CHENNAI : Nurturing a dream to improve the quality of education in his home-country, US-return Suman Nandy conceived Epaathsala for the benefit of educational institutions across the nation. Helping the education sector to earn accreditation and making the same easy with their platform, www.epaathsala.com, the Bangalore-based startup was founded in the year 2014. “When I returned from the States, I realised that there is a gap in communication and information when it comes to educational institutions getting accreditation from the government.
Reasons may be many, but I understood that there is a way to make it easy for such institutions to improve their quality of education such that they achieve accreditation. In turn it would also improve the overall quality of education in the country,” says Suman. Epaathsala collects, data, records and documents from the institutions through cloud-based software and advices and creates reports them in the format to apply for accreditation.
Started up with the investment of `20 lakh of his own, Suman faced the challenge of getting users accustomed to a change. “The managements, particularly the faculty, were not familiar with the information and communication technology that is used against the traditional forms of storing and submitting data. And as goes for any change, they were apprehensive about the same.
We made sure that we created our software to be incredibly simple such that the faculty and management — even those who aren’t well-versed with technology — find this process easy,” confesses Suman. The team stays in constant communication with government and administration to keep their software up to date and understand the requirements better.
Epaathsala, over the years, also received funding from Hyderabad Angels and are obliged to keep the details of the capital confidential. Epaathsala’s revenue is dependent on the fee that institutions pay to subscribe to the platform on a monthly or yearly basis. “As our model and our service is so unique, it would take about three or four more years to break even,” admits Suman.
However, with their platform serving a niche user-base, they also do not face the challenge of competitors in the market. Suman says, “It’s not all about the money. Although we are a for-profit company, our main motto is to improve the quality of education in our country. We also provide workshops which help managements get accustomed to ICTs and about how quality of education can be improved within their authority.”Epaathsala not only functions in all the major states (besides the northeastern states and J&K), but has also launched in Australia and USA. Suman plans on improving their AI more adept at understanding the needs of their users.
In a nutshell
● Epaathsala is a platform founded by Suman Nandy in 2014
● It collects data and records from educational institutions through cloud-based software and creates reports in the required format to apply for accreditation.
● Epaathsala was started with the initial investment of `20 lakh that Suman put in
● They later got funding from the Hyderabad Angels