Jatin SolankiCo-Founder at Eduisfun Published On: Friday, May 20, 2016 Views 3514

"Feel the fear and do it anyway."

Early in his career, Jatin found his strengths revolving around public relations, communication skills and creativity. He has been part of multiple early start up companies working hand in hand with their product & marketing teams. Jatin holds a Bachelors Degree from IIT Bombay.

He conceptualized Eduisfun, which inspires students, engages parents and empowers educators, to ensure students achieve their full potential. It’s adaptive platform which provides an enhanced gamified learning experience. It features personalized question-based learning in a bit sized format.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

We have multiple products for learning, assessment and quizzing. The learning and assessment products are targeted to students of Grade I-X (age 6-15 years). While, our quizzing game is suitable for any age group, wanting to quiz in GK, History, Cricket, etc.

We help students learn maths and science, and prepare them for competitions like International English Olympiad (IEO), National Cyber Olympiad (NCO), International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO), National Talent Search Exam (NTSE), National Level Science Talent Search Exam (NSTSE) etc.

Our games are available live on our page on Google Play Store. Across the globe, over 10,000 users are reaping benefits of our EduGames for learning, assessment and quizzing purposes. Recently, our games have been quoted as one of the best ‘edutainment’ apps by AppLobster. Our games have been topping the trending list on Google Play Store and have got featured in top sites like TheGreatApps.com, ThePopularApps.com, etc.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

Failure is not embraced in learning as failing in an exam or test is seen as a big deal in education. Whereas games have the inherent ability of embracing failure because, in games, you try – fail – retry – master and then succeed. That is what learning is all about. That’s where the need of games into education came into picture. At Eduisfun, we make learning fun and easily accessible to everyone, through games.

What is your life mantra?

Cross my expectations and excel in every target I set for myself is the mantra that helps me get better every passing day. I like to take up challenges those which seem not so possible in the first glance.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

As the concept was novel, the most challenging part was to put together a team of academicians (with over 20 years of teaching experience) and tech geeks (designers, developers).

How did you overcome those challenges?

Once you have faith in your idea and have a conviction to make it through the noise – doing something meaningful – rest of the things just follow. We are a rapidly growing team (comprising alumni of IIT, IIM, Ex-employees of EA Sports, Disney India Games, Wipro, etc).

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

Eduisfun has raised an undisclosed amount of seed & pre-series A funding rounds from a leading educational institute based out in Mumbai. We have over 5,000 paid users as of now. As per our current growth and funds we look forward to break even in less than 18 months.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

We have an office culture and believe in the following things: Each other; Taking up crazy, impossible goals is a good thing; Work is worship, but sleep is better; Innovation in school Education can be revolutionised; We’re going to do it – with games; We will make learning fun, easily accessible to everyone This philosophy and trust within the team keeps talent from leaving Eduisfun.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Patience
Hard Work
Refusing to fail

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

News in Shorts to keep up to date on daily news

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

At the start of the day, jotting down all my thoughts in one place and chalk down that days goal. Helps me set direction for myself and Eduisfun.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success

Try. Fail fast. Learn. Repeat. Succeed.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid

Waiting for the right time to start. The best time to start is Now.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now

There is no one single place or time called success. There are milestones. Enjoy the journey and celebrate milestones. Keep getting better every single day.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

Eduisfun is the pioneer in the edutainment sector globally and would have achieved its goal of making learning fun and easily accessible to everyone through games.

Let me paint the future for you. In the next three years, technology will shape our lives in almost all sectors – be it health care, education, agriculture etc. Kids will no longer have to travel distances to schools or tuition for learning. Quality education will be at their fingertips. And not only that, edutainment will become a big part of learning. You see some part of it coming true today.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

We started our first venture in 4th year at IIT Bombay. If I had the chance, I would have started even before that, so that by the time we passed out we could have had an independent venture with there being a need for all of us to join jobs.

Share a quote that inspires you the most.

‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards’ from Steve Jobs – is the quote that inspires me. It helps me deals with the uncertainties of today yet being optimistic about the future. And when its all good, I can look-back and say this was the reason for the hardship I faced yesterday by connecting the dots. It really gets me going.

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