The challenge
Aurora runs JEE Foundation (Class 9-12), NEET Foundation, and UPSC Foundation programs across four city branches — Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune. ~2,400 students enrolled at any given time, across:
- 3 programs (JEE, NEET, UPSC)
- 5 variants per program (Foundation, Advanced, Crash, Test Series, Doubt Sessions)
- 18 batches running simultaneously across branches
Before Xale, fee collection looked like this:
- A counsellor checked a Google Sheet of "due dates" every Monday
- They manually sent WhatsApp reminders from their personal phones
- 38% of fees were paid late; 7% needed three or more follow-ups
- Two full-time fee-follow-up staff existed just to chase parents
On-time fee collection was the single biggest cash-flow risk for the business.
What we built
Two weeks of configuration; live in week three:
- Program → variant → batch hierarchy modelled in Xale's Academy module. Every student record has the structured triple — no more "JEE Foundation Bangalore Batch 4" living as a freeform text field.
- Recurring fee schedule per student — installment dates auto-generated from the program's plan
- WhatsApp template auto-fire at T-7, T-3, T-0, T+3, T+7 from due date, with parent name, student name, program, batch, and payment link
- Razorpay integration — parents click the link, pay, and Xale auto-marks the installment paid. No counsellor in the loop unless the payment fails.
- Counsellor escalation triggered automatically if T+7 reminder is unpaid — assigns to the branch fee-follow-up counsellor with a pre-filled WhatsApp opener
- Branch-level dashboard for each branch director showing on-time %, ageing buckets, and payment failures
The outcome
Q1 2026 (the first full quarter):
- On-time fee collection: 62% → 91%
- Late fees beyond T+30: 7% → 0.8%
- Counsellor time on fee follow-ups: 12 hours / week reclaimed per branch
- Two fee-follow-up staff redeployed to admissions counselling — and admissions counsellors saw their close rate go up 14% from the added capacity
- Cash flow improved enough that the founders pulled forward a planned Pune-2 branch opening by a quarter
What Rohan learned
"We thought our fee problem was that parents were flaky. Half-true. Bigger truth: our reminder process was flaky. The CRM didn't even know when a fee was due — a counsellor knew, somewhere in their head, after checking a Sheet. We were spending one full salary just to fix the fact that the system didn't know about its own due dates."
The bigger picture
Coaching and academy businesses live and die on fee collection. The dirty secret is that most of the "fee chasing" labour in the sector exists because the underlying systems don't model program-variant-batch-installment as a first-class entity. Xale's Academy module does. Once it's modelled, the WhatsApp reminders are a one-line automation, not a six-month project.
The 12 hours/week saved per branch is the visible win. The invisible win is that Aurora's CFO can finally forecast cash flow with a straight face.
"We run JEE, NEET, and UPSC batches across four cities. Xale handles program-variant-batch natively. Parents get fee reminders on WhatsApp automatically. Counsellors stopped chasing payments."