A team of four IITians conceptualize the vision to start an educational enterprise which can bring noticeable changes in the approach of teaching and learning in India. How did these guys succeed in generating an interest among the youth to pick the teaching profession and become “Teachers by Choice”?

To answer these questions and talk about his entrepreneurial journey, Pulkit Jain, co-founder of Lakshya Institute and Vendantu Innovations Pvt. Ltd., interacted with a crowd of start-up enthusiasts in an event conducted by Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell at IIM Bangalore.

Pulkit Jain graduated from IIT Roorkee in 2005 and served as a business analyst at Evalueserve. After this brief spell, he and his group of four friends quit their lucrative jobs and started Lakshya Institute in 2005, a period when the start-up ecosystem was not as glamorized and sentiments were down after the software burst of 2001.

In a small city of Punjab, these four masterminds saw this period as an opportunity to lay a foundation to something big, and were okay with starting small. They started to recruit employees from various IITs and NITs; graduates who had a passion for teaching and making education more interesting. The pedagogy of the institute was based on “Teacher + Instructor led Content”. From 2005 to 2012, it grew to 200 members and expanded in 5 cities.

Lakshya Institute was sold off in 2014, and the founders pursued a broader vision which was to democratize knowledge. Three basic principles guided them to start their next venture; (1) personalize education, (2) produce and recruit “Teachers by Choice” and (3) democratize knowledge. Thus, Vedantu Innovations Pvt. Ltd. was crafted in 2012 to provide an online tutoring platform for the public.

The Vedantu model was based on “one to one live teaching”. The founders, who themselves have personally mentored more than 10,000 students, brought a disruptive idea to change one size fits all model, with an aim to not just supplement but replace primary education systems. Their vision was to create a “Knowledge Network” and help students to discover and choose to learn from an online tutor of their choice.

Mr. Jain disclosed that they are ready to go slow as any model in education sector will take time to develop, expand and flourish as a lot of behavioral changes is required in customers, and decisions related to education are very critical for the student and the parents.

As an entrepreneur, he talked about his learnings in his journey. He puts team work above all prerequisites to become successful and believes that “Start-up” is about creating a team that is capable of learning, unlearning and relearning to suit the needs of time and company.

He alleged the audience in finding the right reasons, aligning themselves to these reasons and creating an idea to which one can devote themselves. Ability to tackle negative pressure, financial prudence, persistence and perseverance are the other prerequisites to enter the start-up ecosystem.

Vedantu raised $ 5 million from Tiger and Accel in May this year, on this note Mr. Jain discussed about how funding accelerated growth for the startup and brought in increased financial prudence. According to him investors evaluate a startup on the capability of its core team and disruptiveness of the idea. He believes that getting the funding at right time is very important for any startup. He is also a part of several angel investment groups like Powai Lake Ventures and has invested in various fledgling start-ups.

He bowled some important advices to the crowd and asked the budding entrepreneurs to share their ideas freely with others, participate in start-up events, and engage in discussions with people in industry to understand the gap between suppliers and customers. He encouraged them to reach out to seniors and juniors active in start-up ecosystem. He is of the believe that a lot of talented and accomplished people are ready to help, one just needs to identify them and seek help. He also added that books like Lean Start-up and Paul Graham Essays are must-reads for entrepreneurs.

Mr. Jain considers the start-up ecosystem to be a very vibrant ecosystem in India. He thinks that industry is ready to absorb people even if the idea bombs, thus the risk of failures have reduced over the years. He concluded by advising the young minds to go forward with their ideas and pursue them with persistence.