While most were lazing out this weekend, for many, it was an invigorating Saturday. It was 12th, the second Saturday of the month; a day of passionate entrepreneurs coming together on a phenomenal dais of HeadStart – Startup Saturday; sharing experiences, business ideas, brainstorming, it was going to be thrilling; and yes, indeed it was!
It was a sunny afternoon when we all gathered at S.P Jain campus. More than 60 enthusiastic veteran and aspiring entrepreneurs showed their effusive participation in this event that had a savor of Education. Education indeed is a time-honored industry. Entrepreneurs from this industry were invited as speakers to enlighten all with their business experiences. It was really interesting to know what our fellow entrepreneurs are doing in this ever growing segment.
Under the headship of Romil Shah, the event began dot on time and after the formal registrations, Darshana and Ankur commenced the session with an insight on Head Start and Startup Saturdays.
Our foremost speaker, Soumyadeep Chakraborty – the founder and director of Teachify was invited on the dais.
Through Teachify Soumyadeep, is working to improve the quality of teachers in low-income schools by setting up a low cost, technology based certified teacher training program and providing resources and monitoring the performance of both teachers and students as well. Of course, this is quite different than regular education businesses and he as well faced many challenges that he shared with all. Through meticulous research, he was able to put his finger on the issues in the current education system, especially in the low-income schools. In the customary system, teachers are bogged down by their administrative KRAs and not prepared as well as don’t care much of kid’s performances in school. The management beats around the bush, trying time and again to hire good teachers, which as a matter of fact are not available. This gap leads to students not comprehending with the teaching and hence leading to academic low downs. Soumyadeep saw an opportunity here; an opportunity to contribute effectively to the progress of both – students and teachers, an opportunity to make a difference; and hence Teachify was born. It is funded by Unltd. India.
As he recalls, it was not a smooth ride initially and there were lots of mistakes he made; the one like trying to resolve all the problems of the school; right from curriculum to administration. He needed reduce the variables and focus one thing at a time. Finally, he converged his objectives to improving the academic performances of students; have a tracking system for monitoring and providing best resources to the teachers. And through the help of technology, today he has created a digital education system for providing need based training to teachers. It has e-learning modules, tracking system to monitor the performances of both, teachers and students and a feedback mechanism too. Today, Teachify is amongst top 45 social business ventures in IBS Idiya.
Indeed this was quite inspiring. Next speaker of the event was Kashyap Juthani– Co-Founder – BucketBolt.com.
With his passion, he instantly captured the minds of the addressees. His story began back in 2010 when companies like Flipkart were into the book selling e-commerce ventures. This is when he was doing his engineering in electronics. Although these sites were good, surprisingly they never offered academic books and hence they had very few students as their customers. Kashyap realized this during his academic phase. He also knew that students have tendency of getting rid of the books as soon as the exams are over as it gave them fast and easy cash for pocket money. His further research gave him a surprising insight that out of 8K Cr book market, almost 70% students, prefer to buy used books, but sadly they are not so easily available. He saw a wide platform, a huge opportunity here and this is how, bucketbolt.com was incepted. Vide this platform, he sells and buys used books. Although, presently operational in Mumbai only, in a span of 2 yrs, he has been successfully able to capture the substantial market with nearly 8k+ students buying books, more than 80% are repeat orders and 55K+ books sold. Listeners were really inspired by him and there was a shower of questions to which he addressed.
By now, the speakers had already infused fervor in the air and all were waiting for more. Indeed more of it and ideas were served by our consequent speaker, Prasad, a passionate educationist, entrepreneur and the founder of Wunderbar Kids. Wunderbar Kids is a leader and succession of 17 preschool across the nation. Prasad shared his ardent story with much of excitement. It started about a decade ago when Prasad and his brother started a school by the name Vishwajyot in the suburbs of Navi Mumbai. As such, he belongs to the family of enthusiastic educationists and wanted to make a difference by contributing towards the education of children; bringing in substantial change. With this calling, he laid a foundation of Wunderbar Kids. Prasad is a man of mission and drives his team of teachers and others with a sole mission of bringing out uniqueness in each child through tailored made curriculum and experiential learning. He recalled his days of recruiting teachers; believes in having a position vacant rather than hiring a wrong person. Through his incredible zeal and vision, he has created a culture of self motivated educators / trainers in his institutions, who are driven to work towards the common goal of overall development of kids at a transformation stage.
By end of his discourse, the session was already stirred up. The dais was open for the tyros to share their ideas and startup ventures. It was a delight to have many zealous entrepreneurs making their lightening pitches. While Kapil Bhatia made a presentation on his startup – Maalgaadi.in which is a Mumbai based online grocery store; Archana gave an insight about her venture – Bookstreet, a e-platform that is offering students question banks / practices for pre-preparation of exams. Then there was Mera Future led by Sumit, that offers Career Counseling to students based on Psychometric Interests and hot careers in the market. And Dhanyal Gopi shared about his startup – Finsight, offering training on finance modules for non-finance corporate executives. Needless to say, there were countless brain storming Q & As. Quite illuminating! And finally, the session was concluded by Kunal’s exhibit of Saugat Gifts – an exclusive gift package for festive occasions.
Reported by:
ASMITA GAJJAR
HeadStart Volunteer