PrepSmarter is an advanced online practice engine which is not just another fish in the large pond of Online Test Preparation (OTP) market. The startup claims that it stands out from rest of the competition due to its target audience, technology & features, geographical reach and most importantly focus on creating a sustainable and profitable business model.
Why this idea and how it works? OTP market so far is controlled by platforms mainly targeting Entrance Exams piece (Engineering, Medical, Management, Govt Jobs, etc). While There is understandable logic behind this rush because these exams are the most popular and high volume segments. But the challenge lies with the nature of the exams and the demography. First these are entrance exams where students are studying to get into a college (except govt exams), not to get a job right away and second, the students come mainly from Tier 2 /3 cities and may have limited intent or ability to pay for online test preparation service. And that’s why converting free users into paid user and cash-burn from a sustainable business model is going to be an uphill task.
That is where PrepSmarter is different, besides Technology. It is focused only on the niche top professional certifications in the world in the field of Accounts and Finance viz CFA, CPA, FRM, CA, ACCA, CPA Aus, ACA, CMA. These qualifications are well respected and almost guarantees a job. Market for these certification courses is around 2+ Million students annually spread across US, Europe, Australia, Singapore, HongKong, UAE and, of course, India. Given all that, the students are expected to be far more capable and willing to pay for a good practice engine.
Market size of the above mentioned professional exams itself is $400 million worldwide while overall online test preparation market is worth $20 billion globally. Huge opportunities exist to tap into other lucrative professional examinations and this could be one piece in the overall market which offers highest average ticket size.
On technology front, it is an adaptive learning platform which not only assesses the correctness of the answer but also the confidence level of the user while attempting that particular question. It blends the key cognitive principles (distributed learning, adaptive, confidence based assessment) with analytics and gamification, to provide the best learning experience. There is a unique dashboard which gives till date status of user’s learning curve (proficiency level) for each subject and also a comparison with average proficiency level of all other users.
Founders and their story Company was founded by Sharad Gupta (Founder) in early-2015 in Gurgaon and Pankaj Bansal joined him later as Co-founder.
Idea of PrepSmarter first took birth in the mind of Sharad about a year ago. Sharad, a seasoned finance and tech expert (IT Engineer, MBA, CFA) with tons of experience, was at that time heading L&D team for Royal Bank of Scotland in India and in free time running study groups for CFA aspirants as well. During that time, he realized the most of the learning in CFA & similar exams still happen through books & class-room and there is dire need for an advanced adaptive practice engine for these highly difficult professional exams. And he took the plunge to start Prepsmarter.
Pankaj came into the picture a little later. CA by profession and having bid adieu to decade plus long career with Deloitte & Standard Chartered around the same time to start a Consulting company, he felt drawn to the idea when Sharad showed it to him and jumped on to the bandwagon.
Start-up journey is exciting and frustrating both at the same time. In a startup, founder is always doing multiple hats and that eats up lots of productive man hours. And then finding right hires for your team is the biggest challenge any startup would ever face.
Present Status and future plansThe startup is currently having more than 5200 registered users from all over the world and with app-launch happened in Mar16 witnessing fast scaling up. The platform was free to use till Mar16 when it turned the online subscription into paid model per exam or per month usage basis. Its mobile app is best rated CFA learning app.
PrepSmarter is currently bootstrapped and is now planning to raise seed-money to augment its development team and for marketing spend. The company’s aim is to have more than 250,000 users on the platform by end of current financial year and have already started a focused & frugal digital marketing strategy.
