Tag: bootstrapped

  • Amar Canvas – Creating a Glorious Marketplace for Artisans!

    As we all know India is a place for Art and Culture, but if you look at the current situation, most of the people here are losing their hobby or passion and young people are not getting the opportunity to make their hobby in the profession. But there is a market place which is big enough to purchase the artworks from them.

    Here comes Amar Canvas with a vision to create a bridge between the artist and the buyer globally. Amar Canvas was launched by Mr. Rahul Basak & Mr. Amit Kumar Mahishya Das in 2018. Read more about Amar Canvas company profile, founders, growth, funding, and future plans.

    Amar Canvas – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Amar Canvas
    Headquarter Kolkata, India
    Sector E-Commerce
    Founders Mr. Rahul Basak & Mr. Amit Kumar Mahishya Das
    Founded 2018
    Parent Organization ADRB ART PRIVATE LIMITED
    Website amarcanvas.com
    Contact Email contact@amarcanvas.com

    About Amar Canvas and How it Works
    Amar Canvas – Target Market Size
    Founders of Amar Canvas and team
    How was Amar Canvas Started?
    Amar Canvas – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Amar Canvas – Startup Launch
    Amar Canvas – Startup Challenges
    Amar Canvas – Funding and Investors
    Amar Canvas – Growth
    Amar Canvas – Awards
    Amar Canvas – Future Plans


    Check out this List of the Best Startups in Kolkata | Exhaustive List of Kolkata Startups [Updated].


    About Amar Canvas and How it Works

    Amar Canvas takes sign-ups on its website by the artists and after the documentation and verification, it allows the artists to upload their product pictures. And after the second round of verification, it allows the product to be in the product list for the buyers to buy. The great part here is that this platform provides 100% profit to the demand of an artist.

    “In this way, we believe people will create more art because they can as well earn from it and not only that, they don’t have to choose any other profession apart from their hobby.”, said Rahul Basak, founder of Amar Canvas.

    Amar Canvas – Target Market Size

    The market is definitely a big one if one calculates including the hospitality industry of India. On the contrary, Amar Canvas is focusing more on the Interior designing industry which includes interior designing of houses and offices.

    Founders of Amar Canvas and team

    Amar Canvas was founded by Mr. Rahul Basak and Mr. Amit Kumar Mahishya Das in 2018.

    Founders of Amar Canvas
    Mr. Rahul Basak and Mr. Amit Kumar Mahishya Das

    Rahul Basak is the Co-founder and CEO of Amar Canvas, and Chief Editor of “My Canvas Talk”. He is also the director of ADRB ART Private Limited. Apart from these Mr. Basak is a documentary photographer, the projects done by him were featured in MTV NESCAFE LAB. He is also one of the Indians to hold Adobe’s Behance Coin. He is currently working on his first book.

    Amit Kumar Mahishya Das is the Co-founder and COO – Amit is an experienced director with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry. He is skilled in Customer Service, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Strategy, and Team Building. He graduated from Techno India, Salt Lake.

    The team strength currently at Amar Canvas is 10 people.


    Also read: BigBasket – Success Story of India’s Largest Online Grocer


    How was Amar Canvas Started?

    All of this started when Mr. Basak visited Hong Kong, and being an artist himself he noticed the gap of the market. When he was studying engineering, whenever he talked about making his art as a profession, there was no scope available at the time.

    While returning to India, he talked to his close friend Mr. Das, (now the co-founder) about this. And after that within a day, they arrived at the mission of creating a company to help the young artist and everyone who is seeking the market. After this day, there was no turning back and as of today, these co-founders have started their second company as well which is My Canvas Talk.

    The main perspective of creating or coming up with the name was, the co-founder duo wanted to make an international service but keeping in mind that it originated from Kolkata, they used a Bengali word called “Amar” which means your own and the second part is the most famous word among the artists all around the world “Canvas”. So all in all, it means “A canvas of your own.”

    Amar Canvas Logo
    Amar Canvas Logo

    Relevant read: Zomato – Delivering Delicious Happiness to Your Doorsteps!


    Amar Canvas – Startup Launch

    “The day when we launched the company we already had close to 20k+ followers on our online portals. And we did one of Eastern India’s biggest startup launch press conferences at Kolkata Press Club in front of 60+ journalists. Most of the things we did were via social media as well via collaboration with My Canvas Talk.”, added Rahul Basak, Co-founder of Amar Canvas.

    Amar Canvas Launch
    Amar Canvas Launch

    Amar Canvas – Startup Challenges

    The most challenging part for Amar Canvas and the team was believing in things when they were not even real.

    “We crashed so many times and I believe as a friend to me, Amit was always the biggest support, that helped us to grow. So, trust me, your co-founder matters the most.”, added Rahul Basak, owner of Amar Canvas.

    Amar Canvas – Funding and Investors

    Amar Canvas is a bootstrapped startup.


    Also read: MakeMyTrip – Success Story, Founder, Business Model, Funding, Revenue, News


    Amar Canvas – Growth

    This venture is growing regularly. Soon, all the products will be available according to the global region in dollars or euros. And not only this soon they will start taking the artist registration from different countries as well.

    Amar Canvas – Awards

    The awards and recognitions backed by Amar Canvas are:

    • The Best Organization Facilitating Artists” By Indian Women And Youth Skills Foundation
    • Amar Canvas won the title “Best Social Impact Startup” from all over INDIA by The Indian Awards
    • “The 10 Most Promising Startup of The Year 2019-20 in India” by The Intellectual Indian

    Amar Canvas – Future Plans

    Amar Canvas is now working towards taking the artist registration from different countries.

  • Coursesity – Getting all the Online Courses Under One Umbrella

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by the organization it is based on.

    All of us at different times have gone through the struggle of finding the right courses online. Either we get mixed results or the paid advertisements take over the real organic results and we end up in a mess. To create an effective solution to this problem, Mr. Keyul Shah launched Coursesity in 2017.

    Coursesity is a search engine to discover the best online courses and tutorials available on the internet. Coursesity aggregates online courses from different education providers and E – learning platforms and categorizes them. Coursesity makes it easy for learners to find and compare different courses for their next learning.

    Coursesity Highlights

    Startup Name Coursesity
    Headquarter Surat
    Founder Keyul Shah
    Sector Edtech
    Founded 2017
    Website coursesity.com

    About Coursesity and How it Works
    Coursesity – USP and Innovation
    Coursesity – Target Market
    Coursesity – Founder and team
    How was Coursesity Started
    Coursesity – Name, Tagline and Logo
    Coursesity – Startup Launch
    Coursesity – Business Model and Revenue Model
    Coursesity – Startup Challenges
    Coursesity – Competitors
    Coursesity – Funding and Investors
    Coursesity – Advisors and Mentors
    Coursesity – Growth


    Check it out – List of EdTech Startups in India | Emerging Education Startups


    About Coursesity and How it Works

    Coursesity as a platform makes it easy for the students to correctly locate the courses they want to study. This is how it works. Coursesity lists all the courses available on different online learning platforms and MOOCs in one place and categorizes them based on topic, price, ratings, and reviews.  For users, it is a one-stop solution where they can search and compare the courses on the various subjects they want to learn. This saves a lot of time for users. Users don’t need to waste time visiting each eLearning or MOOCs sites and then look for the course.

    Coursesity Website Image
    Coursesity Website Image

    Initially, it started as a search engine for only programming courses, but over time they made a little pivot and expanded to different categories including design courses, marketing courses, business courses and so on.

    Coursesity – USPs and Innovation

    Coursesity empowers students and learners to achieve their career goals by learning new skills.

    Some USPs of Catalyst Group are:

    • It lets the users discover free and the best online courses across 200 different subjects including programming, design, marketing, business, personal development and so on.
    • It records & tracks the progress of the courses they are taking online.
    • It connects the users with other learners at the same level to get help in learning.

    Also Read:  Internshala – Grab That Internship You Are Passionate About!


    Coursesity – Target Market

    E-learning is estimated to be a $325 billion market by 2025. So ideally the opportunity for a successful edtech startup is huge. Globally, $107 billion is spent on online education. In addition to this, the market size of coding boot camp is estimated to be $260 million. In India, with major players like Unacademy, Byju’s, Gradeup, Toppr, and Vedantu, the online education market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of over 20% during the forecast period.

    In recent years, the online education industry has already seen some large acquisitions like LinkedIn acquired Lynda for $1.5 billion, and General Assembly, the largest coding Bootcamp, was acquired for $412 million.

    Coursesity – Founder and team

    Coursesity is founded by Mr. Keyul Shah.

    Keyul is a serial maker and software engineer. Before launching Coursesity, he has launched many products including Bot Stash, Entry Level Jobs, an android app, messenger chatbot and so on. He has graduated with a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Arizona State University, USA.

    How was Coursesity Started

    Three years back, Keyul was preparing for the software engineer interview. That time, he looked for online courses that could help him to revise the technical concepts and technologies.

    In this process, I realized that I had to spend more time looking for right courses on various e Learning platforms instead of spending time on actual learning – says Keyul.

    This experience resulted in him collecting all free programming courses from different e-learning sites and categorizing them based on the programming languages, frameworks, and tools. After collecting, he uploaded the list on GitHub and shared it on Reddit. It became an instant hit on Reddit. Different blogs & sites copied the list and posted it on their sites. Around 17,000 courses were visited in just four days from that list. And this validated the potential of the idea.

    Coursesity Website Image
    Coursesity Featured Courses

    Post validating, he started brainstorming the features that need to be on the first MVP. The site aimed to keep it simple and easy for users to find programming courses. It took six weeks to build the first working version of the site.


    Also Read: EdpowerU – Helping Students and Professionals Reach Their Career Highs


    The name “Coursesity” reflects the vision of the company. It’s simple! Course + University = Coursesity – A university of online learning.

    Coursesity Logo
    Coursesity Logo

    Coursesity – Startup Launch

    After creating the first MVP of the site, the next step was to launch the first version to the public. Keyul posted the site on Product Hunt. It became the “number 1” product of the day on ProductHunt. In three days, 10,000 people visited the site just through Product Hunt.

    The Product Hunt launch helped the Coursesity team to get the word out. When the word got out, a few technology press & blogs also wrote about the Coursesity launch. To diversify the audience base, they started a campaign that focused on a niche market. Reddit and Facebook groups are the best places to reach out to the niche audience. They have also started a publication on Medium for programmers.

    Coursesity – Business Model and Revenue Model

    Coursesity is currently working on two business models. These are the advertisement model and revenue sharing model.

    Coursesity – Startup Challenges

    As an entrepreneur, one always wants to ship the product with all the features but it takes so much time to build everything and there’s no definite way to know which features will the consumer use. So the idea of Coursesity was to focus on the features that solve the actual pain points of the audience. Build those essential features first and launch the product.

    Never wait for your product to be perfect. Always measure the usage of the various features and keep iterating the product over the period. Set one metric and focus on how to grow it. This is an important trick that we learned when we were part of 10 weeks YCombinator backed Startup School – says the founder of Coursesity.

    Coursesity – Competitors

    Coursesity is a search engine to look for courses on all subjects and categories. While other platforms like Educart, Simplilearn, Dexler Education, etc are just focused on one or two categories, Coursesity is well diversified into all the categories. Coursesity also empowers learners to do more things in their online learning.

    Coursesity – Funding and Investors

    Coursesity is bootstrapped from day one. But it’s looking forward to raising funds from the right investors to expand the platform.

    Coursesity – Advisors and Mentors

    Coursesity team is learning from Combinator’s startup school and the Launch podcast.


    Also Read: AttainU – Bridging the Skill Gap in Software Engineering Sector


    Coursesity – Growth

    Coursesity has more than 5,000 courses listed across 200 different subjects. And approximately 30,000 courses are viewed by users every month on the site.