This month, we take a look at a new venture that has taken a
leap of faith, moved countries and in spite of hardships kept their hearts in
one place.
Today we meet
Debarati Goswami, the co-founder of
Educocity and talk about her journey that has taken her
from the usual employee role to an entrepreneur. She talks about the hardships if being an entrepreneur
in India, the role that project management plays in their development process
and their plans for 2012!
·
You moved back from US to India to start your
own company- tell us about it.
My
husband Bappaditya and I were both working with Apple Inc. as consultants for
close to 3 years each, when the entrepreneurial bug bit us. After having been
located in the Silicon Valley for quite some time, the ‘big’ question was whether
we should start up in the US or in India. We listened to our heart and moved
back to India in late 2009.
We
wanted to do something in the education space because the roots of a society
lie in its education system. As everyone knows by now, our conventional
education systems are failing us miserably both in India as well as in first
world countries like UK & USA. We thought it’s about time to do something
so that students start taking interest in ‘learning’ rather than mere rutting.
The
need for a common platform where everyone associated with any educational
institution, be it students, teachers or parents can come together and create
an environment for learning was becoming more and more apparent. We wanted to
build a city for education (Educo is the root word for education is Latin) Thus
‘Educocity’ was born.
·
How well is a collaborative platform like this
one being adapted in India? Or is your target audience outside India?
GUIDE is a
cloud based, collaborative, Learning Management Platform from Educocity.com. GUIDE
stands for ‘Grow as YoU Identify Delight in Education’ and is all about making
the process of learning fun and enjoyable, delightful yet more effective than
the conventional methods.
A
conscious shift in pedagogical methods is taking place across the world. Pedagogy is changing from being prescriptive
(where the teacher teaches, the students only listen) to collaborative (where
teachers and students interact among themselves and absorb the knowledge) Collaboration
is no more a thing of the future, rather something we do day in and day out.
While various ’collaborative’ software products are available in the market today,
they are mostly content based. We believe GUIDE stands apart because it is a
platform that the users can use according to their needs instead of tying them
up with a specific set of contents.
India
has been under the influence of ‘prescriptive pedagogy’ for too long. However,
India is gradually opening up to the idea of collaboration within an
educational institution and taboos are dissolving. Some institutions are not
comfortable sharing their private data with the world. Also we have a
relatively young user base, most of them being school going kids. Hence, if
institutions want, they configure GUIDE as a walled-garden wherein the safety
and privacy of the users are not compromised.
India
is at the epicentre of our focus. However, at the same time, we are also
looking at other advanced markets, which are easier to penetrate without much
user training.
·
What have been the few challenges in working in
an entrepreneurial mode in India?
India
is still in a nascent stage when it comes to entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Professionally, the biggest hurdle we faced was amassing a seed-fund. No
investor is ready to invest in a concept and having at least a prototype in
place is a prerequisite for raising funds. Thus, boot-strapping is the only
viable option most Indian entrepreneurs are left with. This makes the process
longer and more difficult and we have seen a lot of people quit their
entrepreneurial journey over it.
Also,
in India, being an entrepreneur pushes you into a minority bracket and is still
considered as an unwise choice by the middle-class society. At times it can
take a toll on the family life, especially with parents and relatives. We are lucky
to have a very sound support system in place. For others, it might be even
tougher.
However,
the current scenario is improving in leaps and bounds and we are hopeful that
India will catch up with its western counterparts in a few years from now.
·
What does 2012 hold for educocity?
2012
is going to be the most crucial year that our venture has seen till date. We
have big plans lined up including an international launch. We are also looking
to raise some serious funds. For our venture hopefully this will mean an entire
new scale to operate in.
We
have also already roped in a few important customers and we will start
operating at these sites as soon as these institutes open doors for new
students in the 2012-2013 academic session.
·
In all these years trying to develop the
product, how have you managed the process?
Having
seen how a world class company like Apple looks like from within, we have been
very particular about processes and quality adherence from the very beginning.
We
try to keep the Product Management, Product Engineering and Service Delivery units all separate from
each other since most of the time they have conflicting interests.
We
also follow the Agile Scrum
methodology to keep our development cycles short. This essentially means an iterative, incremental framework for project management. Scrum is perfect for a
lean organization like us. It reduces our process overheads drastically and hence
the team is almost always able to deliver faster. It also acts as the perfect
remedy against deadline slippage due to scope creeps.
We
are also finicky about following checklists. Implementation checklist,
development checklist, quality adherence checklist, test plan checklist, you
name it we have it. This helps us to maintain the standards without much review
effort.
·
Tell me 3 things we should know about your
product.
We
call GUIDE from Educocity a virtual cloud campus on rent,
which essentially boils down to:
No software installation is required to start using GUIDE. It can be accessed
over a web-browser and low-bandwidth internet which makes it available anytime
from anywhere without being tied to a particular machine. If you want to try,
just hit educocity.com and go for a ‘Try GUIDE Demo’ option.
No upfront capital investment is required from the educational institution’s end. We
only charge on pay-as-you-go basis based on the total number of users. Thus,
GUIDE is especially suitable for small to medium institutions who do not want to
maintain in-house IT department.
GUIDE
is the most intuitive Learning
Management system you would have seen. The user interface is simple and
clutter free and you can get started from the word go. There are no steep
learning curves and hours spent going through elaborate learning manuals. We
believe in the beauty of simplicity.
You can also follow
@educocity in Twitter or ask your questions, request a demo directly to
@Debaratiz
I have tried to categorise them better this time around, so let me know if this is something that you guys are enjoying as well. 
