition than almost any country on earth and offers less guidance per student than almost any. A school counsellor in India can be responsible for thousands of students at once. Most students never speak to one, and end up making the largest decisions of their lives on hearsay.
The demand on the other side of that gap is now structural. Developed economies face a projected shortfall of more than 85 million workers by 2030. Their working-age populations are shrinking at the same time as AI reorganises what those workers need to know. Attracting international talent has moved from a policy preference to an economic requirement, and universities remain the most reliable route through which it happens.
Manifest’s response is deliberately structural too. International education is one of the most fragmented industries of its size: thousands of regional operators, each strong in one corridor, none able to fund a serious technology build. Manifest acquires the operators who own a route and runs a single AI layer underneath all of them.
The group now operates across the arc of the talent journey. Cialfo and BridgeU serve schools, counsellors and students navigating education and career pathways. Comet gives families a direct route to study-abroad products and services. Explore connects universities to the students they are looking for. Flow AI is the group’s AI-native platform for education businesses, built to make their counsellors better advisers rather than faster processors. Kaaiser and EduGo place students into institutions in Australia and across 18 European countries.
“The next generation of talent infrastructure has to do more than connect people to jobs and institutions,” Pasari said. “It has to help a sixteen-year-old work out what she is capable of, understand what her options actually are, build the skills those options require, and then cross a border to take one. We are building every layer of that.”
Iyer will front Manifest’s work with students and families across India, starting with a campaign launching later this year.
About Manifest Global
Manifest Global is a Singapore-headquartered, AI-native group building the infrastructure that moves global talent. It serves close to half a million students a year across more than 150 countries, works with over 1,750 school partners, and operates through Cialfo, BridgeU, Comet, Explore, Kaaiser, EduGo Abroad and Flow AI. The group is backed by Tiger Global, Square Peg, SIG, January Capital, SEEK, Analog Partners, Cercano and more.
