A tete-a-tete with Rohit Manglik, CEO EduGorilla on his EdTech startup and the future of education, as published in The Times Blog (July 09, 2018)

The cost of using data certainly has plummeted down than ever. And, all of you have been using the internet quite lavishly, for quite some time now. With the war of price getting intense day by day, users are availing various luxuries on their smart devices. And, these are at the rates never cheaper than before.

But the situation wasn’t this pleasant a few years ago, leave alone talking about a generation. Even to execute a simple task of reaching a spot in a city was ridden with several challenges. These included, firstly, knowing about the location of your desired destination. You had to move heaven and earth to discover the main route to arrive there. Besides, you also had to be aware of other tertiary paths and ways to take the support of in case a mishap occurred. You needed to discover other ways prior to reaching it. And this was bereft of any means as that of Google map of today. Also, count the agonies of employing different modes of transport to your use. This was, as often, no single vehicle carried you to your destination. You had to change the transport, one after the other.

It’s needless to say then, that, the jobs like this tested your prowess of both the kinds- mental and physical. Incurring the demands of greater will-power were an additional tax, that you had to pay, and your mind required.

Hardships Vaporising into Smoke

Cut to 2016, the year when one of the giants of cellular network companies introduced its immensely cheap internet services. The advent of this cheap data downsized the earlier exorbitant costs hugely. This cut was by, as much as from 80% (for prepaid customers) to 150% (for corporate counterparts). And it wasn’t only cheap data that provided greater mobility to Indians. Cheaper smartphones also appeared almost at the same time. The smartphones loaded with the newer operating systems, increased RAMs and external memory, swelled the bliss by manifold. This accompanied development readied the youngsters of the nation to enjoy the revolution by many times. The duo of cheaper data and smartphones ensured that Indians make the most of the benevolent providence.

As a result, from deciding upon the movie you want to watch, the most lucrative offer you can avail on ordering the pizza from the restaurant of your choice to deciding the best career path, the study programs and the colleges for it, and almost endlessly more, you find yourself availing these amenities simply at the expense of some taps on the touch screens of your smartphones. You can fulfill almost every kind of your need relying on these taps now. And, therefore, please give all thanks to this irresistible combo of cheap data and smartphones.

The Adversities in the Sphere of Education

The same was the condition of Rohit Manglik, the CEO, and founder of EduGorilla.com. EduGorilla is an edtech portal in the lookout for opportunities to ease students’ lives and education. During his school days, Rohit also suffered from the pangs mentioned above. These, for today’s students, would have been quite a huge roadblock. Imagine about the days when even for locating an average coaching institute, you had to undertake excruciating pains.

Firstly, you had to inquire from your family, friends, and relatives about your choice of the coaching institute. Later, (some of) you had to cover miles and miles of distance. That you did either through your own vehicles or ones of the public transport system. You also had to brave the fatigue incurred in that exercise of only establishing the credentials of the coaching institute. Sufferings like these later opened up the bigger front of worry for you. Consequently, that was of deciding upon the competence of the faculty of that institute. And you had to undertake this whole exercise many times anew, till you found the coaching class of your preferences. What’s more, even this couldn’t have satisfied you. Consequently, you had to rush to locate such an institute outside your city, to any big metro.

The Case with Rohit Manglik

In his days of studenthood, Rohit Manglik, with the greatest amount of money that he could invest, couldn’t procure the resources to weigh the competence of an institute and arrive at a conclusion. For this, he only had the traditional means of human resources and the perspective one forms after hearing about an institute from such resources.

They were the career and life-endangering torments like these that lit a spark of finding befitting solutions, in Rohit. Thus born EduGorilla.com, the dream that Rohit Manglik visualized from the day the above-mentioned spark lit and gave birth to, in him. Rohit founded EduGorilla on December 23, 2016.

Rohit Manglik’s EduGorilla and the Amenities it Offers

The Blog

Since the inception of EduGorilla, millions of students (@ 25,000+ pupil every day) have benefitted from it, to strengthen their studies via a slew of its services. The first to begin, therefore, is EduGorilla’s blog. The blog hosts more than thirty thousand highly informative articles and write-ups on all the important exams of national and the state levels, your suitable career paths, the study courses to undertake to make a beginning in that career(s), relevant coaching institute(s) to help you out in your endeavor, your first ever job interview and the ways to take it successfully, tips on subsequent interviews to further your progress in your chosen career, tips on making one or more switches regarding your career, and many more.

The Marketplace

The Marketplace stores mostly free and over seventy thousand entities of study material starting from study books to guides to downloadable PDFs and other docs. This brainchild of Rohit Manglik promises to greatly ease students’ educational distresses as these resources cover each and every topic of every level of their education-right from their high school to their events of graduation, postgraduation, and further.

Directory Listing

Similarly, EduGorilla’s Directory Listing provides a platform to answer students’ various queries regarding the school or coaching institution of their choice. These queries are regarding the proximity of these institutions from their homes, the fees, competency of schools, etc. This includes over fifty-seven thousand coaching centers and eight lakhs plus colleges.

EduGorilla’s Forum

The platform of Forum of this online marvel of Rohit Manglik entertains discussions to facilitate dialogues among different stakeholders of education like students, principals, managers, educationists, etc. Using Forum, these individuals endeavor to improve the scenario of education by resolving the problems associated with it, bit by bit.

A student, for instance, can start a conversation with his classmates, on a topic that their teacher taught them earlier in the day, but was hard to grasp. Similarly, teachers can also participate in such conversations, to provide further clearance and guidance to the students. Also, teachers can converse with each other. Forum is also open to educationists to share their thoughts on bettering education in a general manner. Managers and principals can discuss with the same motive and capacities.

Test Your Worries through the Test Series

EduGorilla’s Test Series greatly facilitates students’ preparation for taking their competitive national or state level exams like JEE Mains & Advanced, NEET UG and PG, AIIMS MBBS, CAT MBA, XAT, BITSAT, CLAT, LSAT, AILET, UPSC CSE, SSC CHSL, SSC CGL, GRE, GMAT, and a whole lot of other exams. The total numbers of tests sum up to nearly 14,000 which are spread across more than 400 exams. A whopping lot of more than 2 crore aspirants use EduGorilla’s Test Series.

The Lessons Gained and Perspective Developed from the Journey So Far

The journey of Rohit Manglik, as the Founder and CEO, has been ridden with some really important lessons. These lessons gave some new dimensions to Rohit’s perspective toward different challenges he encountered therein.

The First Lesson

The first of these lessons was of being prepared ever towards the natural occurrence of some challenges that an entrepreneur as new as Rohit, could face. Making an estimate of those problems and keeping ready an action plan for each one of them, is the key to the earlier phase of success. Rohit earned these lessons when, being the first and sole employee of the company, he had to don several hats, and sometimes, even more than one, simultaneously. Apart from writing the articles for the blog himself to taking interviews to hire the right candidates to personally monitoring the technical snags occurring intermittently, Rohit Manglik couldn’t afford to leave even a single stone unturned.

The Second

The second set of challenges related to acceptance of the fact that being an initiator of your dream, it’s ultimately you, who will be held responsible for every failure. And, this is particularly more for the bigger ones. The reason for this can be attributed to the fact that, if you fail to identify the upcoming troubles and allusions to forthcoming failures, in time, it’s only you who will be held responsible, instead of any one or more of your employees.

The Next One

Regarding promoting his employees, Rohit Manglik relied on the technique of offering target-based incentives to his personnel. This, apart from motivating the hard and smart working employees, also lightened him off his managerial and financial obligations. The ultimate effect was the gain of the much-needed boost for the company.

The Further Next

Similarly, Rohit Manglik bettered the front of providing valuable suggestions for the company by conveying the sense of belongingness to and ownership of the underlying spheres of jobs in EduGorilla, to every member of the staff. Consequently, the pieces of advice began to downpour which ultimately augured well for the business.

And the Final One

Moreover, Rohit bent over backward to ensure job security for each and every member of his staff. He granted the status of full-time employment to the successful interns who moved heaven and earth to speed up his dream venture to the path of stunning growth.

The Lesson Overall

Life is not a bed of roses and certainly not for the individuals pursuing their dreams. But, the investment of hard toil and resources merits exactly identical returns as well. These, Rohit acknowledges of having availed- from the happiness sensed at being the boss of your own to leveraging the liberty of breaking the set rules by and for yourself. Throwing a glance at the journey of Rohit Manglik certainly filters out the golden rules for an enterprise’s successful journey.

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