Chalk N Dust: Aims to Develop a Learning App and Increase Presence in Each State

BWDisrupt interacted with the team founders of Chalk N Dust, an Edutech Startup to know how their entrepreneurial journey has been from inception

Three passionate edupreneurs – Ankit Rathi, Dhiraj Bishnoi and Eshwarya Mahajan aiming to solve the problems related to teaching pedagogy left their jobs to open up a learning center in Faridabad (Haryana) and Bhiwadi (Rajasthan) ...while at the same time, two startup enthusiasts – Himanshu Ranjan and Shubham Shekhar left their jobs to work from the coworking office at 91 Springboard in Gurgaon in order to produce technological solutions in the education space. Destination had it that their paths converged over a Table Tennis game where they decided to join hands together to integrate both pedagogy and technology and the idea behind Chalk N Dust was born.

Chalk N Dust is a chain of model learning centers on a mission to provide quality, accessible and affordable education by integrating pedagogy and technology.

Brief Bio of the Founders -

- Ankit Rathi – An IIT (ISM) and IIM Rohtak graduate who seeing that the education system is in deep abyss thought to change the status quo.
- Dhiraj Bishnoi – An electronics and communication engineer from MDU Rohtak, who oversees the marketing of Chalk N Dust
- Eshwarya Mahajan – An MDU Rohtak graduate, and a mathematics enthusiast who oversees the financial aspects at Chalk N Dust
- Himanshu Ranjan – An IIT (ISM) graduate and a Young India Fellow who currently heads the Technology team at Chalk N Dust.
- Shubham Shekhar – An IIT Kharagpur graduate in Aerospace Engineering who heads the operations at Chalk N Dust.

Investment Status
Chalk N Dust is currently bootstrapped and supported by the Entrepreneur in Residence Programme of the Ashoka University. We are also in the process of getting incubated as well as the team plans to pitch for the edcelerate program of one of the organization which supports early stage education start ups.

Monetization Model
The main source of revenue is from the monthly fee charged to the students which is quite affordable. The team is generating quality study materials and test series so as to capitalize by reaching to students irrespective of our local presence. Chalk N Dust is highly passionate and committed towards creating gamified solutions so as to make the process of learning competitive and fun. The team is all set to create videos, audios, graphic novels and generate revenues from Youtube advertisements.

Competitors in the Space
We believe in the quote “Work relentlessly until your idols become your competition” Our competitors and inspiration are Allen, Vedantu and BYJU's

Market Opportunity & Possibilities
An Assocham survey valued the coaching industry at INR 1.5 lakh crore but soon there will be a shift to digital personalized solutions such as digital learning through MOOCs. The market opportunity is big enough to inspire our team to create pedagogical solutions as well as technological solutions.

Challenges Faced Till Now
The primary challenge is to hire quality faculty at our local centers and build products as well as teach within a limited time. Also, to pace up our growth, we need to raise funds to create personalized as well as scalable tech solutions. Also, we are very cautious about our branding and perception where we want to differentiate ourselves from the usual coaching centers.

Marketing Efforts put In
Apart from social marketing and digital marketing strategies, the team plans to conduct workshops and seminars in institutes, grow its local presence and branding by collaborating with quality local tutors, and run SMS, email and newsletter campaigns.

Future Plans in Mind
Our future plans include developing a learning app wherein students can access our quality content, a review based curated video content site, increasing our local presence in each state by using the hub and spoke model, and animated video contents.