Many of us today criticize the Indian education system for transforming individuals into people of theory with minimum or no practical experience. In such a competitive world, one has to stand out in the crowd to be successful. A smart student wants to study, learn, and gain experience at the same time.
Parents have always focused on good grades, admission to a prestigious college, and finally securing a high pay scale job. That’s true, but it is not as easy as it seemed to have been before. The cut-throat competition and constant technical upskilling and upgradation means only the best survive in the industry. And these skills can be acquired when students work and learn through internships and jobs.
In India, the concept of internships is picking pace and is progressing rapidly. One of the key catalysts in making internships available online in India is Internshala. This article covers Internshala in-depth.
Internshala was launched as a WordPress blog initially. The blog dealt with education, technology, and issues about gaps in skills. It was then transformed into an internship portal. It is a free portal for both interns as well as employers. Currently, Internshala has more than 3000000 student visits and 80000+ companies registered on its website. Internshala also offers online educational training in various streams.
The courses on offer are on a chargeable basis but can be downloaded along with the supporting materials such as videos for offline reference. Internshala’s courses are largely divided into Summer Training and Winter Training. Internshala offers different kinds of internships—full time, part-time, and work from home. One can find both paid and unpaid internships on Internshala.
Internshala – Founders
Sarvesh Agrawal is the Founder of Internshala.
Sarvesh comes from a business family and was born and brought up in Nawalgarh, a small town of Rajasthan. He completed his bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 2006. After his Master’s, he started working in Capital One company in Nottingham (United Kingdom) as a Business Analyst in the product innovation team.
After a year, he came back to India to work with Barclays Bank’s credit card analytics division. In the year 2010, he switched to Aviva Life Insurance in Gurgaon to set up a Business Analytics team for the organization.
Sarvesh Agrawal – Founder of Internshala
How it Started?
Sarvesh always had an interest in the field of education and learning. While he created blogs to generate awareness about the same, he was asked many questions about internships. It was a stark realization that the domain of internships was one area where nothing was happening in India; it wasn’t as mainstream as in the West.
Sarvesh left his job and began building a team and a portal. An incident occurred when one of Sarvesh’s friends from his college days went on to pursue an MBA from London Business School.
During his semester break, he was looking for an internship in India and informed Sarvesh about the lack of internship opportunities in the country. This served enough motivation for Sarvesh to start a platform where people could get ample of internship opportunities at one place.
The name Internshala means a place where you will find Internships. If we break the name into two parts, then the word ‘Intern’ means a person who is seeking an internship in some firm and ‘shala’ is a Hindi word which means a place. On combining the two words, the meaning is clear—a place where a person can get internships.
The tagline of Internshala is ‘internships that matter’; it means that the company provides you a platform for seeking meaningful and helpful internships.
Internshala – Business Model and How it Works?
Internshala operates through its website and mobile app. A student has to register, create a decent profile, and apply for various internships listed on the portal. Internshala is a free platform when it comes to applying or searching for internships but earns revenue through two mediums:
Internshala charges some amount for its online training programs. These programs vary based on duration, category, and finances.
Internshala also charges fees from third parties such as advertisers who want to post ads, posters or email busters, etc. on its website.
Sarvesh Agrawal, the founder of Internshala, mentioned in one of his interviews that a big challenge faced by Internshala was attracting good talent as the business continued to grow. In the initial days, one of the main obstacles the team had to face was the lack of good technical talent at both the junior and senior levels. Sarvesh was from a non-programming background and had to struggle the most in this area.
Another challenge for the company was that employers were facing hurdles in finding interns as Indian students favored in-office internships during summer and winter breaks, making it difficult to hire interns during the rest of the months. There was a hindrance in matching the location and timelines of students and employers. In short, getting the students to be in sync with the companies providing internships was difficult.
Although Internshala is the biggest platform in India when it comes to providing internship opportunities, there is no dearth of competition. The top Internshala competitors are StuMagz, twenty19, Letsintern and Interworld.
Internshala – Internship and Training Sectors
Internshala provides internships in various sectors like web development, arts, management, science, IT, data analysis, law, engineering, architecture, and many others. The training courses include, but are not restricted to, Photography, Business Communication Skills, Computing, Excel, Design, etc.
Internshala – Future Plans
Internshala concentrates on helping students in learning, training, and garnering on-field experience. Internshala was launched with a mission to equip 30 million college students in India with practical knowledge and real-life skills to achieve their dreams and turn them into reality.
They are constantly working towards providing internships and training across cities, small towns, and villages. This is the driving factor for Internshala. In the coming years, Internshala wants to take the step of providing meaningful internships to students and individuals in tier 2 and tier 3 cities by creating awareness and bringing opportunities to them.
Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs
Is Internshala training free?
No, Internshala training is not free but the cost is kept at a minimum so that everyone can avail it.
Is it free to apply for internships on Internshala?
Yes, applying for internships – paid or unpaid – is free on Internship.
What is the Internshala business model like?
Internshala is a free platform when it comes to applying or searching for internships but earns revenue through two mediums:
Internshala charges some amount for its online training programs. These programs vary based on duration, category, and finances.
Internshala also charges fees from third parties such as advertisers who want to post ads, posters or email busters, etc. on its website.
Edtech startups are emerging as a major business industry in India. In the next 5 Years, the Edtech market is estimated to grow 3.7x from $2.8 Bn (2020) to $10.4 Bn in 2025 (source: inc42). The global pandemic has substantially increased the adoption of Edtech services and products and is expected to reach an addressable base of over 37 million users by 2025. Edtech startups have grabbed this opportunity by its core and are providing unmatchable study experiences to the learners. On this note, it has become important to know how Edtech startups market in this competitive industry and stand-out from the crowd.
Know from an industry expert about the Marketing of Edtech Startups, Edtech Industry, Go-to marketing strategies of Edtech startups, 5 common marketing mistakes & more in this post ahead. StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Mahadev Srivatsa (VP – Marketing & Brand Strategy, Practically) to get insights about Marketing in Edtech Industry.
And here’s what Mr. Mahadev Srivatsa has got to say –
1.What was Practically’s first brand campaign? How effective was it? What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?
Practically, India’s first experiential learning app, designed to make learning immersive and increase retention in STEM learning among students of class 6 to 12, launched its first-ever brand campaign around the theme – ‘Bring Learning Alive’ in December 2020. The campaign has garnered 3x growth and the app has successfully crossed 330,000 downloads till date. The TVCs (TV commercials) have generated over 32 million+ views combined on YouTube and seen above average and consistent view rates, even after two months of launch, indicating relevance and popularity of the campaign amongst the target audience. This has been one of the highest by an EdTech company in India, without celebrity endorsement, so far.
The campaign included ATL (TV & Print) targeted at Andhra Pradesh and Telangana while the digital and social media marketing leg had a pan-India focus. The rationale behind this dual pronged strategy was to drive awareness and consideration in the home market and test markets at a pan-India level to gauge the brand traction and guide future expansion strategy. The brand also signed a two-week Associate Sponsorship deal with Bigg Boss Telegu Season 4.The entire communication was seamlessly woven to deliver the brand proposition of ‘Bring Learning Alive’. The campaign was also amplified using relevant PR activities.
Consumers and customers are different in EdTech, so the marketing challenge was to create a communication campaign that appealed to both set of audiences. The other was to optimize the budget available to create a maximum impact.
However the biggest challenge was to create an impact in a cluttered market, given the amount of SOV by competition in this space off late. Hence the strategy was to develop a communication that breaks the clutter and gets us noticed. Considering most brands at that juncture were indulging in dialogue-based communication, we zeroed in on a fresh, jingle format with stunning visuals to craft our communication. And the result was just amazing. Besides ticking off all KPIs that we had set to achieve, the first campaign has given us the correct dose of inspiration to go further. Besides downloads achieved, all our social media and in app metrics have also been impacted positively and this has set the ball rolling for more engagement in future.
2. Is offering something for free, a good marketing strategy to attract users for an EdTech startup?
A free trial works when the objective is to give people a taste of the offering. It also helps gain visibility and test out the product. So that the learnings, if any, can be applied to better it. When it comes to EdTech, it is important to draw a fine line as quality education, like on Practically, requires several teams and resources to work together to create the unique kind of experiential content and services that we have. With an objective to serve the length and breadth of this country, we have kept our pricing strategy Value For Money (VFM) and competitive. It is advisable to have a pricing strategy that sustains quality than compromise on it by offering it for free.
3.What is Practically’s Marketing Strategy 2021? Any business expansion plans?
We have had a great start for the brand in 2021 with the success of the first marketing campaign. We were able to pull off the entire TV campaign only with a production partner, without a brand agency. This is a dream role for any brand manager, especially when you are launching a brand and we managed to get it right at the start of our journey. Personally, it was a very satisfying experience to devise the brand proposition and work with the production house and ultimately see the vision come alive. And to have achieved our objectives through this campaign was the icing on the cake!
The success in our home/pilot market has given us confidence that we can replicate the same nationally. The plans for 2021 are aggressive as this is the hot sector and rapidly growing. The brand objective is to bring learning alive and make Practically a household name in India this year. And eventually achieve the goal of being the most loved and trusted e-learning brand.
From a business POV, while our focus so far has been on Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states in India, Practically is working on expanding pan-India in 2021, beginning with the south and west markets. And you will see the developments very soon.
With the Series B fundraise that we are working towards, we will penetrate deeper into all major cities in India and begin expansion to one international market by the end of 2021.
Our dedicated school offering- The Practically School Solution, which is absolutely FREE of cost to schools, has been a mega hit with teachers. Given the pandemic challenges, this solution has served a perfect need of the hour for schools wanting to enable quality online learning for their students. So far we have 200+ schools and 18,000 teachers who are benefitting from it. This solution will also be available now in the above markets in line with business expansion.
4. What are the go-to marketing strategies of an EdTech startup?
Marketing mediums of ATL, BTL and digital remain common. What makes the difference in strategy is the weightage that you want to invest in each of these mediums. That primarily differs from industry to industry and obviously TG (target group). Given the unusual circumstances that we are in today, across brands, TV and digital are proving to be the best and safest bet, till normalcy is restored.
5. How marketing in the EdTech sector differ from other industries?
Marketing strategies are always centred around the TG. More focussed the TG, the better the targeting. In Ed-tech K-12 segment, the consumer is the student while the customer is the parent. This presents a unique marketing challenge since the aspiration and appeal is different for both these groups.
Hence one needs to be clear at the start on what the objective of the communication is and craft the same accordingly. There could be certain topical communication targeted separately to both groups too, but then there needs to be a common brand theme. As far as brand communication goes, it makes sense to craft a strategy and communication that cuts across both. How one does that, is the trick!
6. What is the role of affiliate & influence marketing strategies in the EdTech industry?
Celebrity or Influencer Marketing is a strategy that is widely prevalent across industries and brands. Presenting a well-known face adds instant recall and is also one of the fastest and instant ways to generate brand awareness. When a famous person who is also loved and respected in his/her area of expertise associates as a brand ambassador, it also tends to add credibility to the brand.
The explosion of Edtech as a category and the investments made in it, has seen most of the incumbents adopt this strategy. A general observation is when the dominant player in a segment does this, others mostly follow suit.
Personally, I believe that need for an association depends on the stage at which a brand is and whether the ambassador is indeed a good fit with the brand values. Without both the above boxes getting checked, this is an avoidable strategy and can even backfire at times.
7. Is aggressive marketing, a method used by EdTech startups like used by other companies across industries?
The answer is actually the other way around. Traditionally FMCG and Automobile sectors used to invest heavily in marketing, especially media. Then came the telecom and ecommerce era and now media spends are heavily dominated by EdTech. Top sponsorships and premium partnerships are also being lapped up. In fact the rush for GRPs (gross rating points) and visibility amongst the incumbents in this sector, has started to look like what was prevalent in telecom, around 5 years ago.
8. What are some common marketing mistakes done by EdTech startups?
Spray and pray approach – India is the second largest eLearning market with an online EdTech user base to the tune of 10 Mn. Hence a targeted approach is important to resonate with audiences
Following a ‘me too’ approach- Not every product needs a celebrity or an influencer to establish themselves as a brand
Not defining/highlighting USPs – There have been over 3000 EdTech start-ups that have mushroomed in the last year alone. The best way to stand out of the crowd is to showcase why students/parents should pick you out of the host of others who do the same thing.
Applying the same marketing strategy and mix every time will not always work. As the industry and your product roadmap evolve, different mediums may be required to achieve results.
Focusing on customer acquisition alone is a short term play. Driving brand awareness which will eventually drive consideration and intent is the correct approach and will yield long term benefits. In a cluttered space like EdTech in India, at the end of the day, Brand will be the lone differentiator. Hence the effort needs to be set right, from the start.
9. How does the marketing strategy differ based on the target market of an EdTech startup?
Targeted marketing allows marketing teams to tailor their message to a specific group of customers. The targeting strategy is the point at which the marketing mix comes together to establish the best offer and marketing strategy for each target market.
Whether it is EdTech or any other sector, following the identification of target groups, one chooses the appropriate targeting approach. When it comes to grad and post grad students your customer and consumer are mostly the same which is unlikely in the K-12 segment. So the communication & strategy in both the above cases will be different.
Another aspect is geography. However in EdTech, every parent irrespective of geography, wants their child to succeed and have the best means to do so. So the disposable income, access to quality education, regional/cultural influences and content consumption are some key differentiators that one needs to be conscious about, while marketing a product.
10.Based on your experience & insights, what is the growth trajectory you witnessed in the way EdTech startups adopt marketing strategies in the pre & post Covid era?
Practically was launched in April 2020. So for us the learnings were different compared to the incumbents. One of the biggest challenges for EdTech as an industry, pre-Covid was adaptability to online learning and acceptance of the benefits it bestows. There were concerns as to how effective it is for kids. The pandemic was a watershed moment for this category and it removed the main barrier to online learning, since it became a norm. The growth witnessed in this category only reemphasizes the fact that when we visualize and learn through the power of EdTech, the comprehension is better. Without EdTech, education during the pandemic would have greatly suffered. And with the TG now experiencing and benefitting from EdTech, it is only here to stay and grow with a blended learning approach.
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In 2018, Tamil Nadu Assembly Secretariat received 4,600 applications for the post of sweepers and sanitary workers. While nothing is fascinating about this news, what should bother you is the fact that the majority of these applicants were graduates and post-graduates! Again, the news of 93,000 candidates including graduates, postgraduates, and even Ph.D. holders applying for peon jobs in UP was also trending for quite some time. These are just two incidents among numerous others that prove the obsession Indians have towards government jobs. While this craze for ‘Sarkari Naukri’ would never cease, thankfully, preparing for government job examinations and tests undergone serious revamp.
Earlier, aspirants had two ways of preparing for such entrance tests: enroll in a coaching center which in many cases was quite expensive. The second option was of self-study that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Moreover, it involves collecting lots of material for studying in the absence of proper guidance (this doesn’t mean that there’s a shortage of people who excel through self-study).
If one considers backward areas where the popularity and awareness of government jobs aren’t widespread, thousands of capable students altogether miss the chance of giving a shot at such exams. However, the advent of edtech has changed the scenario with the availability of resources, guidance, and what not at the tip of one’s fingers through the internet. Gurgaon based OnlineTyari is one such startup making it easier for the Indian government job aspirants to succeed in their attempts.
OnlineTyari, the brainchild of Bhola Meena and Rajveer Meena, is among India’s leading web/mobile app platforms for online preparation of different competitive exams in India. Headquartered in Gurgaon, OnlineTyari is turbocharged by the latest technologies for solving test preparation problems and facilitates the entire learning experience for serious aspirants. Its unique data-driven and deep analytical approach makes it unique in the field.
Enrolled students can avail mock assessment tests, test preparation e-books, and study material in three languages: Hindi, English, and Marathi. Students can also buy video lectures for various subjects and exams via OnlineTyari.
Also, coaching classes can tie-up with OnlineTyari for test prep solutions and other technical needs. The company recently established its offline presence by establishing Experience Centers in Patna and Jaipur, where students can take tests and have their doubts cleared. The company regularly generates engaging and informative content and sends alerts to the students about the exam schedules and application form deadlines.
“Our product was well taken and loyal users have been spreading good words about us in the student community. Keeping that vision in sight, we have kept product so simple that our users across geographies can use it.”, says Bhola Meena, founder of OnlineTyari.
OnlineTyari – Industry Details
Based on a report published by KPMG and Google, India’s online education market is set to grow to $1.96 billion by 2021 and the online test preparation segment is expected to burgeon at a CAGR of 64%. The market for government and public sector entrance exams in India is huge, with more than 20 million aspirants every year and counting.
OnlineTyari – Founders
Bhola Meena and Rajveer Meena co-founded OnlineTyari in 2014.
OnlineTyari Team
Bhola Meena, with a B.Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kanpur, has been constantly employing his skills and hard-earned knowledge for pushing forward the online education trend in the country and is committed to bringing in innovations in this sector.
An entrepreneur by nature, Bhola has been instrumental in giving wings to two other start-ups in the past. He was a partner at HinKhoj.com—a platform for English to Hindi translation and English-Hindi learning. Prior to HinKhoj, Bhola co-founded and served as the CTO for GetMeCab.com, one of the first three taxi-hailing apps in India. He was also associated with firms like Microsoft and the Aricent Group.
Rajveer Meena (the co-founder) has over a decade of proven experience ranging from software development and product management, to business development. After earning his B.E. Degree in Computer Engineering in 2004, he joined Tata Consultancy Services as an Assistant Systems Engineer. He has had professional stints at Ramco and HPCL and established himself as an emergent business leader. With a PGDM from the prestigious IIM Lucknow, highly-motivated Rajveer embraces a consistent, deep-focus approach in his career.
Today, his stellar track record of building teams and implementing ideas has led him to become a key visionary for OnlineTyari. His expertise lies in decoding user behavior, spotting implicit needs, building a product roadmap, and delivering smart solutions. He shares with his team the art of solving problems from the root of successfully creating a strategic business differentiator.
OnlineTyari – How It Started
Both Bhola Meena and Rajveer Meena have known each other for the last 14 years and no, they’re not siblings! Bhola took an exit from Getmecab in 2013. While he was spending time at his ancestral village in Rajasthan after off-boarding Getmecab, some children from the neighborhood visited him to for some doubts related to their studies. One of them was preparing for a government job and requested Bhola to bring back certain books, guides, and mock papers from the renowned coaching institutes from Delhi upon his next visit to the village.
Deliberating further, he came across a number of students in the village who aspired and dreamt of doing something big in life but weren’t unable to live up to their potential due to a lack of resources. They neither had the right resources to prepare for national-level exams nor the awareness about the scores of government services related competitive exams being held across the country.
When he discussed this with a couple of friends including Rajveer, the ideation of OnlineTyari began. They identified a huge gap that had to be filled for making information accessible and organized to ensure the younger generation getting the jobs they truly deserve. They conducted some market research and organized surveys in a couple of cities such as Jaipur, Kota, and Delhi before starting. The initial response was overwhelming and they started working on OnlineTyari’s portal from Jaipur in 2014.
Bhola and Rajveer understood the real need of students and started delivering value through the OnlineTyari app and website.
OnlineTyari – Revenue Model
At present, OnlineTyari is working on monetizing its services through an annual subscription-based revenue model—TyariPlus. TyariPlus was launched in the last week of March 2018 and over 7500+ students have subscribed to this product —. They are hoping to touch over 25,000+ paid monthly subscribers in 4-6 months. Students usually appear for 5-10 exams in a year and end up spending an average of 3000 to 5000 for preparation courses. With TyariPlus, OnlineTyari is offering the same value at @1499 for an annual subscription. As an introductory offer, this plan is available at INR 399 for a limited period. Through TyariPlus, students get the following benefits:
Material for 25+ exams with 1000+ mock tests for the next 12 months.
Preparation materials in the following languages: Hindi, English, and Marathi.
A counseling session with experts.
Personalized analytics.
Student-driven forum.
Apart from TyariPlus, students can also opt for separate packages for different exams and subjects.
OnlineTyari has raised a total of $5.8M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Nov 9, 2016 from a Series A round.
Date
Stage
Funding Amonunt
Investors
September 2015
Angel Round
$750K
500 Startups, Mohandas Pai, Tandem Capital, Vikram Chachra and Aloke Bajpai co-founder & CEO of Ixigo
November 2016
Series A
$5M
Michael & Susan Dell Foundation
OnlineTyari – Initial Challenges
In the early years (2014-15), users’ response for paid courses was sluggish courtesy of factors such as low trust in online preparation resources, greater familiarity with traditional study methods, and lack of online payment infrastructure. But the team decided to stay on course and learned the art of survival in such crucibles. The vision to make an impact outweighed fleeting difficulties.
Gradually, students’ responses to the product improved and OnlineTyari started getting lots of inbound feedback on various fronts. The company did not look back and continues creating value for students. Edtech platforms have witnessed significant strides since early 2017. This is evident with the spurt in the adoption of paid learning platforms, and the blossoming of ventures like Unacademy, Neo Stencils, and Byju’s.
OnlineTyari – Competitors
OnlineTyari counts Unacademy, Oliveboard, Neostencil, Gradeup, Testbook, Toprankers as its competitors.
However, the vernacular approach has provided OnlineTyari the much-needed penetration in Hindi and Marathi speaking states and has helped it stay above others in the competition. The easy to use product coupled with the vernacular diversity has resulted in super growth that too without significant spending on marketing. This has given OnlineTyari an edge over its rivals. OnlineTyari’s daily submitted assessments are way more than those of its closest competitor.
OnlineTyari – Partnerships and Tie-ups
OnlineTyari has partnered with ePayLater to provide its customers with the convenient option of registering for online courses on job-oriented tests, and paying for them later. OnlineTyari has also partnered with various educational institutions, coaching institutes, and individual tutors who provide quality material for examinations like IBPS, SSC, UPSC, GATE, etc. The company also partners with various coupon sites and Paytm to sell its subscription.
With vernacular diversity and coverage for multiple examinations, the company has 8.5 million registered users and 7 million students have downloaded the OnlineTyari app. Presently over 5,50,000+ students us its services every day. Majority of the users in the case OnlineTyari hail from cities such as Patna, Jaipur, Indore, Lucknow, and Ajmer, in addition to large metros such as Delhi and Pune.
OnlineTyari – Future Plans
OnlineTyari aspires to become India’s No. 1 test preparation platform. To achieve this, the company will be expanding its offline presence in North India. It is also looking to include more languages on its platform soon. With a clear vision and strategy to leave its mark in the edtech sector, OnlineTyari endeavors to bring the youth of the country on a single digital platform and help them prepare for their dream government jobs.
FAQs
What is OnlineTyari?
OnlineTyari is a web and mobile app platform delivering educational contents, mock tests and guidance for students and job aspirants preparing for various exams in India.
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 21CC Education
The World Economic Forum states that half of India’s 350 million workforce requires to be reskilled! Here comes the role of 21CC Education, founded by industry veterans Sanjay Tiwari, Marloeke Werst, Ludo Tieman and Sumer Shankardass in 2019.
21CC Education offers industry-relevant skills in the logistics and transportation space to enhance the employability of India’s workforce as well as the productivity of India’s booming logistics sector. The 21CC app allows individuals to skill, upskill and re-skill. 21CC Education has already worked with market leaders in the logistics space like DB Schenker, DHL Global Forwarding, DP World, Sarjak Container Lines and the Port of Amsterdam to serve their training and recruitment needs.
StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Sanjay Tiwari, co-founder of 21CC Education to know the Success Story of 21CC Education. Along with it know about 21CC Education Business model, funding, founders, how it started & more.
21CC Education aims to offer industry-relevant skills in the logistics and transportation space to enhance the employability of India’s workforce as well as the productivity of India’s booming logistics sector.
21CC Education, well-researched and intelligently designed app based skilling platform that delivers complex content in consumable, efficient modules with high retention outcomes. The app allows individuals to skill, upskill and re-skill. It is a powerful ally of the L&D and recruitment teams by bringing pre-skilled workforce in contact with hiring companies through its unique skills-match feature.
In short, our vision and mission would be to ‘skill the world’ says Sanjay, co-founder, 21CC Education
The smartphone disseminated technology is a scalable solution helping organizations with on-boarding , training and mass hiring to efficiently bridge the skill gaps.
Sanjay as he states enjoys the stress of entrepreneurship, both within and outside of a large organization. There are many learnings as the work progresses and takes a lot of creative effort to get all the noses in the same direction, while trying to figure out the core value proposition. His major interest in logistics and supply chain education led to the setting up of 21CC Education with friends in the U.S., Netherlands and India.
According to a McKinsey report – Because of AI and technology, 375 million globally need to be re-skilled, and this was pre-pandemic!
The World Economic Forum states that half of India’s 350 million workforce requires to be reskilled. India has 21 million employees in logistics and the industry is growing by more than 10% per annum. The Government is spending billions of dollars on new infrastructure, private equity and VC players are investing billions in new companies.
In the warehousing industry alone 48,000 new positions will get added between 2020 and 2022. A new McKinsey Global Survey on future workforce needs, nearly 9 in 10 executives and managers say their organizations either face skill gaps already or expect gaps to develop within the next five years. All of these people need to be skilled remotely, on the fly and preferably before their first day of work.
21CC Education – Founders and Team
21CC Education was founded in 2019 by Sanjay Tiwari, Marloeke Werst, Ludo Tieman and Sumer Shankardass. The company is headquartered in Mumbai and has an office in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Sanjay Tiwari- Co-Founder, 21CC Education
Sanjay Tiwari
Sanjay has close to thirty years’ experience in trading, transportation and logistics having worked for a Dutch steel trading and warehousing company in Singapore and Malaysia, for KLM Cargo in The Netherlands and the U.S. and for Maersk in India.
Marloeke Werst
Marloeke has a product management background at L’Oréal and Air France KLM Cargo, followed by a consulting and training career. Marloeke was hired to work at KLM Cargo by Sanjay when they were building up a new air cargo security product in 2002. Her subsequent background in consulting, training and change management was a great help when they re-connected in 2013. Marloeke has deep connects with the Dutch government and industry bodies.
Sumer Shankardass
Sumer was part of the team that took WNS to the NYSE and has extensive BPO experience, as well as experience as a strategic advisor to startups. Sumer and Sanjay know each other from their days in Chicago in 2007 and coincidentally both moved back to India in 2010 with their families. As the co-promoter of 21CC Education, he helps the company to secure the large corporate contracts, leveraging his network and advising on fund raising.
Ludo Tieman
Ludo comes from a family of entrepreneurs in The Netherlands. He ran his own company in The Netherlands in the DIY space and then worked with two startups in Thailand. He heads technology development for 21CC. Ludo and Sanjay both went to the University of Groningen in The Netherlands many many many years ago and have backpacked through India together in the late 1980s. Ludo leads on the technology development and also helped conceptualize the UI / UX of the 21CC App.
The core team of 16 people is split over India and The Netherlands in addition to contracted writers, programmers, illustrators etc.
The inspiration came from the fact that Sanjay has extensively worked in the transportation and logistics industry across Northern Europe, South East Asia, South America, United States and India for more than 30 years now. Having experience on the front lines coupled with practical understanding of the pitfalls in the sector and a steady willingness to overcome the barriers led to creating 21CC Education
Logistics works with an approximate 15% margin of error that seems to have been become acceptable; but this would not be the norm in any other sector. Therefore, the idea behind 21CC education was a win-win for both business and people- reduce error, and most importantly skilling the workforce.
21CC Education was founded in January 2019 in response to the changing face of logistics and transportation. The accelerated growth track of the sector was facing disruptions owing to lack of skills. Issues like unorganized logistics and packaging operations as well as a lack of administrative capabilities continue to hold the sector back. As logistics gains increasing significance, entering an era of unprecedented change, they recognized the urgent need for scalable and sustainable skill development solutions that could significantly help re-engineer the Indian logistics sector.
21CC Education was founded to respond to this urgent call for individuals and organizations alike by simplifying learning through gamification and reskilling through its unique mobile and web application. This first of its kind application aims to significantly bridge the recruitment-skilling gap by creating enhanced learning and skilling experience for operationally intensive industries.
The company creates a steady and large funnel of aptly skilled resources for organisations and maps opportunities for reskilling and upskilling for individuals and blue-collared job seeker to increasing their earning potential and enable them to build lucrative careers.
21CC Education’s holistic mobile platform is backed by an experienced team across Netherlands and Mumbai. Its library offers industry-relevant, engaging and adaptive learning content with more than 110 e-learning modules, over 50 courses and 8 interactive games, all focused on logistics and transportation sectors.
The 21CC App is built on a technology stack of developed on a technology stack consisting of HTML CSS, Angular, Groovy Grails, JavaScript and jQuery, and supported by a strong LMS.
21CC education makes the complex clear by delivering learning and skill-building modules in both online and mobile formats, based on a vast and continuously growing library of industry-validated content in an accessible and fun manner using illustrations, practical examples, humor and gamification.
21CC Education already works with market leaders such as DBSchenker and DHL to serve their training and recruitment needs and as such is geared to help large enterprises connect with the vast resource requirements while ensuring the talent pool is rightly skilled and aware of the space thereby, eliminating the time required in the training of the employees.
Its training content is also finding favor with organizations wanting to create social impact through their CSR initiatives. Aligning CSR projects with skill building drives, 21CC Education is partnering with several leading organizations to help build capability and employability through the immersive and vernacular content.
Additionally, through a recent partnership with the NSDC’s eskillindia.org portal—which is an online learning hub, with more than 800 courses in over 20 sectors— 21CC Education will be offering its App based content to help bridge India’s skill deficit in the logistics and transport sector. The new association with the NSDC, will help build a skilled talent pool in India, ensuring a robust workforce that has the opportunity to be gainfully employed and be contributively aligned with the nation’s growth agenda.
The name came up many years ago quite charmingly on the streets of Chicago while Sanjay was walking his dog, Rustom. It was then that someone spoke to him about ‘21st Century Cargo’. Since then, ‘21CC’ stuck with Sanjay and he thanks Rustom or the kind stranger for the tag line!
21CC Education Logo
“As for the logo, although it was an evening’s worth of work for Dutch designer,Marlies Bloemendaal based in Mumbai, she did a great job in terms of design, colors and messaging” added Sanjay
21CC Education – Business Model and Revenue Model
21CC Education’s business model is both B2B and B2C. 21CC Education’s library offers industry-relevant, engaging and adaptive learning content with more than 110 e-learning modules, over 50 courses and 8 interactive games, all focused on logistics and transportation sectors.
As stated by Sanjay Tiwari, 21CC Education’s revenue model is –
Employers pay for candidates that have come to them via the 21CC App
Employers pay a fixed monthly amount for ongoing employee training
Employees will pay in future for their ongoing education and job placement
21CC Education has been B2B from day one so getting those large corporate customers on board took its own effort. The first 100 B2C customers have come about via its listing on NSDC’s eskillindia.org platform as well as its partnership with portall.in
“The partnerships with the likes of NSDC and Portall.in in India and Dubai Trade in the UAE are very important from an outreach point of view” says Sanjay
21CC Education – Challenges faced
Creating awareness of its offering was one of the major challenge faced by the team at 21CC Education.
“It’s a challenge to create large-scale awareness of opportunities in logistics and make people aware of it. It feels a bit like promoting the BPO industry or IT industry in the 1980s and 1990s, as people aren’t yet fully aware of logistics. So getting college students to download our content is still a struggle, once they do they apparently love it” expressed Sanjay Tiwari, co-founder, 21CC Education
21CC Education – Funding and Investors
21CC Education has raised 1.1 Million Euros in a seed round led by a Dutch Angel Investor in March 2020.
Aapna is considered to be the top competitor of 21CC Education in this industry.
21CC Education – Future Plans
21CC Education aims to be the world’s premier skilling app for entry level employees in logistics
21CC Education – FAQs
Who are the founders of 21CC Education?
21CC Education was founded in 2019 by Sanjay Tiwari, Marloeke Werst, Ludo Tieman and Sumer Shankardass.
What is 21CC Education?
21CC Education offers industry-relevant skills in the logistics and transportation space to enhance the employability of India’s workforce as well as the productivity of India’s booming logistics sector.
How much funding has 21CC Education raised?
21CC Education has raised 1.1 Million Euros in a seed round led by a Dutch Angel Investor in March 2020.
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.
The education sector is the most significant sector for any country, especially for a developing country like India. In India, however, there has been a growing gap between the industry needs and the skills of the 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.
Addressing such gaps, AttainU has molded its courses to make students skilled enough to do justice to their jobs. AttainU provides a high-quality, scalable, professional skill training platform enabling India’s young population to step up and meet the global talent shortage. Currently, AttainU is offering online, live software engineering courses.
Get trained, get hired, pay once you get a job
AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course. A Full stack web developer is a master in many coding languages for the front end design and development of a website along with a backend coding language besides knowing how to manage and maintain a server.
Read About AttainU Company Profile, Funding, Competitors, Revenue, Business Model, Growth, Logo, Fees and Challenges.
AttainU uses a centralized online college simulation approach facilitating immersive interactions between aspirational learners and domain experts while delivering consistent learning outcomes at scale.
AttainU works with a vision to provide a high-quality college alternative to deserving students, who are either not employed satisfactorily with their existing qualifications or are looking to upskill for better employment opportunities in the field of technology.
In the process, they aim to systematically solve education-related problems in an individual-aligned (interest and ability), market-aligned (outcome-focused), and scalable (accessible, affordable) way while ensuring high-quality outcomes at all steps.
AttainU has built a vertically integrated solution covering-
Enrollment – Here, AttainU helps the students to figure out their fit for the course, which is based on their aptitude, inclination, and, most importantly, the ability to put in the required effort.
Skill Building – This is the main central piece which allows the startup to deliver high-quality learning outcomes at scale. The crux here is maintaining high student engagement during the course. This is achieved through facilitating highly immersive interactions with instructors, mentors, and peers focused around a centrally defined course path built-in line with industry partners and delivered by industry expert faculty. Delivery and measurement of granular learning outcomes are built in to make sure each student is on the expected learning trajectory.
Placements – The core of the higher education system. Through placement mechanism, AttainU prepares the students for placements, does the matchmaking, and facilitates the interactions between its industry partners and students.
Income Share Agreement – This is a deferred fee payment model conditional to employment. It ensures that aspirational students can afford this high- quality education irrespective of their financial background.
There are 24 million students enrolled in colleges across India. Even after spending a significant amount of time and money, more than 80% don’t get a job or a satisfactory job. The team at AttainU believes that a significant number of these students, if provided the right platform can do much better in their careers.
AttainU bridges the gap between unemployable college graduates and global talent shortage. This is one of the persistent problems India currently faces, and it’s essential to address this issue to exploit the demographic dividend; to evolve into a high-quality human resources capital of the world.
AttainU – Target Market
The education sector in India is estimated to stand at $91.7 billion in FY18 and is expected to reach $101.1 billion in FY20. There are around 9 Million people coming out of colleges/year (CAGR 11%+), but 75% of them don’t make it to the White Collar Workforce.
College enrollments will increase 3x over the next seven years. 80% of students after graduation lack the basic subject matter expertise and life skills. Given the global talent shortage and working-age human resource surplus in India, India has the potential to become the HR Capital of the World.
Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpaiare the founders of AttainU
Divyam Goel is the CEO & Co-founder of AttainU. He looks after building a strong team aligned towards the company’s goals for the next phase of growth. He is also responsible for meeting the right set of investors who are looking at investing in the Ed-tech industry.
He comes from a deep tech background and believes education is one of the most important challenges that need to be solved in India. After graduating from IIT Bombay, he moved to Bay Area after a short stint with Microsoft in India. Divyam was part of the team which set up growth engineering at Uber. Eventually, he moved to India with the Next Billion Users (Google Pay) team at Google. Divyam wanted to work on an impact first problem and use his skill set to solve for scale, and that is how AttainU was founded in 2018.
Vaibhav Bajpai is Co-founder and COOat AttainU. He looks after student outreach and student enrollment.
Vaibhav Bajpai, Divyam Goel | Founders, AttainU
Divyam Goel and Vaibhav have known each other since 2006. They both grew up in the same hometown, Lucknow. Soon after graduation, Vaibhav joined GeeksForGeeks as their third full-time member, in December 2015. GeeksforGeeks went on to become the largest computer science interview preparation platform globally. After GeeksforGeeks, Vaibhav wanted to work on the deeper education quality problem at the college level, which led him to co-found AttainU with Divyam.
AttainU Team
Currently, AttainU has a dedicated team of 15 members with high efficiency, where every individual holds multiple responsibilities. Their hiring strategy is to scientifically and unambiguously assess for culture, role, and stage fit.
How was AttainU Started
Working in the Bay Area with startups and top tech companies like Uber and Google is always the highest aspiration for any software engineering graduate in India. After graduating from IIT Bombay Computer Science Engineering in 2012, Divyam Goel pursued the same path.
Over the years, the internal quest for the purpose of life led him to believe that giving back to society is important. Six years, one startup and two big company experiences later, the impact of his work started taking precedence over financial returns. Having identified Education, Healthcare, and Public Infrastructure as the top three problems in India, Divyam moved back to India in late 2017 to create an impact in these sectors.
Divyam Goel has spent around eight months studying the education sector, collecting information, and identifying the first principle facts in the education domain in India. Divyam spoke to over 150 people at length, covering the entire vertical, kindergarten to professional skilling as well as the entire horizontal vertical from the work NGOs were doing in the extreme rural areas to the premium IB schools of the country.
Thorough research led the AttainU founders to come up with two observations –
To be able to solve a problem at scale in a free-market approach, a for-profit model is the most efficient way.
It makes the most business sense to start with the problem where customer motivations are most aligned to benefit from the solution.
With the above two realizations, the team has zeroed upon higher education space. AttainU selected recent college graduates as the company’s target audience. Once the target audience has been selected, the team started working on the go-to-market solution. For the same, they have taken insights from the past and present education industry.
Also, they observed that there were some companies, trying out online live college simulation models in different domains, in different parts of the world and that there is a very high level of student engagement in the same.
AttainU team in their extensive research has engaged with a wide number of stakeholders, and got to understand their views-
Industry Leaders, including CTOs – a) Are of the view that there is a definite, strong need for industry-aligned skilling. b) Believe that finding the right talent for the right role, especially at the fresher level, has become extremely time and money intensive. c) Thinks that college graduates lack the basic fundamental subject knowledge as well as the professionally required life skills.
College Educators – a) Are not interested in the undergraduate teaching outcomes and don’t have any incentive to be. b) Having no industry experience, they don’t understand the industry requirements. c) They need to follow AICTE norms, restricting them to follow a particular curriculum.
Views of Existing and Previous Education Companies – a) Recorded, self-paced material based learning does not have the desired impact as a simulated course. b) Majority of the companies were measuring metrics which are not at all related to learning outcomes, including the number of views, number of packages sold, etc.
Students – a) During College, being the first generation from their families, students feel that the college degree will get them a job and hence don’t have the motivation to learn from any other source. b) After College, however, the students’ views are much different.
AttainU team found that-
After college, the students get disillusioned by the system, and gets motivated to learn the right skills to get into the right careers to the highest.
Also, the team found that many students regret taking the wrong branch at the wrong College, from a career perspective, due to either lack of exposure or lack of finances makes it unfeasible for them to pay for a coaching institute which would increase their chances of getting into a Tier 1 college by 5x.
AttainU – Product Development and Startup Launch
AttainU has followed the below steps in the same sequence –
Curriculum and pedagogy preparation – The team, interacted with potential industry partners and professors from IIT Bombay and IIM Bangalore to include both the hard skills and professionally required life skills in the curriculum as well as the best practices and pedagogy to put in place to ensure high student engagement from the beginning.
Enrollment preparation – AttainU identified what qualities matter in the students who would be able to benefit from these courses and how can they best assess these qualities.
Getting the right team in place – Identifying the skill gap that exists between Divyam and Vaibhav, they have put in efforts to get the right team that fills in the gap.
The first batch – Through digital marketing and network, the team was able to identify the first 19 students for the first batch, 17 of whom are still with them 6+ months later.
Having followed an extensive pre-launch preparation, the AttainU team used techniques like digital marketing, community network, and word of mouth to popularize their services among the target audience.
“We are a mission-driven, impact the first startup, and our customers love our value proposition. Word of mouth has been immensely helpful, as at this point, we are getting 20,000+ student applications every month”, said Divyam Goel.
Furthermore, they have used a combination of referral programs, digital marketing, network community, and multiple business partnerships to reach out to potential students.
AttainU – USP and Innovation
AttainU’s USPs are-
High completion rate, 90%+ in an online medium – Removing the location obstacle from learning.
Placement related payment model (Income Share Agreement) – Removing the money obstacle from learning.
Zero to One course i.e., from no coding background to high-quality entry-level software engineering – Making it possible for anyone willing to put in the effort to learn.
AttainU – Fees
AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course. Get trained, get hired, pay once you get a job.
Fee Payment Options:
Option 1 – Rs. 2,25,000 (Pay after Placement)
Option 2 – Rs. 1,00,000 (Upfront Fee Payment)
AttainU Fee Structure
AttainU – Placements
AttainU helps you to attain your dreams, by giving opportunity to get placed in companies with intense preparation before hand. It has base of 170+ Hiring Partners.
Exhaustive 6 Step Interview Preparation
Interview scheduling upon Course Completion
Each Graduate can sit for Multiple Interviews
Each Graduate can get Multiple Offers
“Degrees are not the best way to filter out or judge a person’s ability. AttainU is filling the much needed gap in the industry” says Kapil Bharati , CTO, Delhivery
“Most Companies are going towards skill based hiring. Coming through AttainU, you’ll definitely have an upper hand against normal candidates” says Devang Mundhra, CTO, KredX
AttainU – Enrollment Process
The enrollment process is designed in such a way that will help a person to figure out, if the course is actually their interest of study and will it be useful for them. With 1-on-1 personalised counselling session, the mindset of the applier is known.
further the process helps a person to develop a coding mindset, In case he/she is from Non-Coding Background
AttainU Enrollement/Application Process
AttainU – Name and Logo
AttainU stands for ‘Attain Your Dream.’
AttainU Logo
AttainU – Business Model and Revenue Model
AttainU is one of the very few companies working on a deferred payment model for students to enroll in its courses. The business model is popular as an Income Share Agreement (ISA) where students pay the company money after course completion, only when they get a job within eight months, paying more than 5 Lakhs INR. The amount to be paid is 3L INR, spread over 36 months in easy EMIs.
AttainU – Startup Challenges
AttainU team has faced two major challenges along their startup journey. These are-
Building the right team – Early on, the founding team of AttainU has spent a lot of time internalizing the right kind of workforce who would be a strength to their company. Moving ahead, they have scientifically formulated the company culture document.
Ensuring learning outcome quality as the team intended – Data-driven iteration along with setting up simple to follow yet effective processes ensuring proper accountability, escalation, and visibility.
Besides, as the company started off, they continued experiments to perfect their business plan-
They experimented with a few different course formats
Tested and perfected their enrollment and counselling model ensuring higher value for customers and more accurate selection for the startup
Evaluating many scalable processes to arrive at a solution that ensures timely high-quality, consistent learning outcomes
Assessing various models to identifying the most efficient processes around company-student interactions leading to a win-win situation for all
In the past few years, several startups have gravitated towards this gap and there’s been plenty of innovation too. HRtech startups such as HackerRank, HackerEarth, Codlity as well as edtech startups such as Udemy, Unacademy, upGrad are some of the notable names moving to upskill India’s engineers and entry-level workers. These are some of the competitors for AttainU.
AttainU – Funding and Investors
AttainU has raised a total of $150K in funding over 2 rounds. Leetu Education Pvt. Ltd, which operates the software engineering focused education technology startup AttainU, has raised angel funding in September 2019 from a clutch of high-profile investors.
The investors included former Google India head Shailesh Rao and former Intuit India head Nikhil Rungta. Anil Gelra, the founder of financial technology firm SnapMint; and Manish Kumar, the founder of invoice discounting startup KredX as well as angel investing platform LetsVenture also took part in the funding round.
AttainU – Growth
AttainU approached profitability in October 2019. Currently, AttainU has 300+ students enrolled in its courses. In September 2019, AttainU has received 20,000+ student applications.
“Some of our students from the first batch, which is graduating at the end of October, have already received pre-placement offers” – Divyam says.
Over the next one year, AttainU aims to cater to 8000+ students
Divyam Goel and Vaibhav Bajpai are the founders of AttainU
How much Funding is raised by AttainU?
AttainU has raised a total of $150K in funding over 2 rounds. Its recent round being on September 2019, raised angel fundingfrom a clutch of high-profile investors.
What is AttainU?
AttainU helps you to completely rewrite your career with its Live and Online full stack development course. A Full stack web developer is a master in many coding languages for the front end design and development of a website along with a backend coding language besides knowing how to manage and maintain a server.
Paytm was founded in the year 2010 by Vijay Shekar Sharma headquartered in NCR region in the nation’s capital. It was started as an online wallet and since then had revolutionized the retail industry. Paytm offers a wide variety of services from prepaid mobile recharge, paying utility bills online, booking train tickets, booking movie tickets, pay insurance premiums, shopping bills and get in the fast lane with Paytm FasTag, shopping for clothes and appliances.
The term startup mafia is derived from the term ‘PayPal mafia’ where former employees of PayPal begin their own ventures. The startup mafia helps one another by providing support, investments, and mentoring to help upcoming startups.
The startup mafia accounts for a sizeable portion of the Indian startup ecosystem, as former employees of unicorns such as Flipkart, Paytm and Ola have gone to begin their ventures.
Well, Paytm is a huge organization that has hired more than 5,000 employees. Some of these employees quit their jobs to build a new venture after growing experience in building scalable products.
Junio is a fintech startup that build products for children, such as a pocket money app. Founded by ex-Paytm employees Shankar Nath and Ankit Gera, they received funding of $1 million from angel investors. The company targets kids in the range of Class 4 to Class 10 and plans to onboard over 2.5 million users by 2024.
One of the vital things, the former Paytm executive learned from his tenure in Paytm is the power of collaboration. Where they worked with more than 100 brands on their consumer promotions.
Another takeaway from their experience in Paytm is to build a product in a simple and usable manner. One needs to understand where the system breaks and move carefully while building a product. The only competitor right now to Junio is sequoia funded Fampay that also exclusively caters to children.
The idea of letting your kid manage their financials by providing them money is quite a new concept in India. Junio seeks to digitize pocket cash and nurture finance knowledge in children at quite an early age.
Park+
Park+ is an app-based platform for B2B businesses and daily commuters that offers smart parking automated solutions. The cloud-based app caters to car owners. The solutions offered in this app include parking reservations to FasTag recharge and a lot of other solutions offered. Park+ was founded by ex-VP of Paytm Amit Lakhotia. He founded this app to solve the parking problem people face in their day to day lives in India.
Park+ has raised over $11 million in funding from Sequoia, Matrix Partners.
Indiagold
Indiagold is the only app in India where you can buy and sell 24 karat gold online with BIS Hallmark certification. It was founded by Deepak Abbott, a former employee of Paytm. You can also buy gold coins and jewels on easy instalments with UPI or debit cards. This app also provides instant gold loans and a secure gold locker facility currently available in Delhi NCR.
The services will soon be opened all across India. Indiagold is now trusted by over 5 lakh customers.
GOQii is an Indian startup founded in 2014 by Vishal Gonda. It specializes in building a preventative healthcare ecosystem. It promotes a healthy and balanced lifestyle with a combination of advanced wearable technology, personal coaching. It has received an undisclosed investment sum from Paytm founder.
GOQii on Harvard business publishing platform
Unacademy
This Indian startup Unacademy started its journey as a YouTube channel back in 2010. It became an EdTech unicorn after its official launch in 2015. This Bangalore based company provides educational content and online classes for various competitive exams like GATE/NET, NEET, CAT, UPSC, Railways, bank officers. The Paytm founder had invested twice in this EdTech unicorn.
Flyrobe
Flyrobe is a startup which is an online fashion rental platform. The platform allows users to rent designer clothes for a fraction of the MRP. It is India’s largest such platform. This startup received funding from the Paytm founder.
Flyrobe
The Ken
Ken is a subscription-driven business news website founded in 2016 by a team of experienced journalists based out of Bangalore. Their goal is to promote content every morning by publishing fresh and original business insights to professionals, entrepreneurs and investors. It received an undisclosed amount of funding from Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2016.
FAQ
Who is the current owner of PayPal?
Paypal is owned by eBay which acquired it for $1.5 billion in October 2002.
Who is the CEO of Paytm 2020?
Varun Sridhar is the current CEO of Paytm.
Is Paytm an Indian company?
PayTM is owned by an Indian company by the name of One97 Communications Ltd.
Conclusion
Paytm mafia has nurtured and supported the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem. The Paytm mafia has been through the highs and lows. For them every day even tiny mistakes cost a lot. They bring a lot to the table which they gained in working among top companies. They also understand the mindset of the consumer which helps them build products that can thrive in the current market.
In the unprecedented time, where everyone is talking about the economic slowdown and financial difficulties, there have been a few startups sectors that have managed grow exponentially well.
The Covid 19 pandemic has shaken the world and has brought many business to a halt, although startups have lost their momentum they are already on the path to recover while the newly created trends are expected to see a long term success.
Nasscom said that 40% off Indian tech startups were forced to halt operation, however the investments and startups have shown resilience and recovered as India saw a rapid shift to digital services and payments. Data from industry tracker Tracxn showed that, investors have put in about $9.3 billion into startups in 2020 despite the Covid 19 pandemic upending many sectors of the economy.
One of the simple explanation for the growth of some section of the startups is the emergence of the “Covid economy” which demands or medical supplies and coronavirus related goods which naturally grew during the pandemic, creating lots of opportunities for new companies to step in and take their share of a rapidly developing market. These companies realize that post Covid 19, this new normal will be accepted as the norm for the remaining in the competitive business.
For some of these sectors, the new normal would bring in newfound opportunities. A whole new market that was untouched before is now up for grabs. As we are talking of all this, some startups are already working upon the aforesaid scenario. Let’s take a closer look at the startup sectors that are most likely to flourish after the end of COVID-19.
Lets look at the Sectors that Bloomed During Lockdown
Ed –Tech
One sector that continues to grow rapidly is online education. With Covid 19 locking down Indian citizen since the end of March, online education and e-learning platform have become the need of the hour and so has seen an astounding adoption and exponential growth.
The online education sector is observing a sudden surge and people from all walks of life, all the Covid 19 affected nations are looking up to alternatives of conventional teaching and learning.
That’s not surprising, considering that a whopping 1.5 billion students were grounded almost overnight as cities locked down and schools closed. A report by BARC India and Nielsen reveals that there has been a 30% increase in the time spent on education apps on smartphones since the lockdown.
People are afraid to send their children to places where social distancing is not practiced and hence the ed tech sector is tapping on every possible entity they can.
Well known EdTech startups of India
Ed tech are coming up with solutions that find their usage in various places from universities and schools, to remote employee onboarding, and upskilling to learn new skills and hobbies. Byju’s India earliest Ed tech startup saw 7.5 million new users on its platform since it started offering free access to content. The time spent on its app increased from 70 minutes pre-lockdown to 91 minutes during the lockdown.
The story is the same for other edtech players in the arena. Unacademy recorded 1.4 billion watch minutes while Toppr saw 100 percent growth in free user engagement in March. While Edtech startups Great Learning said its annual revenue rose 150 percent to Rs 325 crore. The Vedantu platform has also grown exponentially to 6.5 lakh additional learners across K-12 and competitive exams such as JEE and NEET.
During the pandemic the demand for contactless solutions has accelerated the employment of fintech services. This growth of the fintech sector helped the users to check for much more personalized, multi optional financial experience and new trends in areas like banking payments, insurtech, etc. Out of 900 plus deals and $11.5 billion total funding raised in 2020, fintech topped the chart with $2.1 billion in funding and 131 in deal counts.
In such times fintech startups play a pivotal role as they are a perfect option to the stringent and conventional banking systems which sometimes fall short on policies. For small scale enterprise or unemployed individuals who require funds on short notices, these financial entities are the only ray of hope. The pandemic has acted as a booster for the country’s fintech sector giving it the much needed energy and growth trajectory to expand its footprint across the nation.
According to Inc42 Plus, funding in fintech is expected to grow to $2.7 Bn in 2021. This is why of the 11 Indian startups Unacademy, Pine Labs, FirstCry, Zenoti, Nykaa, Postman, Zerodha, Razorpay, Cars24, Dailyhunt and Glance that became unicorns in 2020, three belonged to the fintech segment. The growth volume stood at 70% from 1.30 billion transactions in December 2019 to 2.2 billion in 2020, while the value of UPI transactions increased 105% from Rs 2.02 lakh crore in December 2019 to Rs 4.16 lakh crore in December 2020.
Among the leading deals in the fintech sector last year, Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal-owned Navi Technologies led the chart with $398 Mn infusion by Bansal, Gaja Capital, and World Bank’s investment arm IFC, followed by Pine Labs at $300 Mn and PaySense’s acquisition by PayU at $185 Million.
The pandemic has pushed health and wellness services online and has resulted in a boom of online health and wellness services such as telehealth tech, remote diagnostics, and monitoring, remote mental healthcare, online fitness, healthy diets, motivational contents, and more. According to a report by Practo, online doctor consultations have increased 500% since March 2020, as five crore Indians are now accessing healthcare online amidst the Covid 19 pandemic.
Companies like Practo and DocPrime, mFine, CallHealth and Lybrate are some of the leading telemedicine startups, while other small startups are looking to make it in the industry that is currently on the rise. The telemedicine market in India is expected to reach $5.4 Billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 31%. Innovative technologies are allowing health organizations to enhance the access and reduce the burden on hospitals through real time consultation with doctors through smartphones tablets, laptops or PCs.
Telemedicine will reduce the time of consultations and improve the quality of healthcare services in rural areas, removing many of infrastructural challenges. Telemedicine can also help in reducing the burden on the tertiary hospitals by providing diagnosis and treatment to patients in their own geographical location and reducing chances of patient’s exposure due to hospital visits. While India is already one of the top 10 countries in the telemedicine marketing the world, adoption of a regulatory framework will help the segment grow rapidly.
Well known telemedicine startups of India
HR tech: Cloud and SaaS
The rise of HR SaaS and remote working platforms in times of Covid 19 is not surprising. SaaS and remote working tools fall right in the path of success in such times. Businesses are also now understanding the value and operational simplicity that cloud adoption can bring to their IT environments, and various reports forecast a further increase in the use of SaaS solutions in 2021 and beyond. These applications would serve the founding stones for the majority of business operations in the future and a haven for existing ones.
The covid 19 pandemic has been unable to dampen the interest of investors in Indian startups which offer software as a services (SaaS). According to a report by Brain and company the SaaS firms could capture 7%-9% of the market by 2022, and SaaS companies founded by Indians can reach upto $20 billion in revenue.
The global SaaS market is estimated to grow to $230 billion in 2022 from $145 billion in 2019. Startups such as Zoho, Druva, Icertis, and Freshworks which breached the $100-million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, adding that there is a healthy pipeline of companies.
OTT platform have proven to be time and cost effective, provide a more personalized version of the same experience and one can experience these at the comfort of their homes. OTT platforms in India are growing exponentially in the terms of subscribership because of various reasons. Digital India plays a major role in promoting the use of OTT platforms to stream diverse content from all over the world. One of the reason the availability of cheaper smartphones and internet has enabled a large chunk of the population to gain access to online platforms.
Platforms like Voot, Sony Liv and Zee 5 are OTT platforms developed by existing broadcast channels to remain relevant and to cater to the shift in audience from TV viewership to OTT platforms. However, most of their content on these platforms are the same as the ones broadcasted on TV. With the entry of global players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, users are offered a plethora of original content. Hotstar is currently the most popular OTT platform in India according to data from a mobile advertising and Internet service provider.
Online Gaming
In India, Covid 19 has taken this sector to the next level as there have been new gaming startups and platform have been reporting increased revenues mainly because of the pandemic. Furthermore, there is an emergence of new industry trends such as e- gaming, fantasy gaming and cloud-based gaming. Additionally, gaming is not only about playing anymore, but it is also about watching. the Indian online gaming Industry is growing at an exponential rate upon year and is expected to be worth $1.1 billion by 2021.
Winzo games reported three times more user engagement and 30% higher traffic in online mobile gaming. Similarly Paytm First games also reported 200% increase, with 75,000 new users only during the pandemic. Three in every five serious gamers are now playing for around four hours more than before the lockdown. The online gaming industry is still quite an unexplored area in India but the companies that have taken the leap are flourishing and are now expected to grow by 41% in 2021.
Education franchise is one of the important parts of the franchise business. It also serves as a great opportunity to kick-start your own business. You can choose from the long list of education franchise available in India. The areas including pre-school franchise, playschool, day-care franchise, child care. Apart, they also function in the learning centre, training institute, grooming centre, IT Institutes, retail school, animation school, coaching classes, aviation academy, language centre, educational institute, recruitment service, customer services and so on.
Here we have enlisted a few such education franchises that serve in the top-most level in India. With the detailed information and right choice, you can select one from the list below. So, let’s find out the nooks and crannies of the top education franchise you can avail.
Action COACH
Company Name
Action COACH
Headquarter
New Delhi
Sector
Professional Training & Coaching
Founded
1993
Specialisation
coaching, business coach, mentoring, accountability coach, executive coaching, business coaching, business consultant, executive leadership coach, Business help, and Small business coaching
An award-winning business and executive education franchise in India is Action Coach. It has more than one thousand coaches in over 70 countries all around the globe. This institute was founded by Brad Sugars, who is an entrepreneur as well as a thought leader, in 1993.
India’s No.1 education franchise institute for Banking P.O, Clerical, SSC and a few other competitive exams coaching is IBT Institute Pvt. Ltd. This institute has successfully produced a set of excellent ranking candidates in the banking sector as well as in other competitive exams. The USP of this institute is their commitment until their students make a successful career.
Kumon India Educational Private Limited
Company Name
Kumon India Educational Private Limited
Headquarter
Hyderabad, Telangana
Sector
Education Management
Founded
2004
Specialisation
Research, development, and production of learning materials for math and reading, Publication of children’s books, picture books, and study-aid books, etc, Development and marketing of educational merchandise, including educational toys
Kumon India Educational Private Limited are a highly dedicated education franchise. It helps in pursuing the potential upto a great level of each student enrolled under them. the instructors provide high-quality guidance for their students. The students can learn to build self-esteem as well as develop the ability to take on every new challenge thrown at them.
Brain Checker Techno Services
Company Name
Brain Checker Techno Services
Headquarter
Nashik, Maharashtra
Sector
Education Management
Founded
2012
Specialisation
ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Stress, Impulsivity, Learning Disabilities, Reading Intervention Programs, Brain Development Programs, Educational Services, IQ Testing, Cognitive Brain Development, Psychology, Franchise, Psychometric Testing, Career Counseling, Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, Career Planning, Personality Assessment, and Occupational Evaluation
Brain Checker Techno Services claim to be ‘India’s Largest Career Counseling Company’. In 2014, this institute bagged the award, India’s Top 100 Debutant Company, by a coveted magazine. It helps in assisting students across the country in matching their aspirations with great capabilities that they possess.
Superior brain health, improves our ability to think, concentrate, memory, motivate, learn, express, social skill, process information and multi-intelligence will excel
UCMAS Abacus India is a unique education franchise that talks about mental fitness, besides physical fitness. They believe in the notion of effective working over hard-working, as it helps in yielding better results in students.
Focal Point
Company Name
Focal Point
Headquarter
Bhubaneswar, Odisha
Sector
Professional Training & Coaching
Founded
1997
Specialisation
Business Coaching, Coaching, Business Consultant, Marketing and Management Consultant, Sales Training, Time Management, Public Speaking, Facilitation, Business Systems, Operations Improvement, Growth, Sales, Marketing, Management, HR, and Franchises for Sale
Focal Point, as an education franchise, provide business performance training. This program is exclusively designed for business owners and executives. This institute accomplishes its goals via one-on-one coaching. It also helps to be under an excellent environment of continuous learning, positive support as well as results-driven accountability.
Smart School Education Private Limited
Company Name
Smart School Education Private Limited
Headquarter
Noida, Uttar Pradesh
Sector
E-learning
Founded
2011
Specialisation
ICT based K-12 solution for Schools, Android based learning, and HTML5 services
Smart School Education is India’s leading K-12 education company. This institute has been actively providing innovative solutions under K-12 education directed for various educational institutes across the globe. Besides India US, UK, Africa, Middle-east, Netherlands, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Singapore, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
With research for more than 30 years, carried out in Japan, Respond Right education has grown up to be the top education franchise in India. They provide education for children, who also gets to learn emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence (EQ and IQ).
These are the list of education franchise working successfully across the country. All of them have specialisation in different fields. Try to select the one that suits your forte, wisely and get started.
Educational institutes, professional training programs, schools and colleges have been going online for a while now, even e-learning companies are rising to this situation. This type of learning is not limited to high school and college students who are availing their services, even professionals/employees are availing their products for vocational courses and re-skilling programs.
Edtech startups are making it easier to learn on the digital platform and make it an effective alternative to classroom education besides it is a matter of security in a situation like pandemic which caters to a large audience across geographies at a fraction of the cost. Usually, all you need is a trusting internet connection and bandwidth and you are good to proceed with the learning and also India’s internet connection has grown and exploded in recent years is not to be missed.
Education-technology or Edtech startups have mastered the art of attracting the investors with a hue number of funding. For starters, in the initial months of 2020 in India, edtech ventures have experienced an astounding amount of $686.32 million in 21 funding rounds, a crisp surge from $450 million in 87 rounds in the entire year of 2019.
India’s biggest online education companies have seen a paradigmatic shift, one of the renowned names is Byju’s. Other well-known names include Board Infinity, Great Learning, Lido Learning, Pedagogy, Toppr, Unacademy, WhiteHat Jr and Vedantu, Handa ka Funda, Upgrad.
The data also shows that Bengaluru-based companies attracted $944 million of investments in the edtech space, the highest across cities in India.
Developing Edtech startups in India
India’s Edtech startups funding
According to a survey, Mumbai-based Education-technology startups were raised $109.3 million during the pandemic. Startups based in Gurugram raised a total of $33.19 million, coming the next in line.
In this year, Bengaluru-headquartered Byju’s have raised around $500 million, at an estimated valuation of close to $8 billion. Much later a developing organization called Unacademy raised $110 million in a funding round led by Facebook and General Atlantic. At the same time, Bengaluru-based developing online tutoring platform Vedantu raised $24 million.
Some of the developing edtech startups and their funding amounts.
Startup
Funding Amount
Udacity
$161,00,000
Auxilo
$67,00,000
Pedagogy
$400,000
Knorish
$323,000
Univariety
$11,00,000
Kangaroo kids
$20,00,000
CueLearn
$19,00,000
CollegeKhabri
Undisclosed
Callido
Undisclosed
Since a past few years, edtech companies are all charged up and looking forward to their interactive online tutoring content, targeting school students and candidates preparing for competitive examinations and government jobs across all over the nation with no geographical barrier to learn.
Other funding programs in this year for edtech startups include Testbook, which raised about $8.3 million in a Series B round. Noida-based edtech organization Classplus raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round from Blume Ventures, Sequoia Capital and many more. A Mumbai-based online interactive platform provides learning content and test prep for competitive government examinations.
EdTech startups in India are growing at an average rate around 55%.
Types of learnings through Edtech companies
Some developing edtech startups
The growth in Internet users have almost reached 730 million in India giving birth to a new wave of development in online education industry. The cost of Online Education is also low as compared to offline education.
InterviewBit this yearraised $20 million in a Series A round from Sequoia Capital India, Tiger Global, and Global Founders Capital.
WhiteHat Jr has raised around $10 million in Series A funding led by existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Omidyar Network India.
Doubtnut raised $15 million in a Series A round from Sequoia Capital India, AET, Omidyar Network India, Tencent, and Curefit’s Ankit Nagori.
Lido Learning has raised a Series B round in two rounds, $3 million from Alex Samwer’s Picus Capital, Paytm’s Madhur Deora, followed by $7.5 million from BAce Capital, along with the existing investors in the company.
Topprraised over $47 million, or near about Rs 350 crore, in a growth funding round as edtech startups continue to benefit from the pandemic-driven lockdown situation.
Embibe, Reliance-owned, have raised $12.6 million, followed by $66 million, from the parent company.
Hiring in Edtech Startups
Since the surge in the growth of online education has taken place this year, there is huge need of human resources in these edtech companies.
Edtech is be one of the very few industry that is creating jobs and hiring even during the pandemic. Giants in this sector like Byju’s is looking forward to hire 4,000 people in the next six months in business development, content, and tech roles. Following the company called WhiteHat Jr which is recruiting candidates for teaching coding online.
Conclusion
With the availability of funding across the various stages of growth of edtech startups, only situation will show if edtech companies can maintain the momentum in the future.
Several people have now more hours that they can invest and learn many more interesting things online. Many of them are investing that time in upskilling themselves through online courses.
Not many people realize they have completely transformed their lives as they grow, leaving behind the happiness of pursuing their passion. The competitive and fast-paced life leaves limited time to perform chores of routine life and spare no time and resources for your passion which was once your key task of the day. This is a common problem for most people in today’s world.
While many try to manage their time to reconnect with the long-lost passion, they don’t get motivated due to limited knowledge and failure to connect with people with a similar passion. But this is where you need a platform like MeVero which can help you discover the real you.
MeVero enables an user to effectively pursue his/her passion. It offers a host of Services, Applications & Tools which the user can use to pursue the area of passion.
MeVero is the first global digital platform to offer Social + Knowledge + Services for the pursuit of passion. The platform has been completely built out of Kolkata, India. MeVero is probably the first Social media platform to be built from India. It connects its users to people of similar passion, so that strangers across the world can discuss, collaborate, create projects, and help each other pursue their passion. Following the belief, ‘happiness follows when you do what you truly love‘, the founders conceptualized MeVero – a Happiness Tech Platform.
MeVero is India’s first AI-powered platform of applications and tools for the effective pursuit of happiness. It enables people to pursue their life purpose(s) whereby they can learn, create, network, collaborate and join constructive communities based on common goals, undertake and showcase projects and finally monetize their skills. To define it better, MeVero is:
Socially Enabled Pursuit of Passion – connect people of similar passion around the world,
Personalized Knowledge – intelligent curation and personalization of knowledge around the area of passion,
Aggregation of Services for Pursuit of Passion – various tools & services for supporting the efficient pursuit of any passion.
MeVero – Product/Services
Understanding the need of millennials, MeVero offers the following services:
Life Navigators: Certified Life Coaches on the platform whom you can consult for understanding how to effectively pursue your passion. The first of its kind in the world.
Creation Tools: Online creation tools through which you can use to create and edit video, audio, image, photos, documents, spreadsheets, presentations.
Courses: A host of courses and programs in your passion offered in association with credible global e-learning platforms.
Learning Gallery: A pool of books, case studies, audio dramas, audiobooks, motion comics all devoted to help you understand what barriers you are facing and find inspiration from people who had broken these barriers and pursued their passion successfully.
They also offers content from specific Web resources for the content types, such as:
All are curated intelligently and personalized around a user’s area of passion.
As per an estimate, globally there are 220 million English speaking people on the Internet, who are unable to follow their passion effectively leading to disgruntlement and confusion. MeVero promises a 15 Minute of Happiness in the daily life of millennials, by personalizing their journey in every step of following their passion.
Founders of MeVero and team
Founders of MeVero are Aritra Sarkar, Dipankar Ganguly, and Kaushik Banerjee.
Founders of MeVero
Kaushik Banerjee – Kaushik is the Co-founder and CEO of MeVero Inc. and an alumnus of Jadavpur University and IIM Lucknow. He spent 26 years in Marketing, Sales, Strategy and Profit Centre operations spanning across FMCG, Durables, Fashion, Telecom & Media. Kaushik was the Vice President & SBU Head of Anandabazar Patrika Group from April 2007 to September 2012. There he built the Digital Business from scratch and generated a revenue of USD 1 million in the first full year of operation.
Aritra Sarkar – Aritra is the Co-founder of MeVero Inc who spent more than ten years working in the media in both the US and India—where he handled corporate strategy, business development, and integrated marketing for two multi-media conglomerates.
Dipankar Ganguly – Co-Founder & CTO, Dipankar has over 25 years of global IT experience having served in different technology leadership roles at companies such as IBM, iGate, Tata Unisys, etc.
Both, Co-founders of MeVero, Kaushik and Aritra, had a long run in the Corporate world before commencing MeVero. Both were disillusioned with the pandemic of employee dissatisfaction rampant across all companies. They realized the potential and need for a global community of people pursuing their passion that will connect its users to people of similar passion, so that strangers across the world can discuss, collaborate, create projects and help each other pursue their individual passion.
Aritra set up his first tech venture, Wedoria Technologies in 2012, with a mission to help every human being find their purpose in life. In 2018, along with Kaushik, he started his second entrepreneurial venture, MeVero, to focus his efforts on enabling the pursuit of passions.
MeVero – Name, Tagline, and Logo
MeVero logo
MeVero’s tagline is “Find & Follow Your Passion in Life. Set Goals”.
MeVero – Business Model and Revenue Model
The business model of MeVero consists of:
Online Advertisement – Native Ads in the App via Facebook Audience Network to generate revenue through Ad impressions.
Cloud storage subscription – 500 MB Free for lifetime and plans starting $1/month after that.
Tool package subscription – Creative tool packages like Rich Text Editor, Photo Editor, Video Editor, etc. starting $1.5/month.
Commission on Life Navigation session booking – 25% commission on session booking amount (minimum $10/hour can be set as session fees by Life Coaches on MeVero).
Premium subscription – Users receive a completely Ad-Free Experience and a Daily Personalized Passion Digest Newsletter curated and delivered to their inbox, starting $1/month.
It is the first platform which tries to address the entire problem, so it has no competitors currently.
MeVero – Growth
MeVero launched its beta version product in October 2018 and today it has 100K+ Registered Users across 221 countries. The platform has recorded 200K+ App Downloads, 5K+ Content Downloads, 90K+ Veda Chats, 1K+ Firesides Created and 10K+ Goals Set. The company has lately launched MeVero 2.0 with enhanced features and a user-friendly website.
MeVero – Future Plans
Currently, MeVero Inc. is looking to raise capital to fund its technical development and user acquisition, and scale to 5 million users by June 2021.
Ashwini
Ashwini
