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 Quizizz.
Did you ever give a second thought to a better constructive process? What about discovering something new, maybe a new product? Creativity is a process or a pathway towards expressing brand new relationships or so. One should always scrutinize ideas to explore relatively in a different way because, in today’s world, the difference has got a great glamour!
Quizizz is a creative software company and is also considered to be the world’s most engaging learning platform. The platform allows the users to create as well as find gamified quizzes. Quizzes are simple and an old concept but Quizizz have made this more interesting therefore by gamifying it! Read the Quizizz success story below.
Quizizz is a software company. The application is mostly used in group works, examinations, classes and tests. This allows both the parties – the teachers as well as the students to stay online at the same time. Presentations can also be made with the help of Quizizz. So, Quizizz is a user-friendly application not only for the students but also for the working professionals like teachers or the employees of the MNC’s. It is nothing but an online assessment equipment!
Logo, Quizizz
Quizizz – Startup Story
Since quizzes used to be a common and a boring subject, eventually, people started to lose interest and the subject material got lost into the hustle and bustle of life. BITS-Pilani alumni Deepak and Ankit thought of making this more interesting by adding creativity to it. The founders combined the concept of gaming along with the questions and feedback was too attached to it to aid the youngsters to learn more! This made online classes much more interesting than the usual. It especially helped the teachers to bring a smile to the student’s faces. The team made the theory of quizzes easier and made it more enjoyable.
Ankit Gupta and Deepak Joy Cheenath are the founders of the company Quizizz.
Ankit Gupta
Ankit Gupta is the CEO and the Co-Founder of the company. He began his career as an Intern at Pentair Water India Ltd. Ankit worked as a Contract Developer in Google. He was also an Intern at Flipkart.com. Ankit was an Analytics Specialist at Opera Solutions. He was also the Co-Founder of the company WizenWorld. He completed his education from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
Deepak Joy Cheenath
Deepak Joy Cheenath is also the Co-Founder of the company. He is a software developer. He began his career as an Intern at SAP Labs. Deepak was the Software Development Engineer at Amazon. He was also the Co-Founder of the company WizenWorld. Deepak has also completed his education from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.
Founders, Quizizz
Quizizz – Business Model
The business model of Quizizz is quite simple! This application helps the teachers to construct quizzes of a particular topic in their own way by enhancing the curated subject on the platform. Then, the students take the quiz in their online classrooms, especially which can be later checked by the subject teachers with the help of the collected data.
Quizizz can be operated on any device like Android, Web browser, Chrome and iOS. It is kind of a free equipment for quizzers. Creation of a quiz or ready-made quizzes, everything is accessible over here. Quizizz Super is an upgraded version of Quizizz where one needs to pay. This platform has got a new paid plan along with itself. It helps the teachers a lot especially with amazing offers whenever he or she is upgrading their basic plan.
Quizizz has raised a total amount of $47 million in funding over the 4 funding rounds.
Date
Transaction Name
Money Raised
Lead Investors
June 29, 2021
Series B
$31.5 million
Tiger Global Management
March 9, 2021
Series A
Rs. 910 million
Eight Roads Ventures India
August 9, 2018
Venture Round
$3 million
Nexus Venture Partners
January 1, 2015
Seed Round
–
Prime Venture Partners
Quizizz is funded by 8 investors. Tiger Global Management is the most recent investor.
Quizizz – Competitors
The top competitors of the company Quizizz are Quizlet, Kahoot and Gimkit.
Quizlet
Quizlet is one of the top competitors of Quizizz. This company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, USA and was founded in 2005. Quizlet works in the Educational Software sector.
Kahoot!
Kahoot! is the top #2 rival of Quizizz. This company is headquartered in Oslo, Oslo. Kahoot! also operates in the Educational Software industry.
Gimkit
Gimkit is also perceived as one of the top competitors of Quizizz. This company is headquartered at Seattle, WASHINGTON, D.C. and was founded in 2017. Gimkit also works in the Educational Software field just like the other above mentioned companies.
Since everything is online now, Quizizz being an online assessment equipment has allowed the users to create quizzes. And this has turned out to be a fantastic idea recently because of its uniqueness which no one has examined before!
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.
Amid this Lockdown, several startups that have mushroomed during this time, not many have paid attention to the little ones – pre-schoolers and kindergarten kids. Keeping them engaged during this time is a mammoth task, especially for parents who work from home. That’s exactly where KinderPass steps in.
Founded by two young mothers – Sumedha Khoche and Shireen Sultana – KinderPass offers activities for children based on their age and development needs, reassuring parents that their kids’ early learning needs are being fulfilled.
KinderPass, an award-winning early learning app, that brings exciting brain building classes in Early Reading, Maths, Fitness, Art and more. It offers well-curated content for parents that are tailored for their children. According to the founders, the platform brings together principles aligned with EYFS, Montessori and Waldorf principles of play based learning and a repertoire of scientific research on early development.
It’s a known fact that children learn best through play, interactions with adults, and by activities that involve all senses. Passive viewing of videos is detrimental to a child’s developing brain – over-stimulation of some areas while other areas (such as fine motor skills, language or social-emotional skills) suffer.
KinderPass offers activities for children based on their age and development needs, reassuring parents that their kids’ early learning needs are being fulfilled. The KinderPass app contains 1,200+ bite sized activities for ages 0-4, screen-free exercises, and activities that parents can do with their children in the comfort of their own homes, without needing any expensive material. These activities have been carefully designed to fit a busy parent’s schedule. Based on each day’s feedback, the activities for are changed for the next day.
KinderPass- Founders
KinderPass is founded by Sumedha Khoche and Shireen Sultana.
KinderPass Founders | Sumedha Khoche and Shireen Sultana
Sumedha was born and raised in Delhi and did her MBA from IIM-Indore. She went on to lead sales, insights, and consumer marketing at PepsiCo, and later at P&G, Singapore. She discovered her true passion for teaching and early childhood education once her children were born.
Shireen was born and raised in Visakhapatnam and also went to IIM-Indore for her MBA, and joined Madura Coats out of campus. She followed it up with stints in Mars India, Aircel, and ISB. “Entrepreneurship happened when I helped my husband setup White Cloud Brands to help SMBs solve business problems through marketing. Parenting brought on a curiosity-led understanding of various teaching principles (Montessori, Waldorf, PlayWay, etc.) and early childhood development and learning, which helps contribute to KinderPass today,” she says.
“Our own experience of being working parents – the first few years are the most crucial for child development, and this is precisely the time when parents are time-starved with so many different demands on their time – work, childcare, elderly care, and more. What we also observed all around us was the growing incidence of the phone becoming a teacher and babysitter for children – babies were getting a phone before even their first tooth,” says Sumedha.
Sumedha and Shireen were batchmates and roommates at IIM-Indore, and have known each other for 19 years now.
How was KinderPass Started
They are highly passionate about making a difference in the early years and the lack of an authentic, reliable brand that helped parents make the most of this age was what got us going. The company felt that a lot of the critical aspects of brain science in the early years was locked away in research papers. Most working parents did not have the time or wherewithal to access that information but definitely wanted to make that difference in their child’s development and growth.
KinderPass tested this hypothesis with 150 parents back in late 2018 by running a pilot program wherein they’d receive activities every day for over 2 weeks. Over 75% of parents in this test group came back saying they would be excited to have a product that would help them receive similar information through their children’s growing years and that’s how KinderPass was born.
Research and validation have been part of their growing process over the last 18 months. KinderPass tested their online sessions through various formats and learning approaches, to arrive at the current multi-sensory, highly interactive format that has seen excellent engagement with children between the ages of 3 and 7. Children learn through music, movement, personal attention of a well-trained, qualified teacher and an interactive, play-based learning environment.
KinderPass- Name, Logo and Tagline
KinderPass Logo
KinderPass- Vision & Mission
At KinderPass, their mission is to enable parents to give their little ones the best start in life. The company strives to do this by making excellent early learning convenient, affordable and interactive for each parent and child.
KinderPass- Target Market Size
Globally, the Enrichment activities market is estimated to be 270 billion by 2025. Singapore alone accounts for about 1 Billion enrichment spends per year.
KinderPass- Products and Services
KinderPass is available as a mobile app on iOS and Android and a webapp too. Parents can download the app for free and browse through personalized activities for their children. From birth to three years of age, parents are encouraged to use the app daily to perform recommended activities with their children that impact four fundamental pillars of development – cognitive, physical, personal-social and linguistic.
KinderPass Mobile App
Parents take periodic milestone assessments, track their child’s growth and development and also record their child’s skill level on the activity. Landmark events (almost everyday is one!) can be captured and shared through the ‘Memories’ feature, using readymade templates from ‘My First Day Home’ until ‘My First Day at School’ and everything in between.
From the age of 3, parents rope in the help of its qualified and trained teachers and facilitators to help children build further on the critical pillars through our online classes. Their classes are uniquely structured to provide children with learning that is fun, multi-sensory and interactive.
KinderPass was started in Singapore as a marketplace for all things kids’, in 2018. They quickly realized that scalability, quality control and ease of access were the challenges with this model and, pivoted to the at-home-learning app that KinderPass is today.
KinderPass’ first 150 users came through the pilot program in India and Singapore. Parents would get activities on email and WhatsApp and their feedback is what made them kickstart the app.
KinderPass- Customers/ Clients
Today KinderPass has over 45000 users who come from over 50 countries and 5000 cities across the world. What is a matter of pride for the startup is more than 70% of these users have been acquired organically and through partnerships!
KinderPass- Challenges
Until lockdown in April, they were reliant on subscriptions and products (KinderPass’ own brand of developmental toys) for monetization. The company had a great lineup of products in the works too but all that came to a standstill. By late May/early June it became obvious that things weren’t going to go back to normal and that’s when they added online classes to our portfolio. As has been their approach, they tested these sessions and their approach through small batches, tweaking different variables with each batch (duration of session, batch size, teaching aids, curriculum, etc.) before arriving at what has become their signature style today.
The Finder Singapore’s Most Innovative Award for Business Transformation, 2020
Regional Winners, Singapore for the SoGal Global Pitch competition, largest global startup pitch opportunity for women and diverse entrepreneurs worldwide hosted by SoGal Foundation
Sumedha Khoche, Founder and CEO, was recognized by the Women Innovation and entrepreneurship Foundation (WIEF) at National Summit on Women and Education Empowerment 3.0, for her contribution to early education.
KinderPass was selected to be part of the first cohort of Encubay’s India Accelerator Program.
Sumedha Khoche
KinderPass- Future Plans
Their aim is to reach a base of 100K users within the next 6 months while staying true to their approach of making excellent early learning accessible and affordable to children across the globe, with specific focus on India.
Usually investment firms only fund a startup when they see potential to grow their money. However philanthropic investment firms fund in startups that help achieve their philanthropic endeavors like solving a country’s problems or empowering the civil society.
One such philanthropic investment firm and a non-profit organization is Omidyar Network India, which was established in 2004 by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pamela Kerr. Omidyar Network India is part of the US based Omidyar Group which is a diverse collection of companies, organizations and initiatives that are dedicated in creating opportunity for people to improve their lives.
Omidyar Network India has its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra with over a 50 employees in the country. Omidyar Network invests in innovative organization and bold entrepreneurs that will eventually catalyze economic, social or political change. As of 2017, the firm had invested in more than 60 companies within a decade, and raised more $350 million by 2020.
So far the organization has committed over $992 million to profit, nonprofit and public companies that aim in fostering economic advancement and that are trying to solve the problems of India’s hardest and most difficult problems and challenges.
Omidyar Network India makes equity investments upcoming companies and provide grants to non-profit organizations in the areas of Digital Identity, Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance and Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights. The organization invests in 3 levels which are :
Supporting new and upcoming market innovators,
Help in building institutional & market infrastructure and
Working with the Indian Government to promote inclusion, entrepreneurship, competition, and ensure necessary safeguards and protections.
Here are some of the startups funded by Omidyar Network India
Quikr
Quikr is the India’s top online classifies platform that helps people of a particular city meet, trade, buy and sell household goods, cars, bikes, local services and even find jobs, among other services. Quikr was founded in 2008 by Pranay Chulet and has its headquarters based in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
The company is currently has its footprint in 1000 different cities around the world. Quikr aims on empowering people to independently connect with different buyers and sellers. The company has so far raised over $350 million in 7 rounds in order to fulfill its dream of disrupting the ecommerce market in country and empower people.
In 2009, the company raised over Rs 200 million in their second round of funding which was led by Omidyar Network and Matrix Partners India. Quikr has a long list of investors like Tiger global, Kinnevik, Matrix Partners, Omidyar Network, Norwest Venture, Nokia growth Partners, Warburg Pincus and eBay, etc.
HealthKart
HealthKart is known to be India’s largest online nutrition and fitness platform that offers products, services and even expert advice or assistance to fitness enthusiasts. The company also has leading subsidiaries like MuscleBlaze for (sports and fitness) and Healthkart for (health).
HealthKart sells everything from protein supplements to vitamin smoothies at affordable prices. The company has it’s headquarters in Gurgaon and sells more than 200 brand products and authorized vendors that is listed on their website. It is known for nutrition products that are sold especially to elderly people, personal care, chronic care, eye and skin care.
The startup raised over Rs 27 crore in their second round of funding from their existing investor Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network India. With this the company expanded its product portfolio and is also developing an online magazine about health and fitness.
Dailyhunt is one of the top news and local language content app in India. Currently, the company has over 150 plus million app installations with more than 100,000 news articles that are available in 14 different languages.
The company was founded in 2007 by Virendra Gupta and its parent company is Verse Innovation. Dailyhunt claims to have 150 million monthly users and 27 million daily users. It also has 650 publication partners, while their content is created by machine learning algorithm that delivers real time personalized content.
The company raised over Rs 24.61 crore in series E2 funding from Omidyar Network India, Sequoia Capital and the Renu Sehgal Trust. Omidyar also funds other news aggregators like Pratilipi and Helofy. The competitors of Dailyhunt are NewsDog which is backed by Tencent and Helo backed by Toutiao.
1mg
1mg Website
1mg is one of the top online pharmacy and integrated health application in India and is known for its wide range of medicines, health products, online consultation, booking lab tests and providing information on doctors, clinics, diagnostic centres, pharmacies, etc.
The company promotes transparency around medicine information and is the one stop shop for medical search and transaction experience. During the pandemic, the platform has become popular as it delivers medicines and health products at the safety of the homes in more than 1000 cities across India from Licensed pharmacies.
In 2016, 1mg raised over $15 million in their series B funding round from Maverick Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network India. The company at that time said that it was going to use the funds to expand their online pharmacy and diagnostics and also launch personalized health feeds for their consumers.
Scripbox is an online mutual funds platform, which was founded by Sanjiv Singhal in 2012. The company has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka and uses proprietary algorithms to curate a portfolio out of 8000 other mutual funds in country, they are then divided into equity, debt and tax savings.
The company aims to educate young working professionals to save and grow their wealth and also encouraging people to explore inflation beating instruments rather than the usual inflation par instruments like fixed deposits and gold. As according to E R Ashok Kumar, the CEO of Scripbox, equities will give people over 15% returns than compared to the traditional forms of investing.
The company raised an undisclosed amount in their series B round investment from Omidyar Network India and Accel partners. The company joins Omidyars’s other investment made in the sector of personal savings such as Juntos from US and Tandem from UK. Scripbox was planning to expand to 1000 cities by 2020 with its funds.
Transerve
Transerve is a platform that offers geospatial tech based SAAS solutions. The platform allows solutions for sustainable growth and urban planning. Transerve is used by both individuals and companies for visualizing and sharing spatial data and map visualization through Map APIs.
The platform is a data collector, has location intelligence and helps in mapping precisely so the companies can geo locate data and then make smart and accurate decisions. The company also built many apps and platforms like CityOS in order to solve problems which are related to urban setup, Watsan for waters supply and sanitation solutions and deploys Lidar for heritage restoration and highway engineering.
The company aims in providing solutions to modernize a city’s municipal information system, which is why it went on to raise $1.6 million in Series A funding from IL and FS Investment Managers and Omidyar Network.
Vedantu is a well-known Ed tech company that allows teachers to provide Live tuitions to students online. The online tutoring platform has more than 500 of India’s best curated teachers and over 1 million hours to over 40,000 students across 1000 plus cities from 30 countries.
Vedantu uses a built in technology known as WAVE to create a marketplace model for teachers, where students can browse, discover and choose to learn from a particular teacher. So far the app offers teaching classes for 6th to 12th grades and also for co-curricular and competitive examinations.
Vedantu raised $11 million in Series B funding round from Omidyar Network in 2018. It also went on to raise $12.5 million in Series C-1 round of funding from Legend Capital and Omidyar’s Ohana Holding in 2020.
ZestMoney
ZestMoney is India’s fastest growing Fintech startup that was founded in 2015 by Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma and Ashish Anantharaman. ZestMoney uses mobile technology, AI and digital banking facilities to make life more affordable to millions of Indians by managing their credit for them and helping them pay in affordable EMIs.
The platform was made with the aim of improving lives of the people who don’t have an access to credit card or other financial option due to insufficient credit history.
The Bengaluru based digital lending startup raised over $20 million funding in Series B round from Quona Capital, Reinventure, Omidyar Network, Ribbit Capital and PayU. The company is said to use these funds for expanding their platform with EMI-based financing for e-commerce and for other online purchases.
Credflow is a New Delhi based Fintech startup, that offers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) solutions for cash flow management. With the help of the platform SMEs can manage their finances better with timely insights of pending amounts by customers, sending regular payment reminders, validating invoices and negotiating discounts for early payment, among others.
So far over 5000 SMEs are said to have used Credflow to process invoices that are worth over Rs 70,000 crore. The main aim of Credflow is to help small businesses grow exponentially by managing their banking, payments, and treasury.
Credflow raised $2.1 million in their seed round of funding from Stellaris Venture, Omidyar Network and Flourish Ventures. The company said that they would use the funds to develop its platform, strengthen its technology and come up with new products in order to expand their customer base.
WhiteHat Jr
WhiteHat Jr Website
WhiteHat Jr is a Mumbai based Edtech startup that offers live online 1:1 classes on coding and math. The platform is also built on the foundational skills like literacy and numeracy from an early stage.
WhiteHat Jr helps in connecting top certified teachers that can teach children topics such as e-learning, coding, early childhood education, computational thinking, logic, algorithmic thinking, etc. After learning the kids are encouraged to come up with creative outcome like animations and apps.
The startup raised over $1.3 million in a seed funding round from Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar’s Network India in 2018. It also raised $10 million in their Series A funding round by their existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar’s Network India in 2019. The company said that they would use the funds to strengthen their platform and expand their curriculum and marketing to increase consumer awareness.
Newslaundry
Newlaundry is a well-known independent news media company that provides its readers with media critique, reportage, satirical commentary, podcasts, documentaries, comics and animation content. The media company was founded by former journalists Abhinandan Sekhri, Madhu Trehan and Prashant Sareen in 2012.
Newslaundry was also the first subscription based website in India, as unlike other news websites like The Wire, The Quint, Scroll, etc the company relies on public subscriptions for revenue instead of advertisements. In 2016, the media company raised Rs 3.1 crore from Omidyar Network, Omidyar now owns 18.4% stake in the company.
Over the years Omidyar Network Indian helped in driving empowerment and social impact at a big scale, by investing in startups and entrepreneurs who aim in providing solutions to solve Indian chronic problems. Even during the Covid 19 pandemic, Omidyar Network funded over Rs. 10.75 crores to 67 projects out of 2000 under the Rapid response funding initiative in 2020. The investment firm will continue to help many upcoming startup grow and bolster a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Omidyar Network India?
Omidyar Network India is part of the US based Omidyar Group which is a diverse collection of companies, organizations and initiatives that are dedicated creating opportunity for people to improve their lives.
Who is the founder of Omidyar Network India?
The philanthropic investment firm and a non-profit organization was founded by Pierre Omidyar (also the founder of eBay) and his wife Pamela Kerr.
What are the areas that Omidyar Network India funds?
The areas in which Omidyar Network India funds are Digital Identity, Education, Emerging Tech, Financial Inclusion, Governance and Citizen Engagement, and Property Rights.
What are some of the Top startups funded by Omidyar Network India?
The startups funded by Omidyar Network India are Newslaundry, WhiteHat Jr, Credflow, ZestMoney, Vedantu, Transerve, Scripbox, Dailyhunt, 1mg, HealthKart and Quikr.
In India, there has been a growing gap between the industry needs and the skills of students. A study by employability assessment company ‘Aspiring Minds’, carried out in 2017, shockingly revealed that 95% engineers in India are not fit for software development jobs.
Technology is not something which can be learned once and for all, it is a must to keep oneself abreast of new developments. While it is not possible and convenient to go for formal offline education at all stages of one’s career, online technical education can do a lot to keep one up-to-date with new technologies, without giving up the current job.
Codevidhya is an Ed-Tech company converting classrooms of Indian schools into programming powerhouses with a vision to empower the young generation to innovate.
Read this article to know more about Codevidhya founder, funding, courses, business model, tagline, logo, challenges and future plans below.
Codevidhya is an EdTech company highly inspired by technology to facilitate technical education besides contemporary learning. The company is dedicated to explore new future of young minds through integrating the learning with creativity, sharing and collaboration. They develop the concepts to help understand the future needs and to make complex learning easy with effective tools and techniques.
“We believe in the future that would be written by code. In fact, the ability to code could be the ‘Next level of Literacy’.” – Shiv Ram Choudhary, founder of Codevidhya.
As an EdTech startup, Codevidhya follows the ‘Learn by Doing’ approach. Adhering to this philosophy, the company integrates such tools in their platforms and practices that leverage students’ learning and knowledge. The startup has ambitious plans underway to expand to more schools and has already partnered with 50 schools catering to 20,000 students.
Mr Shivram Choudhary in a classroom
Codevidhya differentiates itself by offering a futuristic Computer Science curriculum that empowers the future generation. Students are encouraged to find out real problems of the real world and solve it with the help of technology.
Codevidhya – Target Market Size
“We consider ourselves to be in the Online(Platform) + Offline (Text Book) market both. Currently there is no player in the Indian industry who is offering this approach for coding.”, says Shiv Ram.
As such, the startup consider the entire Indian education industry from Grade 1 to Grade 10 as their market, the size of which is upwards of 250 million. Since this is a new market that is being created, they are yet to identify the potential of it, however the startup has seen a 100% YOY growth in terms of student acquisition for the past 2 years.
Codevidhya – How It All Started?
Codevidhya was built around the idea that in India we have around 45% of the population under age 24, yet there is a big unemployment pool. Initially, Shiv Ram, founder of Codevidhya, had a discussion with several experts and each one of them had their own views. When he collated those thoughts and did differential analysis he came to one conclusion that we are not adequately skilled. Finding the solution to this issue was itself a problem as the education system in India is still archaic.
When the founder visited Canada to attend a seminar with Robin Sharma, he met this young kid Tanmay Bakshi. He had a discussion with him for more than one hour and it was an enlightenment for Shiv Ram. Then & there, Codevidhya as an idea was incepted, that the problem is in the core. If we shape our children from the grassroot level then in future they will have a skill.
As Shiv Ram says, “Right now everyone is thinking in a reactive way, I thought why reactive and let’s be proactive and catch them young and shape their future. There is a drawback in this thinking that the results of your efforts will come after 10-15 years, but yes we are ready to take that risk, as it is a noble cause as well as we are addressing the issue from very basic, making things foundational.”
Shiv Ram came back to India and discussed with his in-house tech people (people in his school) and met Rajesh, who along with a team of four developers gave basic shape to the idea. Basic concept or say mission and vision of Codevidhya is to Enable Students to Create; using Technology leading to Entrepreneurship and become Global Powerhouse of Skill Development for tomorrow’s world.
Codevidhya – Products/Services
Codevidhya’s latest offering is ‘Live 1-1 Classes’ with India’s best educators. ‘Codevidhya Live Coding Classes’ are for digital classroom where you can start learning from your trainer.
Codevidhya’s flagship product is Annual School Curriculum that focus on Coding through a hands on approach wherein the startup offers Text Book and an online platform for students to practice their exercises; the same platform is used by the teachers to assign quiz, assignments and projects.
Also, Codevidhya offers a well-structured coding curriculum for Schools to teach coding right from Grade 1. The curriculum is at par with the latest trends in programming languages such as Python, HTML and JavaScript to prepare young manpower for future challenges. Currently working with 50 schools in the Rajasthan & South region, the startup aims to grow all over the country in the coming years.
Codevidhya Courses
The program offered by Codevidhya to schools consists of the following set of resources:
Curriculum books for Grades 1 to 10.
Access to Codevidhya online tools such as QuickBook and CodePlay.
Multiple Training Sessions for Computer Science teachers for the whole academic session to equip them to teach conveniently and more effectively.
Regular workshops for students to introduce them to the coding concepts and the latest innovations in the field of Computer Science.
Online Assessments to track the students’ performances.
Program Monitoring.
One to one support for teachers and students.
Coding Challenges for students to create the competitive environment.
Codevidhya – Founders & Team
Shivram Choudhary is the founder of Codevidhya.
Shivram Choudhary | Founder, Codevidhya
In his role as Chairperson, Mr. Shiv Ram considers himself responsible for equipping the students with all the skills necessary for the 21st century. Having identified a considerable gap between what is being taught in the schools as part of the Computer Science curriculum and what is it that the market demands, he wanted a curriculum that could cater to the students in sync with the need of the hour.
Vikas Bahar, CEO of Codevidhya – He is equipped with extensive and diverse experience, and is tremendously skilled with knowledge in IT strategy, Market Research, Management, Pre-sales, Business Process, Re-engineering as well as Business Development. With an MBA degree from the prestigious S.P. Jain Centre of Management, Singapore, Vikas Bahar is a functional & process re-engineering specialist with experience of working in distinctive streams of Information Technology and Service industry in the domain of Banking & Financial Services.
Subhash Bohra, Technical Officer of Codevidhya – He looks after all the technical and product development aspects. Subhash carries the vision of the work as his motivation and wants to achieve this unique goal of teaching students code at an early age. Subhash believes that in the coming years the world will be technical so that every student from the coming generation should learn everything that can ease their complexities for the future.
The company currently has 15 Full-time employees and 10 Part-time employees/interns. The average age of the employee is 25, the team is young, ready to experiment, open to learn and willing to stretch.
Majority of the current team has been with the firm since the beginning and the rest have come through references. The entire team believes in the concept and the importance of teaching coding to students from an early age. Anyone who believes in it is welcomed with open arms to join the team.
Codevidhya – Name, Tagline & Logo
Codevidhya has a clear focus on what the output of the program is. Since they believe Coding is also a Vidhya that needs to be learnt by students to be ready for the upcoming Tech Driven world hence the name Codevidhya.
The startup’s tagline is an extension of what they are trying to do, “Teaching Kids to Code”.
Codevidhya Logo
Codevidhya – Business & Revenue Model
The startup’s flagship offering is Annual School Curriculum for students from Grade 1 to Grade 10, this is their B2B offering for schools. The Codevidhya revenue model is on a subscription basis, where they charge on an annual basis per student with prices varying from 800-1200.
Under B2C offerings, they have Self Online Learning, LIVE 1-1 Coding Classes and Byte Sized Courses. The prices of these courses depend on the duration and technology, they start as low as INR 1,200 and go up to INR 12, 000.
Codevidhya – Startup Launch
“We were lucky to have a school trust us and allow us to run the pilot program for 400 students. This pilot gave us enough confidence on the need of the program as well as feedback on things to improve.”, said Shivram Choudhary, founder of Codevidhya.
Codevidhya – User Acquisition & Growth
The startup haven’t used any sort of marketing campaign, the first 10,000 customers came to them through reference and word of mouth promotion. The team believes that satisfied customers are their brand ambassadors and this clarity has not only made their services and offerings good but also made everyone using the platform happy.
The company has seen 100% growth in terms of students using the platform for the past 2 years thus making the team believe in the product as well as the mission they are onto. They believe the awareness of coding to be included in schools is going to increase leading to more schools and students willing to join the platform.
Codevidhya – Competitors
Codevidhya being in the edtech industry definitley has stong competition from other startups who have been around longer and have aggressive marketing techniques. Some Competitors of Codevidhya are :
The biggest challenge that the company face even today is the lack of qualified people who are interested to move to Jaipur and join the team, specially Tech and Trainer. They offers ESOPs to certain candidates who they think believe in the vision of the firm.
Codevidhya – Funding & Investors
Codevidhya is currently a bootstrapped company.
Codevidhya – Recognition and Achievements
Got Silver Badge in QRATE program by ISTART Govt. of Rajasthan.
Selected in top 5 most innovative and scalable startups of 2018 by TIE Global (CNBC Young Turks Program).
Featured by CIO magazine amongst 20 top most promising EdTech startups of 2018.
Codevidhya – Future Plans
At Codevidhya, the team believes that every student of this nation should have the opportunity to learn to code and create. For this opportunity, the startup is about to launch a subscription based Codevidhya Program for individual students also. AI and ML are new trends and also the future of programming. In step 2, they will be introducing AI and ML as part of their program.
Codevidhya is India’s first company that introduced Coding e-learning. The company has grown to educate 20,000 Young Keen Coders in its curated Codevidhya Annual School Curriculum alone. The Young Keen Coders grew to blossom into National Award-winning Coders at competitions such as the Google Learn to Code Contest. Codevidhya scientifically developed curriculum is molded to effectively educate children from the age of 6-16 years of age.
Codevidhya’s research and expertise curate a large variety of well-researched and structured curriculums and programs that ensures students’ smooth transition into Coding.
Codevidhya – FAQs
Who is the Founder of Codevidhya?
Shivram Choudhary is the founder of Codevidhya.
What is the state of Codevidhya Funding?
Codevidhya is currently a bootstrapped company.
What does Codevidhya offer?
Codevidhya, an EdTech company is highly inspired by technology to facilitate technical education besides contemporary learning. Codevidhya follows the ‘Learn by Doing’ approach. Learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Database etc. with Codevidhya.
What are the future plans of Codevidhya?
AI and ML are new trends and also the future of programming. In coming days they will be introducing AI and ML as part of their program.
“City of Dreams”, as many people express Mumbai, is a place that helps bring dreams to reality. Angel Investors are one of the means for you, to help achieve your dreams. Thereby, find the list of Angel Investors in Mumbai and get an insight on their specific Market Interests, Contact details and Major Investments. It is also essential for you to clear certain Myths about Angel Investors. We are here to help you out on all of it.
Mumbai isn’t just the well-off city, but the Economic Hub of India, that has various Industrialists, CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Well-known companies, Directors, Producers, Artists, and what not! The place ‘Mumbai‘ has its own culture and architecture that makes it the spot of tourist attraction. Well, a place that is full of life and energetic minds, requires a guide and a financial supporter to enthusiastic people, for building up the initial base of their dreams. Thus, here comes the Role of Angel Investors who act as wizards for breeding minds to help them act upon their dreams.
Before, moving ahead to get insights on Angel Investors, Lets’ understand the Pre-built Myths about Angel Investors and the Reality Strike.
Myths vs Reality of Angel Investors
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Arihant is the MD at Ideaspring Capital (an early-stage VC) and Hive Technologies (platform for launching startups in big data space). He acts as the MD at Patni Financial Advisor and as a Director of Nirvana Venture Advisors. An Entrepreneur, Financial Advisor, and Venture Capitalist, Arihant completed his B.Sc in Chemical Engineering from the reputable University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Babson College, with concentration in Entrepreneurship. He also did a Masters in Statistics from Columbia University.
Anupam Mittal is the Founder & CEO of People Group, which has created ventures like Shaadi.com, Mauj Mobile, and People pictures. He is one of the prominent angel investors in Mumbai with over 20 investments. He completed his studies in Commerce field from the esteemed Boston College. Before People Group, he served as the Product Manager at MicroStrategy in Washington.
Ratan Tata, one of the most influential business tycoons of India, is an investor & philanthropist. He is the recipient of India’s esteemed awards Padma Vibhushan and Padma Bhushan for his immense contribution to the country. He was associated with advisory boards for various companies like Mitsubishi, Temasek, JP Morgan Chase, and Rolls Royce. He serves as the former Chairman of the Tata Group. He completed his Bachelor of Arts from the esteemed St. Xaviers College, Mumbai.
Markets Interested
Digital Media, Education, Healthcare, Ecommerce, Technology
Anirudh, the MD at Artha India Ventures (an early-stage investment firm) is an energetic investor in startups and also a prominent member of the Indian Angel Network. He has a vast understanding and experience of the Indian Startup Ecosystem. He is always on a hunt to find new ideas and accept new challenges. Before Artha Ventures, he acted as the Investor director at FindUrClass and Klip.in. he obtained his Bachelor Degree in Economics & Business Administration from the esteemed Austin college
Zishaan is a successful entrepreneur and a prominent angel investor. He is the Founder and CEO of Toppr, an online education platform. Before getting associated with Toppr, he also co-founded a Phone commerce marketplace Chaupaati Bazaar, which was later acquired by the Future Group. He has also worked with Opera Solutions on various strategies and consulting projects. Being a graduate from IIT Delhi, in 2015, he was awarded the Young Alumni Achiever Award.
Anand Mahindra, the Chairman of Mahindra group, is a reputable businessman and also an active investor in emerging startups. He founded Project Nanhi Kali, an NGO that provides financial and academic support to underprivileged girls across India. He was included in the Fortune Magazine’s List of ‘World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’. He did his MBA from the reputable, Harvard Business School.
Anand Mahindra’s Investments
Thinkerbell Labs, Local circles, among many others.
Kunal, the Co-founder of FreeCharge (Online mobile recharge platform), is a successful entrepreneur, mentor, and among the top angel investors in Mumbai. He acts as an active advisor at AngelList. He is also the Founder of CRED, Advisor to the board at Times group, and had been an advisor at Sequoia Capital.
Sandeep Tandon, the Co-founder of FreeCharge (Online mobile recharge platform), is an active angel investor in Mumbai. He has invested in and mentored various early-stage startups. Being the Member Board of Directors at CRED, partner at Whiteboard Capital, Non-executive chairman of Aavas Financiers, and the Member of Board of Advisors of Iron Pillar, Sandeep got exposure to various domains. He completed his studies in Engineering from the esteemed University of Southern California.
Markets Interested
Digital Media, Ecommerce, B2B, Online Marketplaces, Matrimonial, Healthcare
Sandeep Tandon’s Investments
Pocket Aces, Bharat Bazaar, ShaadiSaga, Flyrobe, Spinny among many.
Sanjay, the Director of CORE (Centre of Recognition and Excellence), is a prominent angel investor of Mumbai. He was the recipient of the “Angel Investor of the Year” award by LetsVenture in 2017. He is an active member of Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels, B2B 1K Ventures & CIO Angel Network, Venture Nursery. He has angel invested in more than 100 startups in diverse sectors. He did his Executive education in Venture Capital from the esteemed The Wharton School.
Ronnie, the Co-founder & Chairman of upGrad and also the Founder of Unilazer Ventures, is an entrepreneur and an experienced angel investor. He is also famous for the creation of UTV, leading Mass media aggregate. He did his Bachelor’s degree from the Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics.
Jitendra, the Founder of Citrus Pay, Jupiter, Lazy pay & MD of PayU India, is a well-experienced angel investor. He has got expertise in the field of Banking & Financial Services industry. Before Citrus, he was associated with ICICi Bank and as the Chief Manager of Global Investment Banking Group.
Vishal, the Founder & CEO of GOQii (platform from health and wellness solution), Vishal Gondal, is an entrepreneur cum angel investor. He has acted as a major contributory in modifying the journey of many startups. Believing in leading and motivating startups to get extraordinary results, Vishal expresses the importance of extra effort & commitment Before, he was associated with the Walt Disney Co. and India Games Ltd.
Haresh, Partner at True North (Private equity firm), is one of the active investors in the Indian startup ecosystem. He is an alumnus of the reputable IIT Bombay & IIM Calcutta. Earlier, he had been associated as a Group CEO at Viacom18 & Network18. He also acted as the General Manager of Times Group & the Amitabh Bachchan Corporation.
Ajeet Khurana, the Former CEO of Zebpay (Mobile wallet for cryptocurrencies), is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He is skilled in building teams, ensuring performance, scaling, digital strategy, planning, and negotiation. He was also associated as an Advisor at Kalaari Capital, a Consultant at ii5 Ventures ltd and as the CEO of IIT Bombay’s business incubator: SINE. He completed his MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.
Markets Interested
Cryptocurrency, E-stores, Fashion, Technology, Digital Media, Healthcare
Ajeet Khurana’s Investments
Medd, WittyFeed, Leaf Wearables, Stitchwood among others
Sanjay, an Operating Partner at GSF India (Venture capital firm & accelerator), is a wise mentor and an active angel investor. His portfolio is majorly composed of tech startups. He also acts as an Independent Director at Easy Home Finance Ltd. Earlier, he served as the President & CMO at Reliance Capital and also as the Marketing Head at Allianz Life Insurance. He excels at negotiations & alliances.
Anuj, the Co-Founder of Venture Catalysts (Start-up Incubator) & Samyakth Capital (Hybrid growth fund), is among the prominent angel investors in Mumbai. He has over 15 years of experience across various fields which includes real estate, financial services, manufacturing, and internet companies. By profession, he is a chartered accountant.
Markets Interested
Digital media, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, Ecommerce, Education, Real Estate
Anuj Golecha’s Investments
LenDenClub, Inc42, Koinex, Fynd, Supr Daily, Bharatpe among many.
Japan, the Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Sixth Sense Ventures, is a well-experienced angel investor. He has mentored and invested in various Indian startups and helped them in their journey of growth & development. He is also the Chartered Member of TiE Mumbai. Earlier, he served as the Director at IDFC Investment Advisors Ltd.
Anand, the CEO at Everest Flavours ltd., is an active member of the Indian angel network and Mumbai angels. He has got immense experience in International Trade.
He is also member of National Executive Committee of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry), Managing Committee of FIEO (Federation of Indian Export Organisations). He has his footprints set on various social and charitable organisations.
Amit, the Co-Founder & Director of Raay Global and also the Chairman of Nirvana Venture Advisors, is a prominent angel investor in the Indian startup ecosystem. Additionally, he is also a promoter shareholder of Patni Computers and former Director of PCS Technology Ltd., Partner at The Hive-India & Ideaspring Capital. He holds a Bachelor in Commerce and an MBA from Babson College, Boston.
Vaibhav, he is a partner at Karnavat & Co and a prominent angel investor. In addition to that, he is a partner at Itreat Grocers LLP and also acted as CEO of Jewelex International Pvt Ltd. He did his Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting & Finance from the H R College of Commerce & Economics and is Chartered Accountant by qualification.
Dr. Apoorv, the Co-founder & President of Venture Catalysts, is one of the prominent angel investors in Mumbai. He also acts as the Board member at TiE Mumbai. Earlier, he served as the Vice President of Indian Angel Network and as the General Manager at Amity Innovation Incubator. He did his Ph.D. in Incubation from Amity University, Graduated in Engineering from HBTI, Kanpur, and Diploma in Mentor Studies of Berkley Institute of Management, University of California, USA.
Rajeev, the Founder of Magnetic Partners, is a well-experienced angel investor in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Earlier, he acted as the CEO & MD of JM Financial Services.
Pravin, He is the General Partner at Seedfund (Early-stage venture capital fund) and the owner of the Infinity Technology Venture Fund. In addition to that, he acts as the Board Member of TiE Mumbai and as an Advisor at Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund.
The Founder & Director of Malpani Ventures, Dr. Aniruddha, is a doctor-turned angel investor. He also acts as the Director at Solidarity Investment Advisors and the Board member of Invention Labs.
Aakrit, the Co-founder & CEO of Haptik (Conversational AI Platform), is an entrepreneur and an active angel investor. He is also the co-founder of Flat.io, a real estate platform and the Director of Winmark Enterprises Earlier, he served as the director at Flurry Inc., Business Technology Analyst at Deloitte Consulting LLP and as a Financial analyst at Chicago Transit Authority.
Markets Interested
Education, Technology, AI, eCommerce, Healthcare
Aakrit Vaish’s Investments
Unacademy, ION Energy, Dataweave, Haikujam, Tookitaki, Talent Litmus among others
Bharat, the CEO & Senior President of Aditya Birla Group, is an active member of the Indian Angel Network, CIO Angel Network, Venture Nursery, and The Indus Entrepreneurs. He is an experienced person in varied fields like Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions, business development, and investing. He is the recipient of the “Professional Achiever – Finance Sector” Award from the ICAI.
Bharat Banka’s Investments
OYO, Perpetuiiti Tech, Invenzone, TalView, Vegayan, AdStringo, InstaSafe among others
Devesh Chawla, Founder & CEO of Chatur Ideas, a Startup enabling platform. He is an active investor, TEDx speaker, and mentor to budding entrepreneurs. He is a recipient of various awards which includes “Youth Leadership Award” by Trade Commissioner of Canada, “Mahatma Gandhi Samman Award”, “Entrepreneur of the Year 2018″ and “CEO of the Year 2019”
He did his MBA in Finance and Insurance from the Mumbai Education Trust-Institute of Management and his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering from the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology.
Devesh Chawla’s Investments
NUOS, Cloudrino, Hublio, Koonk Technologies, and others.
Vikram, the Founding partner at 8i Ventures, is a prominent angel investor. He also acts as the Board Advisor to Blue Tokai and Signzy, and the co-founder & Board Member of Eight Capital. He did his MBA in Accounting & Finance from the New York University, MBA in Personnel Management & Industrial relations from the XLRI Jamshedpur and Bcom in Finance from the Shri Ram College of Commerce.
Farooq, the Co-founder of Fynd (Online Shopping Platform), is an entrepreneur and an active angel investor. He is a graduate from the IIT Bombay and also was associated with Opera Solutions before founding Fynd. He is an alumnus of the esteemed IIT Bombay.
Abhishek Shah, the Founder & CEO of Wellthy Therapeutics is a prominent angel investor in the Indian startup ecosystem. He did his MBA in Finance, strategy & Leadership from the Esteemed Indian School of Business.
Markets Interested
Consumer Internet, Enterprise Software, E-commerce, IT, Food & Beverage, AI, Healthtech, Big Data
Abhishek’s Investments
Bizly, ZipDial (Acquired by Twitter), Innerchef, Haptik, Greatist, Silverpush, Meddo Health, myUpchar.com, Doxper, among many
Sohil is an Early stage investor and a prominent entrepreneur. With experiences in firms like Bank of America, Fortune Financial Services & Intellecap Impact Investments, he has explored his field of interest with enthusiasm and curiosity. He completed his MS in Finance from The University of Michigan.
Bhavik, the Founder & Chairman of Vamaship (India’s largest e-commerce logistics marketplace), is a focused investor & entrepreneur. He also serves as a Director at BVC ventures. Being a part of various angel networks, he has gained exposure in several tech enabled startups. With regards to academic exposure, he was part of Harvard, London School of Economics, Indian School of Business, Singularity University & Narsee Monjee.
Markets Interested
Mobile Advertising, Social Media, Digital Media, Transportation, Logistics, E-commerce, Travel & Tourism, Software Technology
Siddharth is the Founder & CEO of Noesis.tech. He was also the founding partner at 369 Solutions. With a keen passion for technology, Siddharth constantly attempts to create a platform to monetize knowledge.
Being associated with Protiviti India & StyleCracker as Consultant and Advisor at Umoja & FoxyMoron Media Solutions, he gained immense experience and exposure in his field of domain.
This was our list of Angel Investors in Mumbai. Hope the contact details of these Angel Investors helped you! If you are an investor or know any Angel Investor in Mumbai, connect with us at shubham@startuptalky.com to get featured in the list.
Every student dreams of getting good grades, good college and a good life ahead. The young budding mind is curious, puzzled and still learning how the world works. The academic education and grades will only help too much, a person will need practical knowledge, certain skill set and so called “experience”. Aviate helps its Students to prepare for a job.
A freshly graduated individual struggles in finding a path, a direction to a journey he has to cross alone. The college, peers and adults in one’s life can only help through the way of giving advice, which at often times confuses the person. What these final year graduates need is the correct training about the work and skills they will need to instill in order to enter the recruitment market with the confidence and competence. As such, Aviate will guide their students in the right direction and also help them develop important and necessary skills to get a job.
Almost all the companies coming to the placement cells for recruitment are looking for students who have good communication skills and are fast learners. Why? Because they will be trained after the competitive range of interviews, GDs and tests of all sorts. Aviate provides the very same stage – a program with a vision to change the hiring market by training job-seekers on a very role-specific and organization/industry-specific that is designed in collaboration with the employers and geared to inculcate the operational as well as the soft competencies that an employer seeks for a particular job profile.
Aviate is a platform for employability-enhancement and placement services for fresh college graduates and final year college students. Aviate’s long-term vision is to disrupt the hiring market for entry-mid level roles. Aviate’s objective is to create a world where companies recruit via a train and hire model instead of the current norm of hiring people and then training them to be job-ready.
Aviate’s strategy is to train job-seekers on a very role-specific and organization/industry-specific courses that are designed in collaboration with the employers and geared to inculcate the operational as well as the soft competencies that an employer seeks for a particular job profile.
Post the training, job-seekers are thoroughly assessed (the assessments are also approved by the employers and designed to gauge a candidate-profile fit) and only the ones that make the cut are sent for interviews.
Aviate also has a retention cum mentorship programme wherein the alumni are paid a retention bonus after they complete a year with their organization. In exchange, the alumni conduct screening and mentorship sessions for incoming batch of job-seekers targeting the Alumni’s industry or profile. This also helps the alumni by granting them a sizeable supplementary income and provides the best possible mentorship to candidates aspiring for a particular role or an industry.
The advantages of the ‘train and hire’ approach for employers are-
Reduce employer’s TAT for hiring because of curation of eligible candidates made by Aviate.
Reduce the training costs and unlock a lot of opportunity costs as the candidates are job-ready.
Reduce attrition rates via its retention cum mentorship programme.
The advantages for job-seekers are-
Guaranteed Jobs for successful candidates
Successful candidates get a job offer within 24-96 hours
Employability – Enhancement by inculcation of core operational and soft skills
Supplementary income via our retention cum mentorship programme
No upfront training fee
Pan-India access to multiple job profiles and employers
Rishi is an Engineer from MIT Manipal and he also attended MBA course at MDI Gurgaon for an year before dropping Out. Previously, he worked with LetsTransport as National Sales Manager, where he scaled revenue to $10Million ARR. He also spearheaded strategic partnerships with Porsche and JW Marriot during his stint at Bidsvilla.
Kundan Kumar, an alumnus of IIT BHU (CSE) has joined Aviate as a Co-founder and CTO. Kundan is experienced in full-stack development. Kundan had Co-founded a company called Medaboss in the healthtech space and has also worked as tech lead with many organisations in the past.
“I talked to Kundan on LinkedIn when he pinged me as he was itching to work in this space as he had a very similar idea a few years ago. So I remember having several very late-night conversations with him and when we realized that our vision for the product and the business were aligned, he flew down to meet us and before long, he had put in his papers and would be joining us full-time in August as a co-founder and CTO”, Rishi informed.
In addition to the founders, Abhishek Singh is a core team member and heads the operations and online supply acquisition. Abhishek is an alumnus of IIT Dhanbad. Aviate has also made another addition in the form of Malika Bhutani to the core team as the head of community relations wherein she would lead the supply acquisition efforts.
How was Aviate Started
Rishi had faced the problem of hiring good frontline sales reps for a few organizations that he had been a part of and he used to wonder why that was the case and then one thing led to another and he started researching about the problem.
Rishi spoke to the Talent acquisition teams at several prominent BFSI, FMCG and retail companies that typically employ a large sales and operations workforce. He realized that a lot of their hiring for frontline roles is outsourced to recruitment agencies and they don’t really have a good curation mechanism.
“What I realized were three problems on the side of employers, the time taken to hire was protracted owing to a lack of good curation, the candidates needed training post-employment and weren’t job-ready and the attrition rates for these profiles was pretty high.”, said Rishi.
Rishi also spoke to a lot of placement officers across colleges in the country, students that had recently graduated or were about to in order to understand the problems at their end. Rishi also discussed it with a few friends that are entrepreneurs and some that work with a VC fund to get a sense of what they thought of the idea. By the end of last year, Rishi put in his papers at LT and decided to take a plunge and try to solve these problems.
Aviate – Name and Logo
“We just brainstormed on a couple of ideas for the name and when we zeroed in on Aviate” says Rishi.
The founder (Rishi) himself created the company’s logo.
Aviate is a pioneer in the ‘train and hire’ model. Aviate trains job-seekers on very role-specific and organization/industry-specific courses that are designed in collaboration with the employers. Post training the trainees are assessed and only those perform well are sent for interviews. To reduce attrition, Aviate also provides incentives to those alumni who complete minimum an year with an organization.
The advantages of this ‘train and hire’ model are-
Effective curation of employees. Employers can recruit from a candidate pool that is pre-trained.
Candidates are job ready even before getting hired. So the companies can skip the need for in-house training.
Reduced attrition. The alumni receive retention bonus on completion of minimum one year of job with a company, which reduces the attrition rate.
Role specific training and assessments designed in collaboration of the employers bridges skill gaps.
Aviate – User Acquisitions
Aviate’s client acquisition strategy has mostly been about identifying industries and sectors where they feel the model of hiring can create a dent and then reaching out to relevant stakeholders in the organizations to take the conversations ahead. Aviate is currently focusing on community buildingthrough campus ambassador network, internship platform and promotional events. The company is also taking help of digital marketing to reach out to potential customers.
Aviate raised a total funding of $45K in Feb, 2019.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investor
Feb 22, 2019
Angel
$45K
Sanchit Saraf, Abhimanyu Dhamija, Ravish Naresh, Pushkar Singh along with some other angels
Aviate – Startup Challenges
A major challenge for Aviate has been to build a good mechanism for offline supply acquisition. They initially started by reaching out to colleges for supply acquisition but soon realized that most colleges could care less about the placements and outcomes for their students.
“It’s so sad it isn’t even funny. Some colleges are responsive but the overwhelming majority couldn’t care less about outcomes as long as their seats are getting filled and they’re making money”, says Rishi.
Now their focus in terms of offline supply acquisition is to build a network of campus ambassadors to evangelize the cause. They also plan to launch an internship platform in order to try and get a lock-in on the supply side right from the first year of college.
Aviate – Competitors
Aviate’s model is different from the other players in this space like Manipal pro-learn or times learning etc. Rishi, is fairly sure that some great companies would emerge in this space. However, he thinks what Lambda has achieved is quite remarkable and investors and entrepreneurs alike have shown quite an interest in creating an Indian clone of Lambda. They will be watching this space with great interest specially to see if and how the Income sharing Agreement model works in India.
However, there are several companies and entrepreneurs that Rishi finds inspirational like Larry Ellison (oracle), Divyank Turakhia (directi, Media.net), Nithin Kamath (Zerodha), Ashish Kashyap (Goibibo, INDwealth) among several others.
“Tech-enabled/tech-based recruitment has seen a few interesting companies but none have managed to solve the problem at scale except Naukri. It is a little odd that none of the startups founded post 2010 have made a dent in the market in terms of the scale that naukri enjoys. In terms of skill development, the market has tinkered with a train and hire model however we feel that no one has really created a model that hinges on incentive-alignment of all stakeholders. We do think a lot of interesting plays will emerge in the broader recruitment and skill-development space.”, says Rishi.
Aviate – Advisors and Mentors
Aviate is being mentored by Pushkar Singh (Co-founder Let’s Transport) and Ravish Naresh (Co-founder Khatabook and housing).
Aviate has signed up clients and has commenced training and hiring for them. The immediate focus for the next years is to create a wide array of content that enables them to create a broader base of profiles and roles as they feel this will trigger a positive feedback loop with tremendous network effects.
Depth and breadth of content and job-types would lead to a better supply and a better supply would lead to better demand from clients. Kick-starting and optimizing this feedback loop is their immediate focus.
Aviate – FAQs
What is Aviate?
The Aviate platform provides college graduates and final-year students with employability-enhancing and placement services.
Who are the founders of Aviate?
Rishi Raj Rahul is the founder and CEO of Aviate and Kundan Kumar is the co-founder and CTO.
Where is the headquarters of Aviate?
Bomanhalli, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560068, India.
What is the total Funding and who are the investors of Aviate?
Total funding is – $45K in Feb, 2019. Invested by Angel investors – Sanchit Saraf, Abhimanyu Dhamija, Ravish Naresh, Pushkar Singh along with some other angels.
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 Udemy,India.
With everything around the globe turning more and more into the online or internet-based platform, Udemy is an online learning platform that provides to its customers courses’ videos on a good vary of topics like coding, videos and photos editing, personal and professional development, software tutorials, programming courses, and the list goes on and on…
Recently, Britannia Tiger Krunch has partnered with Udemy for promoting self defense among kids. They have launched defense classes for kids at a special discounted rate.
India is one of the company’s fastest growing market, with revenue and students doubling year-over-year. A local presence will enable Udemy to continue enhancing and localizing the student and instructor experience.
“Udemy’s rapid growth in India shows us the level of demand from students, instructors, and companies for affordable skills training. We are dedicated to our mission of improving lives through learning and expanding in India enables us to deliver on that promise,” said Gregg Coccari, CEO of Udemy.
Udemy offers a powerful platform for self-placed, non-degree learning regarding hard and soft skills to its customers. When you explore the content broadly, there are 13 categories: development, business, finance and accounting, IT and software, office productivity, personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, health and fitness, music, and teaching and academics. Each category is further divided into subcategories.
It has a wide range of content and is excellent resources for instructors as well as it provides them with the platform to come forward and sell their designed courses to the people needing the same. Several courses are taught by subject matter experts in languages other than English, including Spanish, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and German.
Talking about the best course in Udemy being sold to the customers, a generic question arises, where do the courses come from? To which let me enlighten, Udemy invites instructors and teachers who want to design courses and sell them on the platform. So, Udemy not just benefits the students by providing them with the in-demand best courses at their screens by few taps, but also provides a platform to the teachers to sell them to the students.
One needs a Udemy account for most activities on its platform including purchasing, enrolling in a course or to submit a course for publication.
The platform has more than 35 million students and 57,000 instructors teaching over 65 languages. There have been over 400 million enrollments. Students and instructors come from 180+ countries and 66% of the students are located outside of the U.S.
The Udemy logo is made up of two elements – a symbol and a wordmark. The symbol is handwritten and organic, to emphasize the personal connections being made between our students and instructors. The wordmark, set in practical sans serif type, is the structure and substance that makes their connections possible.
Udemy – How It Works?
Udemy works on 4 major lines and aims to provide the following to its students:
Convenience :
Udemy provides its students with the freedom to choose what and when to study. If a particular course is made available on the e-learning platform, students can enroll for it whenever they want because Udemy gives lifetime access it. Moreover, there’s no set time limit, so the students get to learn at their own suitable pace.
Variety :
Udemy has linked tutors from all around the world who teach a huge variety of subjects from business to the arts. It allows the students to learn whatever they want.
Affordability :
Some Udemy courses are free, and some are paid start from as little as $9. There are also a variety of udemy coupons and seasonal sale and discounts which help students to register themselves in courses at dirt rates. They also have an option to choose their preferred method of payment.
Certification :
Udemy certification courses adds credibility to your career. Udemy provides various certification courses to add up new skills, upgrade your skill, and enhance your expertise. It issues a certificate of achievement to students, a mark of completion of a particular course. Certificates can be saved as a .pdf or .jpg file so that you can easily share your accomplishment. In addition, certificates can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIndirectly from Udemy. The certificate of completion looks like this-
Udemy certificate
Udemy – Founders
Udemy was launched by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani in early 2010.
Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani, Udemy Co-Founders
In 2007, Udemy founder Eren Bali built a software for a live virtual classroom while living in Turkey. He saw potential in making the product free for everyone, and moved to Silicon Valley to find a company two years later.
“Udemy differentiates in two major ways. First, students can learn on their own time. Many other services provide the ability to host live learning with teachers, but it is critical for students to learn via recorded content (videos and written articles) as well. Second, it develops a community around the course. We provide features so students can easily interact amongst each other and their instructor,” said -Gagan Biyani, (Indian-American) Co-Founder of Udemy
With a mission to improve lives through learning, it is the largest online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. They enable anyone anywhere to create and share educational courses(instructors) and to enroll in these educational courses to learn(students). More than 35 million students are mastering new skills from expert instructors teaching over 130,000 online courses in topics from programming and data science to leadership and team building.
For companies, Udemy for Business offers an employee training and development platform with subscription access to 7,000+ courses, learning analytics, as well as the ability to host and distribute their own content.
Udemy for Government is designed to upskill workers and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. It is privately owned and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Turkey.
Udemy – Business Model
Udemybusiness model maintains a vigorous platform between instructors and students. Instructor create online courses as per their expertise and these are bought by students. It charges instructors a fee for every course sale made on its platform. The fee depends on how the user was acquired. It ranges from 3 to 75%. Additionally, it charges students annual subscription that gives its businesses (and their employees) access to the platform’s content.
Udemy – Revenue Model
Instructor Fees
There is no fee to create or host courses in Udemy. The firm makes money whenever a student purchases a course.
Consequently, revenue is shared with instructors. Depending on how the student was acquired, a different instructor fee applies.
This edtech Company has three revenue share tiers that it applies to its instructors:
Instructor Promotion: The student discovers the course through a coupon or referral link issued by the instructor. In this case, the instructor receives 97 percent of the revenue. An additional administration fee of 3 percent is applied by Udemy.
Udemy Organic: Organic sales occur whenever a student browses the e-learning platform and finds a course he/she is interested in. Furthermore, no instructor coupon is used when purchasing the course. In this scenario, Udemy and the instructor share 50 percent of the sales. Udemy charges a 30 percent fee for any sale made through the company’s Android or iOS app.
Paid Acquisition: In some instances, Udemy buys advertising slots on other platforms like Google, Facebook, or YouTube. Whenever students buy courses through paid marketing channels, Udemy takes a 75 percent cut of each course sale. Instructors can limit the amount of times and types of channels in which their courses are promoted.
For Business
Udemy For Business, as the name indicates, is tailored towards companies and their employees. Udemy for Business host courses including development, design, IT and software, data science, office productivity, management, marketing, personal development, project management, sales, among others.
Leading companies in India, including Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and Tetrasoft are using Udemy for Business so their employees can learn the latest skills and deliver the most innovative solutions for their customers. “We use Udemy for Business because we want to provide a learning platform for our employees across the globe where they can learn anytime, anywhere. With short bite-sized lectures and some of the best professors globally, our employees like learning on the platform because it’s easy to pick up new skills,” says Anurag Seth, VP & Head of Talent Transformation at Wipro, a leading global information technology, consulting, and business process services company.
It offers two subscription plans, depending on the size of the team. The teamplan is aimed at learning groups of 5 to 20 users. The company will have to pay $360 per year and user. Consequently, the Enterprise plan is suitable for all teams above 21 or more users. Hereby, pricing is available upon request by contacting it’s sales team. Furthermore, the Enterprise plan offers a few additional features. These include custom categories and learning paths, no language limitation (the Team plan is limited to English only), custom user groups, tracking user activity, Slack integration, and many more.
Udemy – Prices
With so many perks attached to its name, this is another generic question. There are both paid and free courses on Udemy. But to describe it in layman terms, nothing worth comes for free. So, yes the free courses aren’t as up to the mark as the paid ones. One needs to pay for Udemy courses one by one or can get access to more than 4,000 any time with a Business subscription. Unfortunately, the price is a little high, and you need a minimum of five people for a Business account. Some popular online learning platforms feature a membership system, but Udemy is a pay-per-course service. Udemy Courses ranges from $9 to $300, and the company frequently hosts sales.
It accepts international debit and credit cards, e-payments and bank transfers. The company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Udemy – Courses
The expert turn of events and programming courses are strikingly like the ones you can discover on LinkedIn Learning with proficient teachers. From the student’s viewpoint, you’re generally watching a talking head and incidentally perusing list items or synopses that show up on the screen.
You can discover the frail substance and self-serving educators if you burrow. One can even let the instructor know the doubts while studying the course which the instructor/teacher answers accordingly. The doubts and questions of other users which have been already answered by the instructor also appear to the student which helps in solving their doubt at earliest.
Every learner or student has to have a Udemy account to enroll or purchase a course. As the student purchases a course, it gets saved under ‘my learning’. The student can study them accordingly. The progress made while studying them is also displayed to the user including the number of sections completed. Just like any other shopping website, here we can wishlist a course if we’re not prepared to buy the same at that very moment.
When you discover a course, you can examine an in-depth description of that course, requirements to start it, what to expect at the end of the course, whether or not the course includes a certificate on completion and so forth.
The flesh and bone of each course are videos. Videos generally are grouped into sections. So, a course might be 3 hours long, however, each video might not be greater than 10 minutes. This is how a course is divided into sections.
The format enables teachers to ensure their courses are genuinely structured. By having sections and brief videos, instructors have to break their content material into specific, digestible pieces. this setup facilitates students to see the overall scope of the course beforehand. It additionally makes it smooth for students to pause and take a break from their course once they want to. Having brief videos additionally, lets newbies effortlessly repeat something they failed to apprehend or need to refresh. And it is beneficial in case you have a few revels in with the subject count already because you could skip any videos that include what you already know. Students can even rate the courses accordingly.
Udemy – For Instructors
Anybody proficient and confident in a field can turn into a teacher on Udemy. In beginning as an educator, Udemy offers tools and understanding to assist you with making a decent course. There is no fee to be an instructor on Udemy. Instructors are paid according to a revenue share model of the company. When a student buys a course on the marketplace, revenue is shared between instructor and the company, according to revenue share model. It offers tips, outlines and information concerning what sorts of courses students are searching for. The site likewise reveals to you whether the quantity of courses presently offered is per the interest, in addition to the normal and top-procuring month to month wages in this subject zone. Courses must have at least 30 minutes of video content and at least 5 lectures or learning modules.
In order to ensure that students have great learning experiences, Udemy also have a Quality Review Process that every course goes through.
In order to create paid courses, you’ll need an active PayPal or Payoneer account. Instructors can connect a PayPal or Payoneer account to their Udemy account. They are paid on a monthly basis.
In addition to the Udemy’s standard lecture uploader, they offer the ability to upload materials in bulk or import them via Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and other file storage tools.
Udemy’s Marketplace Insights they offer robust reporting on student demand, search volume, and revenue for a particular topic to help you decide what to teach. If no data exists for a topic the want-to-be-instructor-person is searching, it likely means that there’s an opportunity to fill this gap in the Udemy marketplace and he/she should get started right away. While success as an instructor on the e-learning platform is not guaranteed, this tool offers some powerful data to help you make your decision.
As an instructor, you have the option to enroll in the Udemy Deals Program, which is made up of two marketing channels that spotlight your course(s) in different ways. Enrolling in the Udemy Deals Program gives company the option to promote your course, at a discount. Selection for promotion is not guaranteed. In addition, they provide instructors with extensive articles, resources and features at online platform to help you effectively market your course(s).
Udemy – Expansion in India
For Udemy, after the US, India is the second largest market catering to the requirement of professionals wanting to learn new skills or upgrade their skills.
“It has started talks with both the Center and various State governments for using its platform to train their staff,” said Irwin Anand, Managing Director, Udemy India.
Udemy MD, India- Irwin Anand
“With over 20 million employees, the Government is one of the biggest sectors to be tapped. Udemy works with the Governments of Japan and Singapore.In India, we have millions of students as customers and thousands of instructors teaching students from around the world. Every year, nearly 7 million graduates pass out of colleges, but not many are employable. The traditional way of education in India is not sufficient for people to be productive at work. Udemy with its practice-oriented courses help people to learn the right skills and get into the job market,” Anand said.
Udemy – Funding and Investors
Udemy has raised a total of $223M in funding over 9 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Feb 19, 2020 from a Series E round.
Date
Stage
Amount
Investor
Feb 19, 2020
Series E
$50M
Benesse
Aug 1, 2019
Secondary Market
–
Manhattan Venture Partners
Jun 2, 2016
Series D
$60M
Prosus and Naspers
Jun 2, 2015
Series D
$65M
Stripes
May 8, 2014
Series C
$32M
Norwest Venture Partners
Dec 7, 2012
Series B
$12M
Insight Partners
Oct 12, 2011
Series A
$3M
Lightbank
Aug 1, 2011
Seed Round
–
–
Aug 31, 2010
Seed Round
$1M
–
Winter Capital Joins Series F Funding Round in 4th Quarter of 2020 to expand its edtech portfolio. The capital raised will enable Udemy to continue growing its consumer and business product offerings to serve the world’s students, organizations, and instructors.
Udemy – Revenue
Udemy’s estimated annual revenue is currently $653.9M. It’s estimated revenue per employee is $165,000. Like any startup in growth mode, it does not share any revenue metrics with the public. Due to ongoing expansions into new markets as well as spending on product development and new hires, it can be assumed that the company remains unprofitable for now.
The cost of online learning is all over the map. Some companies charge a membership fee while others sell access to specific classes only. As mentioned, Teachable lets instructors sell courses at prices they set, rather than offer a membership. The Great Courses is similar. Every course is priced individually.
Top competitors of Udemy are Coursera and Khan Academy. Other competitors include Linkedin learning, Udacity, Skillshare and Master Class.
Udemy – Awards
Udemy has won awards at major competitions such as VatorSplash and the ASU Education Innovation Summit. Also, blogs such as TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb.
Udemy – Future Plans
Udemy is an interesting and evolving concept that focuses on the transfer of knowledge, rather than fetching a diploma. The wide variety of content and instructors available at affordable rates and the exceptionally personal pace of learning make it a very convenient method of attaining skills. With the world becoming more advanced and technophile, their businesses have huge horizons unlocked for themselves. For the time, it remains non-profitable.
Udemy – FAQs
Who are the founders of Udemy?
Udemy was founded by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
What is Udemy?
Udemy is an online-based learning platform that provides its customers numerous courses on a variety of topics like development, business, finance and accounting, IT and software, office productivity, personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, health and fitness, music, teaching, and academics.
Is Udemy accredited?
Udemy is not an accredited institution. Each completed Udemy course includes a certificate, but the certificate can’t be used to seek formal accreditation.
How long are Udemy courses?
Every course has a specific duration associated with it. Once the course is purchased, the consumer has lifetime access to their selected courses.
What Platform is Udemy built on?
Python is the base language on which the Udemy platform is built on. For Database, Udemy uses MySQL.
Is Udemy cheap?
Udemy courses are priced based on the market, though the company does host sales(Udemy sale), and sometimes an instructor offers discounts to increase sale volume.
Is Udemy recognised?
Certificates of completion help demonstrate your accomplishments, but please note Udemy is not an accredited institution, and as a result, the certificates cannot be used for formal accreditation.
Is Udemy an Indian comapany?
No, Udemy is an American company, privately owned and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, Brazil, India, Ireland, and Turkey.
Degrees in hand, but are India’s graduates job-ready? Not really, a huge percentage of students who pass out from higher educational institutions every year are “not employable”. In a quick overview, Foxmula is an EdTech company, with headquarters in Bangalore, providing Training, Certifications & Internships for the most in-demand domains like Data Science, Machine Learning, Asset Management, etc. Both Online & Offline. All the programs are industry-oriented, keeping beginners and intermediates in mind. Everything starts from scratch.
Read this article to know more about Foxmula, how it works, products, founders, tagline, business model, revenue model, future plans, wiki, and achievements.
Foxmula offers industry-oriented skills, global certifications, job placement courses, and exposure via industrial internships through its self-paced e-learning programs. The company aims to address the skill gap existing among undergraduate students that often leads to decreasing their employment chances once they hit the competitive world.
In the short term, the startup wants to create an ecosystem of job-ready students by promoting practical exposure and curriculum based on international standards of professionalism. Its short term goal is to refine services so that students can understand if they are willing to pursue a certain subject and make it their top career choice.
“Although we offer the most in-demand and growing domains of the industry, we do not want our students to commit a long time and effort without realizing whether they are strongly inclined to pursue a career option in that domain. Hence, our interesting mix of certifications and internships over 2-3 months is ideal to get the optimal window to make a career decision”, says Ayush Bansal, CEO of Foxmula.
You can use discount coupon code “FOX15” and get 15% discount for Foxmula’s essential program.
Foxmula – Target Market Size
Though the Indian EdTech landscape is still at a nascent stage as compared to its global counterparts, yet most students and their parents have come of age to realize that one size does not fit all. Even EdTech companies have transitioned from being a collator of study materials to an interactive platform providing students with career-shaping tools.
Foxmula targets students in the higher education segment who are interested in choosing a career in ever-expanding technology space. Its curriculum is built in a way that students can use the platform to not just hone their skills but also take a litmus test to find their own calling. Even the recent public health scare has given a positive thrust to the EdTech companies as most learning schools are opting for digital platforms to continue imparting education.
The inspiration came from the founders’ lived experience. Before founding Foxmula, Ayush and Shubham operated another start-up called Inversion Consultancy that worked as a service provider to help micro, small, and medium enterprises with their IT, PR, and HR needs. It was here that they noticed the skill-gap between the theoretical education that was imparted at college and the practical knowledge needed to survive in a work environment.
Even during their formative years, Ayush and Shubham, co-founders of Foxmula, got heavily influenced by mentors who attended to special learning needs and addressed their curiosity. Their love for certain subjects was more than others solely because of the teacher and his unique teaching methods. That made all the difference.
“The inspiration for Foxmula came from our understanding of the need to create measurable differences in students’ engagement and performance. Our intention is not just to reduce gaps in the delivery of education but also to give a new dimension to the education space”, recalls Ayush Bansal and Shubham Sharda.
Hence, this unique learning platform brings top-notch subject matter experts who impart their knowledge on complex fundamentals of machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, data science while clearing learners’ queries.
Foxmula – Products/Services
At present, Foxmula’s offerings are divided into two programs – Foxmula X and Foxmula Y.
Foxmula X
Under Foxmula X, it offers an intensive Bootcamp focused to solve the issue of underemployment. The program comprises online technology courses that are structured to train students and make them ready to hit the job market armed with advanced skills and confidence. The program involves industry-standard tests and exams, expert coaching from industry leaders and domain experts, resume building and mock interview preparations, accent neutralization, and personality development modules, and guaranteed job placement of 4 LPA at no upfront fee.
Foxmula X
Foxmula Y
Foxmula Y equips students to learn and earn global certifications from eminent tech giants such as Microsoft, SAP, AWS, IBM, and MSMEs to name a few, that are recognized by multiple MNCs. Learners then get further opportunities to apply their knowledge on industry-led offline or online tech internships. This program is targeted at those who want to be proficient at cutting edge tech domains and have a fulfilling career in emerging technologies.
Shubham Sharda and Ayush Bansal are batch mates from the Ramaiah Institute of Technology (MSRIT). They both completed their engineering in information technology and came up with the idea of Foxmula when they were in the third year of college. They came up with the idea together and looked after every small factor to build the right platform.
The current company size is ~45 people. The company has department leads to handle all operational challenges, manage respective teams, and implement key business processes for the smooth functioning of the organization.
Foxmula – Name, Tagline and Logo
Shubham spent sleepless nights coming up with a unique yet catchy name for the product so that it resonates well with young graduate learners, the company’s key target group, and brings to life the brand voice as well.
Foxmula Logo
Those who take up science courses for higher education revolve their lives around formulas since it is the fundamental element to solve most questions. Foxmula too is striving to solve a persistent pain point in the existing education system by incorporating smart and clever techniques to impart education. Hence, the name Foxmula.
Foxmula works on a commission-based business model. It charges 17% of a student’s salary on or above 4 LPA after they get placed post-completion Foxmula X program. For Foxmula Y, the program is priced in a very affordable bracket of INR 20,000 to INR 35,000 depending on the course material covered. Foxmula, bootstrapped with an initial investment of INR 50,000, has clocked more than INR 1 crore in revenue, in less than one year.
The startup’s revenue model is structured on the two programs that it is currently offering on the digital platform. Since it offers guaranteed placement under the Foxmula X program, it charges 17% of a student’s salary for two years once he receives a job offer of 4 LPA or above.
Now, for Foxmula Y that involves 80-90 hours of intensive live sessions and training from expert industry mentors, the startup charges a fee in the bracket of INR 20,000 to INR 35, 000. This program also comprises internships from global firms. They have also tied-up with five international universities to impart subject knowledge to students opting for the Foxmula Y program.
Foxmula is also expanding this program to train resources from the B2B segment since reskilling them has become imperative for resource optimization of B2B companies. The revenue is divided into two segments. 60% of the profit is spent on trainer and employee salaries while the remaining 40% is saved for research and development and business development initiatives.
Foxmula – Funding
It is currently Bootstrapped, with an initial investment of INR 50,000.
Foxmula – Startup Launch
The founders were lucky to be supported by well-wishers and friends who helped them build the products from the development stage, followed by editing learning videos, acquiring leads through word of mouth publicity. These set of friends acted as the core brand ambassadors and helped the company sail through during the days of inception.
“I remember we were eight of us including Shubham and me. We didn’t follow any specific strategy to ‘crack’ the first 100 users who saw value in our learning platform. It was an uphill task no doubt, but a very rewarding one”, recalls Ayush about the startup launch.
Foxmula’s primary focus was on enhancing the quality of its programs in terms of user experience, content, and support system. Then it expanded its ambassador network to almost every premium college in the country and sourced leads from there.
They did not resort to traditional online and offline marketing as they needed to reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC). The startup partnered with AWS, Certiport, SAP, and became a Microsoft Authorized Education Partner. It spent less on marketing efforts and relied on organic growth for sales conversions.
Foxmula – Startup Challenges
One of the key hurdles that the founding team faced was to earn the trust of target customers, that is, graduate students in the tech space. Since there is a recent boom in the EdTech landscape, students too are often confused to put their money as they are unsure of the return on their investments. What worked best for Ayush and Shubham was that they, as founders, belonged to the same demography as that of the target customers.
“We knew the challenges of these graduates better than anybody else and could address them first hand. Of course, we undertook in-depth research to develop the quality of our products and with persistence could deliver a superlative experience to our enthusiastic career-focused learners. All this cumulatively played its own significant role in overcoming the initial hurdles and developing a differentiated product”, says Ayush and Shubham.
The startup will soon launch Foxmula Z where it will onboard product-based companies and upskill their employee base and recalibrate their roles. Its objective is to teach and develop existing employee strength so that they are prepared for progressive job roles and are equipped with new-age skills to address the needs of such technological evolution.
In the near future, it also has plans to launch a unique teaching technique that will reduce the need for rote learning that is present in India’s education system. This will be an exclusive, one-of-a-kind product and once it is developed, Foxmula will soon apply for a patent grant as well.
Foxmula – Recognition and Achievements
The startup is recognized as one of the top 100 startups by Startup Turkey and one of the top 9 EdTech startups by TecLabs organized by Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico.
Foxmula – FAQs
What is Foxmula?
Foxmula offers industry-oriented skills, global certifications, job placement courses, and exposure via industrial internships through its self-paced e-learning programs.
How does Foxmula make money?
The startup’s revenue model is structured on the two programs. Since it offers guaranteed placement under the Foxmula X program, it charges 17% of a student’s salary for two years once he receives a job offer of 4 LPA or above. For Foxmula Y that involves 80-90 hours of intensive live sessions and training from expert industry mentors, the startup charges a fee in the bracket of INR 20,000 to INR 35, 000.
Who are the Founders of Foxmula?
Ayush Bansal (CEO) and Shubham Sharda (COO) are founders of Foxmula.
What internships are offered by Foxmula?
The internship is under Foxmula and it’s network/sister-concern companies like Inversion Consultancy (under the partner network of Microsoft, SAP, AWS, IBM, and more). The internship is Industrial. You’re given with options of industrial projects, to choose one from, all requiring your freshly earned skills. You’re supposed to work on it and submit when done on our Laboratory (instructions for which will be provided). Doing that industrial project is the Internship for which you receive an Internship Completion letter with details and recommendations.
Foxmula – Conclusion
Foxmula aims to emerge as the topmost learning platform for students who desire to make a mark in the domain of technology. They want the student fraternity to choose them over other tech platforms as the most credible name to upskill themselves in cutting-edge technology and implement those skills in the professional world. The company has plans to expand its processes and services in Dubai that also faces a similar demand-supply gap in the job market.
In this competitive world, education is the one thing that empowers people. But sadly, a large part of our country is still deprived of this education. Though digitization is the ray of sunshine which can enlighten our country with knowledge and literacy. An IES officer turned entrepreneur, Akhand Swaroop Pandit, Founder of The Catalyst Group is using the power of digitization to empower thousands of youth from every nook and corner of the country to prepare for various Government exams.
Akhand, who himself cleared all government exams envisioned the ‘Catalyst Education Group’ to help many more clear government exams. His purpose through his startup is to make high-quality education reach every part of the country at an affordable cost so that everybody can compete for irrespective of the difficult monetary or geographical circumstances.
The Catalyst Group provides online courses for different competitive exams like UPSC, SSC, GATE, IES, RRB, State PSC, etc.
Founded in the year 2017, Catalyst Group is an education portal where students have to create their profile by signing up. Then they can enroll in any program by any trainer from the profile.
This platform has a payment gateway enabled on its website so anybody can easily take admission. EMI and other payment options are also available. After taking admission students can attend the classes multiple times on the portal till the expiry date of course. They can download notes, study material, provided by the Catalyst Group and can give online tests on the portal.
Catalyst Group – Target Market
The education sector is currently one of the biggest sectors comprising of around 60-70 lakhs students every year preparing for the competitive exams. Data calculated considering the students filling up forms for different competitions. Currently, Catalyst Group has an intake of 2 lakh students every year and in the coming 5 years, they are expecting it to reach 30-35 lakhs.
The Catalyst Group was founded by Akhand Swaroop Pandit.
The Catalyst Group’s founder is Akhand Swaroop Pandit. He belongs to Bareilly, a city in the northern state of India, Uttar Pradesh. Being an average student, Akhand gave all his time and full dedication to his studies and career. Clearly, this makes him the man that he is today. Truly, his success is an inspiration for a lot of young minds who put themselves through these competitive exams.
Akhand started working as an IES officer and later went on to start Catalyst Group. Here, he mentors aspiring candidates of Civil Engineering, IES, GATE, and many more such kinds of government examinations. As an average student, Akhand understands the clear difference between the rules of smart work and hard work.
The Catalyst Group Founder – Akhand Swaroop Pandit
All of it started when Akhand was in his college days and started his preparation for the UPSC examinations. But he didn’t have good study material and he couldn’t afford to go to other metro cities due to the hefty fee amount the coaching institutes charged. So he had to study on his own which was quite time-consuming.
After that, when Akhand started teaching, he had to travel to different faraway cities for institutes to deliver the lectures. And that time he felt the need to have a mechanism through which he could teach lakhs of students at a given time. All these experiences led him to the idea of having a Catalyst Platform that connects teachers with students directly.
Students, irrespective of where they are, can take lectures from teachers who are teaching in a different part of the country. Akhand’s idea was to bridge this geographical and monetary gap between the students and the teachers.
And that’s how he launched The Catalyst Group where the idea was to be able to provide high-quality education at an affordable cost to many. Initially, when they launched through YouTube (catalyst group YouTube), they had roughly 100 students and in the short span of only two and a half years, they are having around 2 lakh students learning on the platform.
Catalyst Group – Name, Tagline and Logo
“Catalyst means something that accelerates the process and here we are doing the same thing by connecting teachers with students,” says this genius entrepreneur.
The Catalyst Group is accelerating the careers and process of learning for students. And so the logo is rocket-shaped that is about to launch!
The Catalyst Group Logo
Catalyst Group – Startup Launch
The Catalyst Group launched through YouTube channel from where they got the first 100 customers. The YouTube video lectures were appreciated by everybody which helped them in getting the base right.
The Catalyst team believes that the primary quality is very important for any product. And secondly, people should know that you have a quality product. That’s where marketing comes into the picture. The team’s continuous point of focus is improving the quality of the lectures and hiring the best faculties to deliver the lectures.
The Catalyst Group’s revenue model works both ways B2C and B2B. They offer online courses that students can directly purchase from the website for Fees ranging from ₹2,000 to ₹38,000. The Catalyst Group also offers business to universities where they can sell the courses to students pan India.
Catalyst Group – Startup Challenges
One of the major challenges for The Catalyst Group was to gain the confidence of the students in their online classes as in India students feel more comfortable in the conventional system of learning where they regularly have to go for classes and can see the teacher standing in front of them.
To gain their trust they had to first give them free online lectures to make them aware and comfortable with online classes. Because the courses this platform is providing has great quality, the Catalyst team could dodge this challenge successfully.
According to the current stats, they are operating in Jaipur, Patna, Lucknow, and Pune. They also have partnered with institutions like NIT Srinagar, NIT Jamshedpur, BITS Pilani, LPU, Thapar university. The idea of empowering thousands of students with quality education at the mere thought of it sounds so noble. And that’s exactly what we need to build a bright future for our nation.
FAQs
Who is Akhand Swaroop Pandit?
Akhand started working as an IES officer and later went on to start Catalyst Group.
What is education empowerment?
Empowerment is the “process by which individuals and groups gain power, access to resources, and control over their own lives. In the field of education, empowerment theory is often associated with the classic work by Paulo Freire (1972/1986), in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
How does education empower people in general?
Education empowers people with the knowledge, skills, and values they need to build a better world. The belief that quality educationcan help reduce poverty and inequality comes from a recognition that education is a basic human right—similar to food and shelter—and that it is vital to protecting human dignity.
How do you empower students to design their future?
5 Ways to Empower Students:
Give Students Decision-Making Power in an Area of Curriculum.
Give Your Students a Voice Through Forums for Student Feedback.
Encourage Meaningful Technology Use in the Classroom.
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 My Class Campus.
The advent of Edtech is certainly a boon for the education sector. Edtech is not only making learning easier, interesting and fun for students but has also made managing schools and educational institutes simpler. There is a lot to take care of when it comes to managing an educational institute.
Stock management, account management, tracking student performance, managing time tables, maintaining regular communications with parents and guardians and a lot more needs to be done to run an educational institute smoothly. There is a need of education ERP software which could make it smooth.
ERPs allow systematic management of all these tasks under one platform. My Class Campus, an all in one campus management ERP with 40+ ready modules, is helping educational institutes to manage various tasks better and with ease. My class Campus provides one of the best school ERP software.
My class campus is an Ahmedabad based startup founded in 2015. It provides a complete ERP for educational institutions. It Provides ERP software for educational institutes.
Besides, My Class Campus also builds app for educational institutes and offers a DIY website designing platform for these institutes. Their school ERP app increases productivity of teachers and give better experience to students & satisfaction to parents.
“All in one solution is the biggest gap in educational ERP domain and we at MyClassCampus are providing that.”, says Rachit, Co-founder, My Class Campus
Having a simple and easy to use system is also another problem for schools as admin staff is not very tech savvy. 80% of schools buy a system but couldn’t utilize effectively due to complexity in use and technical glitches. MyClassCampus is crafted with a vision to provide the simplest solution which anyone can learn to use. Also, their dedicated expert tech team is keeping the system error-free for a better experience.
My Class Campus Founders
Rachit Dave, Rutvij Vora and Raj Kothari, Founders, My Class Campus
My Class Campus was founded by Rachit Dave, Rutvij Vora and Raj Kothari. All the three founders are engineering graduates from Birla Vishwakarma Mahavidyalaya, Anand (Gujarat).
Rachit Dave is the CEO of My Class Campus. He is a BE in Electronics and communication and is also an MBA in Human Resource. Rutvij Vora is a BE in Information Technology and M.Tech in Cyber Security and Incident Response. Raj Kothari is a BE in computer engineering and also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management.
Besides My Class Campus, Rachit, Rutvij and Raj are also associated with another startup CareerKhojj, which is a platform giving career guidance and facilitates knowledge sharing and communication between students and teachers.
How was My Class Campus Started
It was in 2014 when a huge section of the Indian population was doing everything from booking tickets to shopping, online and through apps. Rachit, Rutvij and Raj had the thought that if shopping and ticket booking, which are not daily activities, are being done digitally, why the educational institutes were still following the old techniques of managing operations, data, resources and communication.
They wanted to develop something which could help the educational institutes to manage different tasks and operations digitally and thus easily.
“We felt, there is a strong need of Mobile And cloud driven advanced yet easy to use system. That’s when we started building My Class Campus, which is one of the most popular and fastest growing Educational ERP Companies.”, said the founders.
My Class Campus offers a complete ERP for educational institutes. My Class Campus is a cloud-based ERP platform. It is simple, easy to use and connects management, teachers, students, parents and other stakeholders of an educational institute. Besides, My Class Campus can be used for a single branch and also can be used by educational institutes having multiple branches through a single account credential.
It has 40+ advance dynamic modules which cover all the requirements to make an institute completely digital and go paperless. It offers a right based access to the system which helps in managing an institute more effectively.
Some USPs of My Class Campus are-
Quick and easy set up
Multi-branch enabled
Dedicated Support Team
Regular new updates and features.
Some of the features of My Class Campus ERP are-
Classroom, Student and Faculty management
Dynamic calendar, Time Table, and Holiday and year planner
Besides the ERP solution, My Class Campus also develops customized apps for schools and offers a DIY platform where educational institutes can design their own dynamic website.
“Any educational organization dealing with more than 50 students can use our system. We have a very dynamic system which can be used by school, college and private institutes dealing with any kind of classroom management and teaching process.”, said Rutvij.
My Class Campus – Price
My Class Campus provides the system in the range of 100-150 Rs/student/year pricing model depending on the packages. The company has three subscription packages: Basic, Advance and Premium. Based on need, an institute can choose which package to go for.
My Class Campus Pricing and Packages
My Class Campus – Revenue Model
My Class Campus charges per student basis with an annual fee. The company has three subscription packages: Basic, Advance and Premium. Based on need, an institute can choose which package to go for.
My Class Campus – Funding and Investors
My Class Campus raised seed funding of INR 1.5 Cr through a private investor group.
“We are already generating and growing good MoM revenue. However, our dream is to serve 10s of thousand educational organizations around the globe through our solutions. We are not in a hurry to raise funds however right kind of investment partner who could see our vision would definitely add more value and speed to our goal.”, said Raj.
My Class campus will utilize a part of the fund for research and technology development to bring more excellence and another part for strengthening of the sales force to increase customer base PAN India and in the International market too.
My Class Campus – User Acquisition
Acquiring the first set of customers was not an easy task for My Class Campus. After launching the minimum viable product in March 2016, My Class Campus team started approaching small coaching classes and schools. While it was a new concept and internet speed being a problem, there were very few institutes which showed genuine interest. The first user was a coaching institute which purchased the system at the very first visit.
“As it was quite a basic product, we used to visit small coaching classes and schools. We used to get a lot of rejection with answers like who will pay the cost of the internet? Our teachers don’t use smartphone. Our parents are not tech savvy etc. We used to tell them, a few years back you weren’t using WhatsApp but now you do use right? Same was this. It is going to become very common in coming time. Very few used to trust us. Still, we kept going with a vision that someday, the problem of the internet will vanish. And then with a surprise, in 2017 Jio came. It totally changed people’s perspective on the use of smartphone and suddenly people started accepting our idea” , recalled Rutvij, Co-founder, My Class Campus
Today, more than 2,000 educational organizations are registered with My Class campus. More than 3 lakh students and 6 lakh parents receiving regular updates through the system.
It was very tough for My Class Campus to build the product initially without having funds and sustain. It was tough to meet expenses even after the MVP was launched. The company required expert developers for building a strong product, but hiring good manpower without funds was a challenge. The company hired freelancers to meet with its early manpower needs.
“At one point of time, paying our monthly rent was difficult and it went due for 3 months.”, said Rachit.
My Class Campus – Competitors
There are few platforms which have a very large number of schools registered with it. Major companies are working region wise with few hundred to 1000 customers. My Class Campus is building a tool, which will be the easiest way to get started with the best experience and customer support to win a large mass of educational organizations.
“Our product innovation and processes are already helping us to win many customers who were already using some reputed companies’ products previously”, said Raj, Co-founder, My Class Campus
My Class Campus is planning to launch an interesting communication tool with data analysis around June 2020. This tool will change the way communication happens with all the stakeholders. The company is also aiming to enable 100s of educational organizations to go cashless in 2020-21.
“By end 2020, we want to enable 1000+ educational organizations to go 100% cash and paperless for their operations, communication and data management.”, said Raj.
Find a real problem you’re passionate to solve. Don’t worry about the competition. If you feel there is a market, you can definitely build a good business providing you’re innovating on product, pricing and go to market strategy.
If you are ready to give your best honestly and focus on customer needs and keep hustling to strengthen your revenue channels then as a startup it’s not too tough to achieve something. We are on the journey to success however we are enjoying it a lot.
It provides a complete ERP for educational institutions. Besides, My Class Campus also builds apps for educational institutes and offers a DIY website designing platform for these institutes.
What is My Class Campus Price?
My Class Campus provides the system in the range of 100-150 Rs/student/year pricing model depending on the packages. The company has three subscription packages: Basic, Advance and Premium. Based on need, an institute can choose which package to go for.
What are the products offered by My Class Campus?
Academics, Accounting, Admission, Attendance management, Courses, and Batches Management, Database backup/restore (Management), Document Management, Event Management, Examination Management, Fee Management, Financial Management, etc., are some of the features.
Who are the Founders of My Class Campus?
Rachit Dave, Rutvij Vora, and Raj Kothari founded My Class Campus in 2015.
What is school ERP software ?
A school ERP software is a set of programs, designed to manage all the administrative tasks of a school in an effective manner. It manages attendance, online fee payment, transport management, library, and examination management, circulars and report cards, and more.
Purbalee Dutta
