Toronto-based Visto.ai hopes to demystify the process and create “coherent stories that clearly explain why they want to come to Canada and what they plan to pursue in school.”
CEO and immigration attorney Josh Schachnow is familiar with the country’s immigration process and demonstrates the complicated process through his experience managing clients.
“Applying for a student visa is challenging for international students because there are many different requirements that must be met,” Schachnow said.
Prospective students using the program can create study plans from scratch or use an AI tool that can create a proposal “within 10 seconds.” The platform is designed for use by international students themselves, as well as immigration lawyers and consultants who work with these students to create visa applications.
“There are so many different requirements to meet”
“Depending on the region the student is applying from, it is most common for aspiring students to work with a professional (immigration lawyer, consultant, etc.) to prepare their application before submitting it to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and our platform creates a process that much faster and easier for both parties – the student and the practitioner,” explained Schachnow.
The platform went through several rounds of testing to ensure the accuracy of the tool. Visto’s in-house engineering team contributed to the feedback leading up to the public launch, as well as “a group of former international students who have already gone through the process and immigration professionals who evaluated the platform’s output.”
“The most consistent feedback we get from our beta testers is ‘I wish this had been around when I was going through the process,’ which comes from our beta testers who are now in Canada and have been able to compare Visto to do this ‘ I’ll take care of it,'” Schachnow said.
The company also launched the Visto Study app, which it says contributes to Visto.ai’s mission to “reduce the arcane — and often confusing — immigration red tape.”
