Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Arun Sharma: We work in the space of helping students, career seekers and young professionals take the critical leap from one level of success achievement/ to the next. We run various training and self-development programs to help students do the same. The I started my venture immediately after I passed out of IIM Bangalore and first started out as a CAT coaching company, where we were helping people prepare for this exam. The initial thought came from the realisation that there is a large vacuum in the provision of high quality content and training for various competitive exams & we felt that that was a space, where we could significantly contribute by our work. While that was the initial vision, over time the vision has evolved into a full educational service and product company. The vision at Mindworkzz is to get into wrold class products in three broad spaces- Test Prep Training and products; Professional development training and products; After School learning training and products.
Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Mindworkzz
Arun Sharma: Currently we offer products for
i) Preparation of Aptitude exams like - CAT, GMAT, GRE, CLAT, IPMAT and all other aptitude exams. These are all in the online space & we offer them both as products &/or services - meaning that a learner can choose to do an intensive immersive program with us where he is handheld and mentored through the course or do it as a take away product, where he can consume the course on his own with minimal intervention from our side.
ii) Professional development and Self-development programs - This is a fresh initiative from our side, where we are building products that will help people develop their professional skills and their personality and prime them up for success. We run courses for Cracking Interviews, Self development, Personality development, Succeeding in life, Improving learning skills, Public Speaking, English speaking, English Language improvement etc.
iii) Mathematics: We have a deep passion to help people understand Mathematics better & offer courses for math skill upgradation.
Great Companies: What makes Mindworkzz from hundreds of other Education Technology firms?
Arun Sharma:
The research and the quality that goes into the creation of a product. We do not believe in making me too products and for us, a product/service we offer has to be world class, before it enters our offerings.
Our long years spent in the industry that has helped us understand the learning process with a clarity we see lacking in most training systems around the world, is what differentiates us. Since our offerings are built based on this clarity of understanding the learning process, our products are never me-too products as they have dollops of originality in them.
Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?
Arun Sharma: Being Boot Strapped and having decided multiple times against getting funding, we have to sequence our product launches - as we need to devote full focus and budgets to every new product launch. It does slow down our pace, but we have learnt to live with it - because we know that the educational market is a long term market, and as far as your products are stronger than your competition, you can always enter the markets at your own speed.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Mindworkzz?
Arun Sharma: We expect to grow our revenues by 40-60% every year, for the next 5 years. This we expect to do through getting deeper footholds in the markets where we are major players and also through new product launches in the categories mentioned above. From a 5000 paid users company, we expect to reach 25000 paid users a year in the next 5 years.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Arun Sharma: Find a product/service that you enjoy creating, become the best in the world in creating it and then create a business around it. That's the template for long-term entrepreneurial success.