Established in 2017, with a mission to transform the Ed-Tech world is Exambazaar (Exambazaar.com), providing prominent services with a novel approach. Gaurav Parashar and Saloni Khandelwal are the Co-Founders of the company. With sheer determination and unified efforts the company has successfully created a niche in its sector. To get more details about Exambazaar’s exclusive services and expertise, we bring you an exclusive interview with Gaurav and Saloni.
- Kindly brief us about the company.
Exambazaar is one of India’s largest education discovery platforms, which provides comprehensive information about test preparation for 50+ entrance exams. Students can discover, shortlist and book a demo at 38000+ coaching institutes in every nook and cranny of India, with the help of exclusive videos, photographs, past results and faculty profiles of coachings in 400+ cities. It helps students in every aspect of test preparation by providing free previous year question papers online, daily EQAD (Exam Question a Day), daily current affairs and preparation strategies from past toppers and top coaching institutes. In addition, it provides valuable insights into colleges, courses and career options in India related to these exams.
- Please tell us something about the Founder/CEO and his/her contribution towards the company.
Exambazaar has been founded by IIT – IIM Alumni Gaurav Parashar and Saloni Khandelwal. Gaurav Parashar studied at IIT Bombay, Computer Science (2006-10), and IIM Bangalore (2012-14). He worked in Investment Banking in top tier investment banks – Deutsche Bank & Goldman Sachs, London before moving back to India. Saloni Khandelwal is from Computer Science IIT Delhi (2007-11) and worked in Credit Structuring at Deutsche Bank, London for 5 years before starting Exambazaar. Saloni and Gaurav, both believe that education is the only way forward for the holistic development of India. Gaurav looks after the tech while Saloni looks after business at Exambazaar.
- Your perspective about the Ed-Tech Startup world.
An average Indian thinks of education as an expense rather than an asset. It’s something they must do because it’s required. They don’t know the possibilities which open up with higher quality of education (aka more spend) than the minimum education that they must have. Hence Ed-Tech startups which focus on delivering higher quality solutions to consumers are tougher to scale. Ed-Tech startups built around driving down costs to the end consumer will scale. Hence, building a company in education does not follow an Internet company’s growth curve. Entrepreneurs should focus on fixing problems in education for the next 20 years rather than quick fixes.
- Mention any awards and appreciations that your company has received.
Exambazaar is incubated at Bhamashah Techno Hub, India’s largest business incubator. We were shortlisted for the prestigious YCombinator programme, S18 batch interviews (600 startups shortlisted among 10000 global startups). We have been published in YourStory, YouthKiAwaaz, Internshala, Ed-Tech Review, Campus Twist and several other publications.
- Please describe the journey of your organization so far.
Exambazaar started in April 2017 in a coffee shop in Jaipur with a blueprint sprawled across tissue papers. Since then we have grown to be one of India’s largest Ed-Tech startups with a 25-strong team and a host of products. We started out with one objective – building deep listings for all coaching institutes in the country. We met with hundreds of coaching institutes personally to get their views on bringing the coaching market online including the biggest names like Allen, Bansal, Career Launcher, Career Point, etc. With a small team of interns, we built our database -from scratch to now having contact information, courses, photos, videos, faculty profiles, past
results and reviews of over 38,000 coaching institutes spanning across 400+ cities. With our base ready, we branched out into building a complete package for a student preparing for competitive exams. We realized that the most important elements of preparation are strategy, consistency and practice. And we set out to solving each of these problems through exclusive strategy blogs by experts and past toppers, daily quizzes, previous year question papers for 50+ exams, all for FREE for the student. We have slowly launched new unique propositions and grown our team to provide the best information and assistance to students. Our next step is to bring the entire coaching course buying process online to provide the ultimate convenience to the students!
- Kindly describe in detail about your distinct services and products / Describe the unique solutions/products that make your company stand out amongst the rest.
Exambazaar is India’s largest Coaching Classes discovery and comparison platform by far. We differentiate ourselves on both quality and quantity on information and services we provide. We have more than 38000 Coaching Classes in 400+ Cities covering 50+ exams. Why we stand apart from listing websites like Just Dial and Sulekha are our deep listings with exhaustive, verified information about fees, photos, videos, past toppers and reviews of coaching classes. Our proprietary rating system based on 15+ objective and subjective rating parameters is first of its kind and rivals MHRD’s NIRF. Map search for the best, closest, cost-efficient coachings and the ability to book demo lectures instantly online makes the process hassle free for the students. But the best part is the exclusive discounts that we provide on coaching courses that makes coaching affordable for all!
We continue to help the students throughout their test preparation duration with a host of different products for FREE
Question Papers – Previous Year Question Papers of 50+ Exams available to attempt or download. Proprietary Testing interface, customisable for every exam.
EQAD – Daily Exam Practice with Free Exam Question A Day in your inbox or on the website itself.
Current Affairs – The Most Important Daily Current Affairs, hand-picked for IAS, SSC, Bank, RRB, Govt Exams with summaries of important points, complete with weekly, monthly and section wise revision Capsules.
Preparation Guides – Preparation Strategies by exam toppers and the best coachings for the exam, by invite only
In addition, the student can benefit from our unique and innovative tools like ‘Best Coachings’ which has Expert reviews of the best Coaching Classes across India, ‘ExamWiki’ where students can get a List of ALL Exams they can write just by entering their qualifications and the latest exam updates for 150+ exams! In short, no platform in India provides the range of content for test preparation or covers the breadth of streams and exams that we do.
- What has been your game of plan to tackle the challenges in terms of changing trends, market players and innovations happening in the Ed-Tech startup industry?
Online Coaching Classes have picked up in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Even MOOC websites now host courses for low involvement exams like SSC and Bank PO. We think that consolidation in offline coaching can fight with the pricing pressure coachings face. Marketable products in the AR/VR space for education are still to be developed, but those can fundamentally change how the students in India learn. We stand at the cusp of change in terms of how students view education, and we are ready to embrace the move to online education because our platform caters to all formats of courses.
- Enlighten us about any new advancements and technologies that have had a huge impact on the Ed-Tech startup industry.
With introduction of Jio and the follow through in mobile data prices across companies, video streaming for coaching classes has become a lot easier and, more importantly, possible in the Tier 3 and 4 cities and villages. Many startups have shifted from USB / Tablet based coaching to online classes which can be streamed via the app. Super cheap mobile data prices in India have become a big boost to Ed-Tech startup industry overall.
- What is your advice to the young entrepreneurs in the Ed-Tech Startup Industry?
Ed-Tech as a sector is tough and patience in the founding team is paramount. Most entrepreneurs in education build the wrong type of business, because entrepreneurs think of education as a quality problem. The average person thinks of it as a cost problem. Try to find ways to disrupt the status quo of the current market rather than incremental innovation.
- How do you portray the future of your company? Tell us something about your upcoming solutions.
Our ultimate goal is to become the one stop shop both for students and coaching classes. We aim to make sure that if a student thinks about entrance exams, he thinks about Exambazaar! We will square off our test preparation universe with the facility to buy all coaching courses online, thousands of mock tests and online study material for FREE. On the coaching side, we want to become the most effective and efficient marketing channel for coaching institutes who wish to advertise their strengths, market discounts or sells out early bird or last seats.
