Incepted in 2014, based out of Bangalore, epaathsala is cloud based software for accreditation, campus and compliance management for scaling up and improving operational efficiency of higher educational institutions around the world. Suman Nandy is the Founder & Director of epaathsala, based out of Bangalore. BWDisrupt interacted with Suman Nandy, Founder & Director of epaathsala to know about his entrepreneurial journey:
Edited Excerpts:
What led the inception of epaathsala?Suman and Prabol were working for Ernst and Young in the USA but always wanted to do something locally in India. Moreover, they were committed in helping improve the quality of education in India. epaathsala was started in 2014 in Bangalore with a vision to improve the quality of education in India and it was formed out of this desire to make a difference in your own country. It is a cloud based software for accreditation, campus and compliance management for scaling up and improving operational efficiency of higher educational institutions around the world.
Please elaborate key features/services offered by epaathsala?Epaathsala provides ERP solutions to the colleges and universities. These institutions are charged a fee to use the ERP as per the modules they use. epaathsala’s key highlight is to help higher educational institutions to save time and put their effort in management and compliance so that they can focus on what's truly important i.e. better education of students. For example, features to address mandatory accreditations such as NAAC and NBA are already included in the ERP which saves thousands of hours in manual labour. Educational Institutions find it extremely valuable to have an integrated end to end solution as it enables them to make real time data driven business decisions. Below are the major features:
epaathsala provides end to end ERP solution to manage colleges and universities with accreditation management for standards such as NAAC and NBA. Some of the major modules included in the ERP are:
a. Admission Management
b. Accounting and Fees Management
c. Student Management
d. Learning Management System
e. Library Management
f. Hostel and Class Management
g. Placement Management
h. Alumini Management
Once the institutions use the ERP, they automatically get an accreditation report with gaps and recommendations on how to improve and get better grades for the accreditations. epaathsala also provides consulting services to the institutions to improve their overall college management with an emphasis on how to improve the compliance with the accreditation standards.
Who are your competitors and how do you stand out among them?ERP providers such as TCS, ION, Academia etc. but none of them have accreditation modules built on top of a robust ERP like epaathsala. Management and the accreditation compliance are the most expensive propositions to the institutions therefore, epaathsala believes that ERP integrated with accreditation is the differentiator in the market place.
What is current funding status of your venture?The company has raised two rounds of investment from Times Group and Hyderabad Angels.
What is the Monetization model of epaathsala?Help education institutes improve quality by assisting them in getting and maintaining accreditation. The colleges can use the ERP module that is built on top of accreditation. This also means that if colleges use epaathsala’s ERP solution, they are already following the processes to get and maintain accreditation.
Please let us know the traction details?More than 1000+ colleges
What are your future plans with your venture?Reach 10,000 colleges in India and globally in the next three years.
What is your marketing plans?• Conferences
Epaathsala’s primary service is to help institutes get and maintain accreditations. The institutes can significantly improve their financial situation and improve the quality of the education simultaneously. Our services is a no brainer for the institutes. We organize conferences in each of the major cities in India and invite the decision makers. We believe that if we can get decision makers in the same room and we educate them on our services, our sales will explode.
• Digital marketing
We use the power of internet network with massive digital marketing. Use of social networks along with search optimization is our big priority. We believe that with digital marketing, our more technically able customers will be able to find us more easily in the internet and find value in our services.
• Door to Door sales
Of course, we will not completely stop door to door sales marketing efforts however we will use these efforts to convert the institutes as our customers in some cases while in in the other cases, we will invite the colleges to our conferences which we hope will help with our overall sales strategy.
What is the market size and opportunities for companies operating in education industry?More than $200 million
How technology is changing the education system in an organised way?
Technology is changing everything that we do in our daily lives. Education industry is no different. From attending classes, grading, learning assistance, student and faculty interaction, class planning, syllabus planning and so many other things are now being done with technology. While technology is making things easier and faster, it is also important to be careful to not automate everything as that may take away the core of education experience which we believe is the faculty and student interaction on campus.
How epaathsala's solution reaching out to colleges and universities to improve the quality and get higher student enrolment ratio?epaathsala helps colleges get, maintain, or improve their grades on accreditation such as NAAC, NBA, ABET, and so on with the help of an end to end ERP. In other words, epaathsala helps colleges with the following:
a. Improve quality of education at an institute
b. Help colleges get funding which will ultimately translate to better education experience for students
c. Use ERP technology to improve learning experience
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Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
