Lovleen BhatiaCEO of Edureka Published On: Monday, December 28, 2015 Views 7178

Edureka is one of India’s fastest growing online education marketplace offering technology and business courses to professionals and students across the globe on a differentiated real-time instructor-led tutorial platform with 24×7 expert helpdesk support, project-based assignment evaluation and free lifetime accessibility to study materials and upgrading of content. Edureka ranks No.1 in Deloitte Tech fast 50 India 2014 list and No.10 in Deloitte Tech Fast Asia Pacific 2014 list. It has been positioned No.2 on Business Today India’s Coolest Start-up 2015 list and Business World Hottest Young Entrepreneurs 2015 list respectively.

Higher Education system in India has become highly stereotyped with most of it becoming marks oriented. Real learning has taken a back seat and today it has become a running frenzy for youngsters and their parents to enroll in typecast subjects and secure high scores. The saddest part of the story is that post all these valuable efforts and time investment, a majority of Indian youth is rendered jobless or has little or no career plan that would entail a secured and happy future. The
employers find them unskilled/less apt for their job role. To re-instil this, I had always wanted to create an education platform that would bring forth fresh outlook to our education system.

My life mantra is to be prepared for challenges. I see every challenge as a learning. Another mantra that I swear by is “Be customer focused”: customers should be the only focus for a company, not competitors!

There is a yawning gap between theory and practice in the education space. As Edureka wanted to target and bridge this gap, we knew that convincing students to take to virtual classrooms would not be an easy task. The challenge, therefore, was to devise a strategy supported by technological know-how to create an interactive classroom environment where we could dispense knowledge and skills relevant to industry requirements. To put up a quality product requires a lot of planning, domain knowledge and proper execution, apart from the will to go through the grind. We realized that to carve out space for our venture in the virtual teaching space we had to be innovative in our method and approach. This would make students prefer our courses over what our rivals had to offer.

Edureka is a pioneer in virtual learning and in fact, we introduced the concept of ‘online assisted learning’ into the market. Raising awareness about this model of learning was the biggest challenge that we faced when we started off. We solved this through an innovative, customer-focused approach. During the first year of operations, we invited 100-150 people every day to attend free classes. Over time, this initiative helped in popularizing Edureka’s online assisted classes and brought in business through referrals.

Edureka is a bootstrapped venture with angel investors. The company was started with an initial capital of Rs.1.5 crore and has raised money from angel investors, including Jungle Ventures partner Ramakant Sharma, a former CTO of Myntra. Total investment in Edureka till date has been 2 crores. We have not burnt cash since last 2 years since we have been highly profitable.

Edureka has an open culture that encourages people to ask questions and empowers them to be involved in decision making. This makes all the difference when it comes to employee retention. This level of accessibility and participation is probably why some of the earliest employees of Edureka are still working with us today.

1) Integrity

2) Perseverance

3) Teamwork

These are also the qualities that are actively sought in every person who joins Edureka.

Google Tasks

Taking data-driven decisions helps me spend time on things that are important and also helps me multi-task.

I would like to get more sleep and go to bed early.

• One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Do not get carried away with small successes

• One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

Keep trying; you will figure out a way.

In the next 2-3 years, Edureka plans to introduce many more key industry courses and also launch new categories. Besides expanding services to more countries, we plan to triple our growth every year.

The mountain ranges of the Himalayas – the known and the hidden – are my favourite getaway destinations.

The first two years of Edureka provided me with a lot of learnings. If I got a chance to start my career again, I would use all that I have learnt to shorten the learning period this time around.