TargetIIT team points out the high cost involved in other IIT coaching
institutes’ programmes… either it is inefficiency or greed.
- Provides one of the most economic and effective IIT coaching in India.
- Charges really affordable fees for one of the most competative exam in India. Points out the greediness of other institutes.
- Web forum to engage IIT aspirants who cannot afford a paid service. Also very useful for physically disabled aspirants.
Edudigm.in
Today at microreviews we are very happy to announce the start of a new series where we will present before you all the insight into the businesses of upcoming startups in India. We will try to bring even the interviews of people who are running these startups. Maybe do a bit of evangelism for these startups.
So today we are going to give you a peek in to the world of TargetIIT and Edudigm . Both of these are run by the same set of guys , IIT alumni themselves and serve the same purpose.While TargetIIT is free, Edudigm is premium service and a good one at that, and comes at a very affordable cost. And we will bring some good news as always.TargetIIT is moving offline too, collaborating with some schools. They are now present not only in the web world, but are also doing some real stuff. Edudigm has its own printed course material for IIT JEE aspirants. The most important part is that they do not charge your whole months salary for this. And within this small cost they provide everything from study material to tests and even interactive sessions to help students learn and understand better.
First let us take you through the interface of TargetIIT which seems so much Web 2.0 and yet the makers feel there is so much more to do , which may just give you an idea of the high standards set by these guys.You have so much on these sites that for an IIT aspirant, we dare say that he does not need to go anywhere else when he is preparing. There are question-answers forums,sample tests, a good community to interact with ,some brilliant articles, some good downloads and links and much more. We would rather say, go and get yourself a peek into the best thing which seems to have happened for IIT Aspirants in the Web Space .
What can be better than to put the readers of Microreviews face to face with Nishant, one of the 5 people responsible for this wonderful business cum initiative. Here is an exclusive interview with Nishant given by him today evening.
Microreviews: Hi Nishant…can you give a small introduction on what you do?
Nishant: TargetIIT and Edudigm are the two initiatives we have running right now…both are for IIT JEE. TargetIIT is a free site, Edudigm on the other hand is a paid one.
Microreviews: Why did this idea of IIT coaching come up to you…you were about to be a mechanical engineer from IIT KGP? Why did you decide not to go for any of the contemporary jobs?
Nishant: Well the thing is that I mostly never wanted to work…work as in a more contemporary way. So this idea struck us when we were near our placements.
Microreviews: How many people are you…and what made you stick with them?
Nishant: Right now, including Edudigm, we have 20 odd people working…of which 5 of us are full time..
Microreviews: That’s wonderful…but we suppose the initial times would have been very difficult…can you tell us some interesting story from you initial days…how you struggled to work, eat etc.
Nishant: Yes it was very difficult at times…basically we started with no money!! What we used to support ourselves with was by freelancing…so in the part time, we would freelance as web developers…for the first 6-7 months, there was no revenue from our venture…revenue started coming from Edudigm.
Microreviews: But you said that the market was very bullish…so had only hope had kept you driving?
Nishant: Not exactly hope…but we were working on building a brand for 1 year.
Microreviews: What did you do for that?
Nishant: We used TargetIIT aggressively to help students get answers to their queries or doubts.
Microreviews: What extra do you give in Edudigm that makes people pay for that service?
Nishant: Printed study material which is delivered to their home…and extra tests…in a more technical term…test series coulpled with a correspondence course.
Microreviews: Was your brand building in one year so strong that people were actually ready to pay you…even after so many things were already buzzing the market…by the way…the site looks perfectly WEB 2.0…kudos on that.
Nishant: Thanks 
…but we feeel that there is much more to do that it can be a real web 2.0 application…in the sense that the content generation from the user site etc.
Microreviews: All good apps have to think that way… …by the way…buzz generation in the web space is a big thing. How do you manage that?
Nishant: Yup…we did build a web application on orkut by the name Periodic Table.
Microreviews: Tell us something about that.
Nishant: It basically displays the elements on the periodic table. It is a two language application.
Microreviews: We have actually seen that getting used.
Nishant: That is the little we have done on this front. Other than that we have an Orkut group and a Facebook group. But there is nothing too substantial about viral marketing that we have done
Microreviews: Coming back to money…what do you charge for your material? How did you manage to compete with so many big players?
Nishant: The competition is there but we are different from others in the sense that our material contains animations and ppts. So, that is one incentive…and the other good thing is that the market is a very big one…and not every one can pay 15k for the course…we charge around 7k for it.
Microreviews: So ‘cheap’ is the word…but does that mean very less profit margins for you?
Nishant: No it does not!! Our margins are quite high.
But I suspect why the other coaching institutes charge so so high!!! May be the whole structure most of them have created is too inefficient.
Microreviews: That could be true…good to hear that you are having good margins…something which points to the others…inefficiency or greediness…by the way how do you plan to scale up?
Nishant: We are already getting into a tie up with a huge media house. So we are starting a coaching with schools here (Read Kolkata). We have tied up with a few schools already. So we are getting to offline mode…if you observe carefully the trend with online portals, the trend is that they are all going…Shaadi.com…Naukri.com…
Microreviews: Yes…we have seen that happen with almost all web startups..
Nishant: And that is something I see very relevant.
Microreviews: Yes it does make sense…and anything like you’ll be employing full time people? Becuase a lot many people are looking…for that.
Nishant: Yes we are looking at something like that.
Microreviews: So when you employ full time …then you would need to give out salaries…in such a situation…how would you manage your USP…”cheaper than the market”?
Nishant: No not at all..the thing is that there are a lot of people who dont have enough to pay…and when we collaborate with schools, we get far more students than you would otherwise.
Microreviews: So…its also a social cause for which you are working…kudos for that (There is a “support a child tab” in their website too).
Nishant: : And that gives us the “ability” to charge much lesser…moreover, no matter how low you charge, if you dont teach well, students will move out!! So quality is not on compromise… (if that is the impression that cheap gives).
Microreviews: Going back to online mode…what new feature or something which we can look fwd to in your web app?
Nishant: We believe that on our application there is almost everything that you can think of…but what we are working on is to improve the content…in terms of theory and notes…that is what we are trying to add…feature wise it is complete…but content is something that is missing..like we have to complete…wiki.targetiit.com…in the sense that we have to get the content there.
Microreviews: That sounds cool. We would be putting up the content of this chat on microreviews.org in our startup review series…would you like us to have some message sent out on your behalf?
Nishant: Dream to Dare, Dare to Dream …nice having a chat with you guys
Microreviews: You can keep looking for updates at microreviews.org …we love dreamers…and you have certainly been one who realised his dream. Thanks a lot.
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