Technology is used today to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of our country, says Piyush Agrawal, Founder & CEO, SuperProfs, in an interaction with Elets News Network (ENN)
Please brief about the reasons behind starting the venture.
I was pursuing PhD at Stanford University (USA) when a brainwave hit me – Technology can and should be used to dissipate quality education to every nook and corner of our country. I dropped out of my course and returned back home with a vision – to make quality education accessible to masses. Firstly, I worked with Sujeet Kumar (CTO and co-founder of SuperProfs) on a video compression algorithm, to make videos streamed at low internet bandwidth (even as low as 100 Kbps). We initially offered this technology to universities and worked with them to improve our solution.
In 2014, we decided to take it to students directly– and that is how SuperProfs was born. Thereafter, we tied up with some of India’s top professors offering coaching for competitive exams and helped them bring their courses online. We have so far launched 1000+ courses for CA, CS, CMA, GATE, JEE, UPSC (IAS/IPS/IFS), etc.
What are the challenges faced in doing business on ground level?
Being a B2C company, it is always a challenge to manage the details of logistics involved. We have to make sure that there are no slip ups and the entire process of recording lectures, streaming it to students, providing study material, doubt clearing, etc., is done seamlessly. Our operations and customer-facing teams work round the clock to ensure full customer satisfaction.
What is the market size of services offered by you?
Coaching for preparation of competitive exams in India is a $8 billion industry and concentrated only in a few hubs or cities. As no sincere efforts have been so far made to aggregate and streamline the coaching process, SuperProfs is attempting to do this exact thing. However, this requires a change in the mindset of all players involved in the coaching industry. SuperProfs is striving hard to win the trust of all stakeholders with the help of superior technology and excellent quality of services.
How your solutions are beneficial for organisations/individuals?
In India, nearly one crore students appear for various competitive exams every year. However, only a small fraction have access to good quality coaching. There are geographical and financial constraints that prevent students, especially those who are not from metro cities. We believe that technology can bridge the gap between teachers and students. Now, students from remote areas can access coaching classes by top professors on their mobile phones with just 2G internet connectivity, at less than 50 per cent cost compared to a face-toface coaching class.
Please share the vision of your company for next two years.
For next two years, our key focus will remain on helping students, so that they do well in competitive exams, tie ups with more top professors and adding more courses in regional languages. We will focus on providing the professors with required tools to conduct mock tests, interactive sessions, etc. We are also planning to launch courses for TOEFL, IELTS and GMAT.
What methods are you using to increase the visibility of your organisation?
We are trying to spread brand awareness among students by conducting various activities in colleges across India. We are very active on social media as well. SuperProfs is also getting a lot of attention in media – print and online. All these together help in increasing our reach over our customers.
What are the major stakeholders and sectors you are focusing on?
Our major stakeholders are professors and students. We make sure that the professors are provided with all necessary technology that allows them to share their knowledge with students from any corner of the country, and students get what they are promised – best online coaching classes. The only sector that we are focusing on is Edu-Tech (Education Technology).
What are the initiatives taken by your organisation to emerge as a market leader?
We believe that there are no shortcuts to the top. We will become the market leader, if we offer the best services to customers. We have promised to make competitive exam preparation easy for students and intend to deliver on that. We also want to make sure that the professors, tied up with SuperProfs, are facilitated with everything required so that they can communicate with students with ease.
