Edukhoj

Q) What was the idea behind the setup of your startup? What inspired you to do so? What was the idea behind the setup of your startup? : Build an Education Search platform. A one-stop, data-driven & technology-based educational platform that helps in connecting students to education Institutes & making informed decisions. What inspired you to do so?: Let students decide what they want to pursue. While working with different education conglomerates in different parts of India and interacting with students from rural to urban locations, I figured out the lack of information among students in ref to educational institutes' entrance examinations and degrees to pursue in the near future. The knowledge of exam information is limited to the IIT JEE & NEET exam of students & parents, but why. To my surprise, I was shocked to know students who were interested in making careers in designing cars & sports bikes were not aware of the related exams to crack, and again those students were limited to the knowledge of Engineering & Medical. This is when I thought of creating Edukhoj. Even one of the students asked me sir, if not NEET then what for Biology students, if not IIT what for Math students. This was the turning point of my career when I left my job and started building bootstrapped startup edukhoj. Q) When did you realize that there’s a need for such a product in the market? And when did you launch in the market? Launch April 2020 When did you realize that there’s a need for such a product in the market? : When a student said there is no other option apart from engineering or medical - If I am not able to crack NEET my career will be ruined. But in actuality, there are a good number of career options in all the streams. NEP ( New Education Policy) - it's a big reform in the Indian education system There should not be a rat race for any course or exam Q) Please let us know about the products/services you offer, what makes you unique in the market? Who are your competitors in the market? Offering: Branding & CPL ( lead basis) Edukhoj.com earns its revenue from paid advertising, which allows institutes to promote themselves on the site. A Cost Per Lead (CPL) approach where they will obtain a CPL from the institutes. A mix of online advertisements and institute partnerships. Q) Who are your competitors in the market? : Shiksha, Collegedunia, collegedekho, careers360 and few more to name . There must be a tremendous team that has helped the startup to grow. So tell us about your team and the members. Q) Tremendous team Yes Sure, we have a small core multitasking team. Team : Abhishek Porwal: Founder - IIMP Brijesh Nirmal : IIT Guwahati Asheesh Tripathi: Business Development - IIMP Q) Tell us about how you launched your product in the market and since then how far have you come. We launched our website not in any big fancy way - it was just a normal launch with some samosa party and that’s it. As we were burning our savings we had a lot of pressure to generate sales from day one. And the time we launched, we all were moved into lockdown which made all of us re-strategize and also gave us time to rebuild a few of our product features. How far have you come? : We boarded our first client from Lucknow and to date we have sold our services in 11 states of India by onboarding some of the National institutes with Pan India presence. Q) And what makes your product and services better than others? Our competitors are probably limited to Higher education institutes only. And as we are coming up as ‘Search Education’ which means you can search Coaching institutes Skill-based/professional institutes Higher education (colleges & universities) Colleges in abroad Foreign student can search colleges in India and can get enrolled in ‘Study in India’ E-learning Online college & university programs As per the above-listed features we have a few of them live on our website and on few of the features we are still working on it. Q) What are your plans for the future? How are you planning to expand your operations? What are your plans for the future? : To be in the top 3 positions in reference to our product & service among our competitors. To expand our product offering on the below-mentioned education domains Skill-based/professional institutes Colleges in abroad Study in India E-learning Online college & university programs How are you planning to expand your operations? : Expanding team Raising funds from investors More focus on user behavior & clients' feedback and understanding their implementation of our product. Moving strategically and marking penetration in the rural parts of India. Q) What’s the current investment status of the startup? And what are your plans to raise funds for the venture? What’s the current investment status of the startup? : We are a bootstrapped startup. We have not raised any investment to date. Q) And what are your plans to raise funds for the venture? We are in discussion with angel investors & venture capitalists to raise funds. At present as per our discussion with VCs, we have a strong ‘Yes’ from them in ref to investment. Let's see how soon we can close it. What has been your customer experience like? What are the challenges that the startup has faced so far, please elaborate on how you overcame them. What has been your customer experience like? : It has been a good one and more of quick implementation of new features which will help our customers to grow rapidly. What are the challenges that the startup has faced so far, please elaborate on how you overcame them. Building a bootstrapped startup itself is a big challenge when your competitors have millions of dollars in investment to capitalize on the market via online & offline marketing or getting the best talent on their side. Hiring team: We changed the working time, reduced the working time and we just focused on the timely completion of the task, which resulted in getting a pool of the best talent at the best financials and mostly freelancers. Sales & Marketing: Hiring to get output from the sales & marketing team is presently a challenge. The well-funded startups have raised the bars of the fresher's package too high. We overcame it: I as a founder ( with hardcore sales & marketing exp) stepped in since the initial days in sales & marketing of edukhoj and sold our services in 11 states with all commitments delivered and after-sales services on time too. This helped me understand the customers from various states and their points of concern too, which ultimately helped us to improve our features.