Straight answers about how the marketplace works.

It is a multi-sided marketplace that connects the self-declared improvement needs of India’s schools and colleges to vetted intervention providers — and independently verifies whether those interventions worked. CatalystBox is the trusted matching-and-verification layer in the middle. It does not deliver interventions itself, hold, route, or control money, or sell anyone’s identity.

Four groups. Schools and colleges that want to improve against a specific need. Intervention providers — teacher-development organisations, counselling and wellbeing programmes, career and future-readiness modules, parent-engagement programmes, and selected EdTech. CSR funders who need targeting and proof of impact. And boards and government bodies that need standardised evidence of where capital should go and whether it worked.

No. It is not a listing site, an EdTech app, a consultancy, or a discovery directory that ranks schools and colleges for parents. It drives internal improvement against a declared need, routes that need to vetted providers, and verifies the outcome.

In one line: Declare → Match → Verify.

Declare — the institution self-declares its improvement priorities through a structured intake. Match — the marketplace surfaces a shortlist of vetted providers ranked by fit and verified impact, and the institution engages one on its own terms. Verify — a structured follow-up measures whether the intervention worked, which feeds back into smarter future matches.

Basic matching stays accessible so that participation is never gated by spend. Institutions and boards can optionally subscribe to premium analytics — deeper dashboards, longitudinal tracking, and peer benchmarking. The core transaction revenue comes from a placement or success fee paid by the provider when an engagement originates through a match, not from the institution being matched.

Supply is curated, not crowdsourced. Providers pass a vetting framework before they can be matched, and once live they are ranked by verified past impact. At launch the network is a small, hand-vetted set of high-quality providers so the first matches are credible — depth before breadth.

By fit to the declared need and by verified past impact — never by how much a provider has paid. The institution always chooses; CatalystBox never compels a selection.

After an intervention runs, a structured follow-up measures the change. By default it draws on delivery confirmation, institution-confirmed results, and repeat-engagement signal. Where the institution also runs the separate CGEB or CHEB diagnostic, the before-and-after can be independently quantified. This is the proof the ecosystem otherwise lacks — and funders and providers will pay for it.

The institution funds the engagement into a ring-fenced escrow held by a licensed, RBI-authorised payment partner. The money stays there until the work is delivered and independently verified. On verified completion, the escrow releases payment to the provider — with CatalystBox's fee deducted at that point. Where work is staged, funding and release can follow each milestone as it is accepted and verified.

A licensed, RBI-authorised payment partner — not CatalystBox. The funds sit in a ring-fenced account, separate from CatalystBox's own money. CatalystBox's only role is to confirm that delivery has been verified and to instruct release; it never has custody or control of the funds.

Nothing is released. Because the payment is still sitting in escrow, undelivered funds are returned to the institution, and CatalystBox sources a replacement vetted provider at no additional matching fee. The institution doesn't pay twice for the same work, and a provider that fails to deliver earns nothing.

CatalystBox earns a success fee that is borne by the provider and deducted at settlement — charged only on delivery that has been independently verified, and never added to what the institution pays. Basic matching stays free for institutions. A fee can never change a ranking, a match, or a verification outcome.

No — this is the single hardest line we hold. A provider cannot pay to rank, to be matched, or to influence a verification result. No payment, by anyone, can change a ranking or a result. Ever. This is the explicit opposite of a pay-to-list directory.

No — CatalystBox never holds, routes, or controls your money. Payment for an engagement is held in a ring-fenced escrow operated by a licensed, RBI-authorised payment partner, and released to the provider only once delivery has been independently verified. CatalystBox is paid for matching and verification, and its fee is deducted at settlement by that partner — we are never a fund administrator, escrow agent, or payment intermediary.

By a five-principle integrity firewall and a structural separation between the two entities — the firewall is architectural and institutional, not just a written policy. Matching logic, verification standards, the diagnostic interface, anonymisation, and the firewall itself are overseen through CatalystBox's internal governance controls.

They are diagnostic benchmarks — the CatalystBox Global Education Benchmark (CGEB) for schools and its higher-education analog (CHEB) — produced by a separate platform operated under CatalystBox. You do not need them to use the marketplace. Where an institution chooses to run the diagnostic, its score can be imported through a defined interface to sharpen a match and quantify verification. It is optional enrichment, never a prerequisite. The marketplace works on self-declaration alone, and works better when a diagnostic signal is attached.

CatalystBox keeps the optional diagnostic signal logically separated from commercial ranking. A score is connected only with institutional permission, while matching and verification follow documented Marketplace rules.

Primarily institutional account details and the improvement need an institution chooses to declare, plus how the platform is used. Where an institution opts in, a diagnostic score may be imported with consent. Full detail is on our Privacy policy page.

No. CatalystBox sells matching, verification, and aggregate, anonymised intelligence — never an institution’s identity, and never the individual feedback that underlies a diagnostic score.

No. Outputs are aggregate-only. The individual responses that feed a diagnostic score live on the separate diagnostic platform and are never surfaced through the marketplace.

Pre-revenue and deployment-ready. The infrastructure is built, with an existing directory of 28,008 CBSE and CISCE schools and a design that extends to colleges. There are zero confirmed institutions onboarded today. The roadmap seeds vetted supply and a launch cohort of institutions with real declared needs before any monetisation is switched on.

Not yet. Any benchmark scores or financial figures shown are illustrative models built on stated assumptions — not forecasts and not real marketplace data. The launch cohort exists precisely to replace those assumptions with measured numbers.

Email hello@catalystbox.in — tell us whether you’re an institution, a provider, or a funder, and we’ll take it from there. Public-infrastructure and partnership enquiries use the same address.