“The focus on hiring right is tightly linked to the cultural fit point” – By, Mr. Rohit Manglik, CEO, EduGorilla
Lately, I read about EduGorilla in a newspaper article. From where did you get the idea to start this?
While working as an investment banker, I had always cherished a desire to do something of my own that would help underprivileged students. Education as a subject has always been close to my heart.This was instrumental in shaping my idea of EduGorilla which was aimed at being a one-stop solution to students’ career needs. However, due to hectic schedule; it became very difficult to follow my passion alongside my regular job. So I decided to leave my job and plunge into entrepreneurship.
- Can you please brief me about EduGorilla’s journey from scratch?
I was fortunate to get access to good quality education. However, whenever I visited my hometown, I found a huge void in the whole education system and wanted to bridge the gap. Despite thousands of coaching institutes, youth today lack career guidance. There is indeed a disconnect among teachers students and schools. This gap was instrumental in the founding of EduGorilla, a step that can be regarded as a turning point in my life. I single-handedly began it with the school listing project with my own savings and the loan from my parents.
- What challenges did you face while setting up your startup?
Apart from competing with other major players in your niche, getting investment in India or anywhere in the world is a learning experience of sorts. So that was a major challenge in the beginning for me. But then, startups do bring new challenges. Recruitment is always a tough job as we need talented, passionate and creative people who can wear different hats, in case the need arises. Another major challenge was to organize effective marketing initiatives or programs for the startup. Assigning the right amount of money to the right channels or sources of advertising for offline marketing was also a Herculean challenge.
- What made you choose Lucknow? Did you face any challenge while setting up EduGorilla here?
We shifted our base to Lucknow in 2016 and have grown from a 10-member team to over 60 people today. I have a home in this marvelous town and I want to contribute to making it a tech hub. Here, I have attracted talents from premier colleges. According to a 2013 study by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI), the city had the largest number of mobile subscribers in the country. An entrepreneur has more reasons to be optimistic about the future of the startups here. Right now, the city is catching up to have the culture for startups and hiring is a tough business here. But you can leverage more opportunities than facing challenges if you are flexible in nature and can adapt to the culture and in turn, can motivate your team to adapt to whatever the startup culture needs.
- Would you like to mention any local factor which helped in your success?
The large population of students in the city and in the state works to my advantage. Millions of students present a home market for any goods or services of startups. Lucknow has also been a cost-efficient option for me. Being a home to IIM and some IITs in the nearby cities, the city of Nawabs promises some very good pool of talent.
- What do you look for in an employee? What’s the HR culture like?
The focus on hiring right is tightly linked to the cultural fit point. We believe smart work is more important than hard work. The members follow a methodological approach and attention to detail and help new members in every way possible to get results. The HR team provides every individual the freedom to try new things and flexibility to move across teams. All the members are passionate towards their work. Boredom has no chance here as every new day brings more challenging and exciting work. Every member is coordinated and helped in every possible way to get the results or solutions to the problems.
- How do you advertise your business?
Coming from a technically and digitally sound background, I knew how to best advertise EduGorilla. All the major online advertising platforms like Google AdWords and Facebook provide you with extensive stats related to your advertisements. They help you determine what is working in your niche and what isn’t. Digital marketing is a powerful tool. I’ve also promoted my company individually by speaking at the conferences, writing articles for newspapers and magazines. It helps to let people know your potential and attract the best investors. I’ve also organized writing competitions in collaboration with IIM Lucknow. Based on all these initiatives, we were able to organize a successful fundraising campaign.
- What services does EduGorilla offer?
EduGorilla provides an array of services to both all stakeholders of education especially the students. The major highlight of our offering is the ‘Directory Listing’ where a school, college and coaching can enlist itself. We have enlisted 57,132 coaching centers across 53 Cities, 300,000+ schools across 8 states with 100,000+ reviews, till date. There is also a ‘Marketplace’ with around 74,539 free study material for 195 entrance exams. Our ‘Forum’ contains 10,739 Questions asked by Students that are answered by experts around the world. We have also reviewed almost all the top Coaching/Service Providers in the major market segments. Then there are over 30,239 articles pertaining to the education/career segment and 150+ careers have been analyzed in depth so far. We have a section called ‘Trends’ that offers live updates of 13 exams (30,000+ updates published). We also provide ‘Video courses’ from top Institutes.
@Technuter.com News Service
