How many times has it been that you have been asked for advices just before exam or last minute preparation tips from your siblings and neighbours and even small acquaintances? Infinite times for some people and at least once for all. Here is something that has got students excited and received positive response in past few days. Being deemed as the easiest way of revision ever by students preparing for exams all over, Prepmonk – a startup with roots in Bangalore is a must try for all IIT JEE Aspirants.
The cumulative effort put in by childhood friends turned entrepreneurs Pranav Jang Bahadur, Akshay Kumar Bhaskar and Aditya Goyal to gamify competitive exam preparation to help millions of students in India and on the world to achieve their dreams. Sounds cool right? That’s what happens jb mil baithte hai teen yaar :p
The three yaars define PrepMonk as:
“It is a product that is an amalgamation of 4 major pre-requisites to clear any exam i.e. Strong Basics, Taste of Exam like environment, Lot of practice and Rock-solid concepts. But here is the interesting part, we offer them in a way that promotes an urge to study more in the aspirants.”
That last line must have made all curious. The next lines elaborate the amazing prep tricks:
“The users are required to attempt basic questions first (the ones that would not require pen and paper and can be solved in matter of seconds but at the same time form the foundation of any good problem). As an aspirant gains more experience, high quality content starts unlocking itself. They get to gauge their performance level against other aspirants from all over India on topic, subject as well as course level. The custom algorithms ensure preparation in its true sense. While the aspirants are busy preparing, PrepMonk monitors their progress and keeps reporting their strengths and weaknesses from time to time.” Impressive Enough!
The founders of PrepMonk have themselves walked on the fire and understand the heat of these exams well. A brief introduction of the founders:
Pranav Jang Bahadur (CEO) – BITS Pilani Alumnus, with a teaching experience of 4 years.
Akshay Bhaskar (CMBDO) – NSIT Alumnus who built a fitness related operational business up from scratch in 12 months.
Aditya Goyal (CTO) – NIT Kurukshetra Alumnus who was the star coder at his previous employer firm FISERV.
And not to forget, all of them left their jobs at MNCs to pursue their entrepreneurial dream of going somewhere where their heart resided. From helping their siblings crack exams to teaching strangers online, the zeal for promoting education had kindled within their hearts from years. They always had a clear idea of what needs to be done and how to do it. According to them, not doing it would have been close to a crime. They wanted to give the best source of preparation to millions of students who prepare for competitive exams around the world to help realize their dreams:
During our own preparation, we became aware of the struggle a mere 17 year old has to go to achieve their dreams. We want to make the process more fun, engaging and simpler for them.
It is not always about the competition and the maddening rat race that we are all part of.
They believe EDUCATION is the best bet against whatever ill is happening around us. Be the old practices of dowry, the narrow mindedness that leads to honour killings, poverty or simply the helplessness that an average young mind faces around is can all be solved by the empowerment education provides. Most of the people in the PrepMonk team have humble backgrounds and they have the realisation of the power of education. Every parent hopes for a better future way different than their own past because they empowered their children.
Education is a beautiful thing and our biggest hope. It is at the core of all great things.
The thing that differentiates PrepMonk, that will launch on both Android and web, from their competitors is that they are competing with likes of BYJU and Toppr-both well-funded start-ups having backing of firms like Sequoia Capital. Everyone is delivering value to students and that is respectable but their product is to gamify competitive exam preparation.
Actually, the above paragraph is a bit misleading. It somehow says that what differentiates us is lack of funding 😛 But instead it would be great if we could portray somehow that – though they have big well funded competitors like BYJU and Toppr, it hasn’t deterred them one bit from building this highly effective product to help students crack these exams with a brand new game-like product. Everyone is delivering value to students and that is respectable but they plan to gamify competitive exam preparation market with their product.
“It will be such easy and fun to use product that users will feel no inertia to come to our app. We are not in direct competition with coaching institutes unlike other apps. So while the student today still has to attend school, coaching and then keep up with these content intensive apps, we are going to be like a cool wind in summer which acts more like a supplementary product that users will use primarily for revision and test taking.“
The biggest obstacle according them was hiring great talent while staying in budget. But since they wanted everyone to have the same privileges on the app whether they are preparing in a small village or a big metropolitan, they have decided to keep the entire product free of cost for students.
How do they manage working this way while they are still to raise funds ? Its all Jugaad. The Indian way 😉
Being highly disciplined regarding tracking of company expenditure, they keep track of every penny spent since day one till today.
“There is a feeling somewhere inside that we are travelers who forgot to carry their journey maps in the haste to leave early and now must figure everything out on their own. So, if we are bound to make mistakes (and learn) let us not make expensive ones, is what we decided.”
Whenever a major expenditure needs to be made in any department – development/design/market research etc, they do it only with the consent of everyone in the team.
Entrepreneurship tip: ‘This might not be very practical in case of big teams’.
But in their case if someone opposes they generally come up with a cheaper/jugaadu way of getting the same work done. So, it’s a win win situation! 😀
They never had full-time employees. They hire great students from smaller colleges who are passionate about what PrepMonk is and are doing and get them down to Bangalore, where they join them in their house cum office.
Although right now, the target audience for PrepMonk are the IIT aspirants, they would soon diversify themselves to and ensure that their contribution will not be limited to Engineering Aspirants. they plan to expand their product to offer value to aspirants of exams like GRE, GMAT, CAT, UPSC etc.
Future plans? They plan to move to cause more disruptions after PrepMonk in education field when the country is ready!
We want to explore VR (Virtual Reality) to make classrooms a dreamland of learning. Until, then we want to concentrate on a new way of content delivery in education that is way ahead of videos, animated content, lectures, books and even flipped classrooms. This a secret underground project.
Secrets make it more interesting!
Bonus for all engineering aspirants, the public Beta for PrepMonk should be out by the first week of May, just in time for everyone preparing for BITSAT.
They are running a contest for JEE Aspirants on their website right now. Huge prizes to be won while preparing for JEE and BITSAT. Click on the banner below to check it out.
