Career Power Plans to Cross Rs 50 Crore in the Next FY

BWDisrupt interacted with the founding team of Career Power, to know more about the startup venture and spoke about the opportunities in the Edutech sector

Dream big and work hard towards achieving your goals. -Anil Nagar, the CEO and Co-founder of Career Power, must have followed this axiom to the hilt to achieve the levels of success he has today. Hailing from a small village in Uttar Pradesh, Anil was keen to prepare for the IIT JEE exam and get into one of the premier institutes of the country.

Due to lack of proper guidance from the teachers of his hometown, however, Anil was forced to pack his bags and leave for the capital, New Delhi. In Delhi, he enrolled himself for IIT JEE coaching classes and worked hard to make it to the top list. In 1998, Anil cracked the competitive exam by securing an All India Rank of 1439 and joined IIT BHU for Electronics Engineering.

That was the turning point in his career. Anil, after graduating from the top-notch institute, went on to gain some corporate experience with powerhouses such as Jaypee Group, Liqvid, ITM University and Cognizant Technology Solutions. In the meantime, he also continued his studies and pursued MBA from Goa Institute of Management.

In 2010, he called it quits from the daily grind of a job and decided to follow his heart. Anil realized that just like him, there were still thousands of students aspiring to crack competitive exams but are not being able to do so due to lack of proper guidance, affordability and mentoring.

Therefore, in order to solve India’s educational problems by providing affordable and excellent quality education using technology and offline classroom training, he along with his friend Saurabh Bansal, a finance graduate from Delhi University went on to start Career Power in April 2010.

The two invested Rs 1 lakh in their venture and in the first year itself, Career Power was able to reap profits. Out of 32 candidates enrolled in the first batch, 26 were selected in various jobs. In the initial years, the duo decided to spend every penny judiciously and also shouldered the entire responsibility from doing menial tasks to training students, all by themselves.

In the past few years, the Career Power brand has diversified and effectively established itself as a household name in India. To build a world class platform for learning and assessment, Paresh Goel (Ex-CTO, Hike Messenger) joined Career Power as co-founder and CTO. Under his guidance, whole array of app and technical activities are currently going on.

1. What are the unique key feature & services of Career Power and How Career Power is different from their competitors?
Career Power’s unique feature is its strong presence in online and offline mode. Their applications bankersadda.com and sscadda.com attracted more than 20 million users in last 1 year. Both offline and online modes help emphasize the qualities of the other.

Career Power’s mobile application Adda 247 is also a runaway success with around 10 Lakh downloads within 4 months of its launch and tag of one of the most look-after educational app on google playstore. With average per user time spent of 25 mins, it is one of the most used app in educational category in India. As per the latest rankings by similarweb.com, adda247 app was ranked second among all educational apps in India. Features like Artificial Intelligence based learning; interactive social media platform and availability of whole bouquet of online learning material are bound to make it a game changer in coming months.

Anil says that the professional environment of the company and their work culture which clearly signifies the philosophy ‘Happy Teachers, Successful Students’ differentiates them from their competitors.

2. What kind of Challenges the startup faced initially?
In the initial years of career power, the challenge was to establish Career Power as a brand name in the education industry. Limited availability of funds proved to be a big challenge. Company was bootstrapped for the initial six years and all expansion was done through internal accruals of the company.

Another big challenge was to transforming from a offline test prep company (Classroom based) to a Full-fledged online Education-technology (edtech) company. It required a total change in mindset – with respect to student needs, technology understanding, content generation for online etc. When we started the company, we had a clear that we have to take quality education to every home in India.

Market for government job test prep is really big. More than 3 crore aspirants appear for various exams every year and average fee for a course is Rs.10,000. So, even as on today, we are catering to 1% of our target market. We are a long way to go!

3. Please elaborate a little on the future plans you have decided for the startup?
Career Power aims to become the Career Power focuses on Bank Exams and SSC Exams, where students can self-assess their preparation along with access to a detailed analysis. educational start-up in India, delivering the best quality training to students using a unique hybrid model- a combination of offline and online content delivery.

With a focus on leveraging technology to deliver world class educational solutions across India, the founders are keen on developing high-tech educational platforms, through which seamless educational content can be made available to all the students.

Career Power focuses on Bank Exams and SSC Exams, where students can self-assess their preparation along with access to a detailed analysis. The content team, which comprises subject matter experts, translators, and typists, are always updating the content so that students are able to prepare well for their exams.

It is also integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their App which will guide the students to prepare, based on their performance and progress on day-to-day basis. They also cater to their students through live classroom teaching which helps them to remotely access the classes.

Besides expanding to more geographies the founders are looking to diversify their course offerings and add CTET, NDA, CDS, IAS, Railways, and a few other entrance exam preparatory courses to their academic portfolio. Eventually, the venture plans to be a full-fledged edtech company catering to all segments and all age groups. In terms of revenue, last year, Career Power crossed Rs 27.5 crore and plans to achieve at least Rs 50 crore in the next fiscal.

In pursuit of providing preparatory opportunities to students from every corner, demography and family in India, Anil Nagar has established Career Power as one of the bright beacon of how an academic training center needs to run. His vision, however still remains that day when no children would have to run from their parents in order to pursue their dreams.

4. Tell us about any kind of funding that you have received so far?
We have recently raised a series A funding from a large business house. Details are confidential as on date.

4. What is your Monetization Model, Recent Traction Details and Marketing Plans?
Fees charged for classroom courses, online assessment tools and videos are largest contributors in revenue of Career Power. As far as Marketing in coaching industry is concerned, it is more of a word-to mouth affair in India.

We already have more than 2 crore users on our online platforms, and, all these are organic (zero marketing spend). Even our app Adda 247 app has grown organically. Management of Career Power also believes that students are their only brand ambassadors.