Diwakar Chittora had a passion for learning new technologies from an early age and designed his first website when he was in Class X. After working for companies like American Express, Mercedes Benz RandD and Wipro, he started Intellipaat Software Solutions in 2011 with his life partner Shilpi Jain, who had earlier worked with Microsoft India and IBM. Intellipaat is an online training company that offers e-learning courses on technologies like Big Data, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, Data Sciences and Application Development.
They were among the first to offer online HADOOP (open-source software framework for storing and processing big data) courses in India, and provides 24/7 access and support to their students for 36 courses across technologies. Their platform currently has more than 1,50,000 learners. The e-learning courses have been priced between Rs 3,400 to Rs 10,000, inclusive of taxes, so that they are affordable to a large population. Intellipaat also conducts corporate training programmes for more than 40 clients, including Ericsson, Genpact, Wipro, Cognizant and TCS, and have trained more than 15,000 professionals globally.
“It all started in 2011 when we got a call from Ericsson to train their employees on HADOOP and Big Data technologies. We were excited as our first order was from one of telecom giants worldwide. We spent time to understand their training requirement and were able to provide best quality training at a competitive price. Today, Ericsson is our biggest client and Intellipaat is the training partner for Big Data programs there,” recalls Diwakar about the early days. He adds, “I have personally trained personnel at more than 30 corporates, including CEOs of companies working on niche technologies.”
They are shifting to a bigger office in Bangalore soon and will be hiring 30 full-time employees over the next two months. “We are looking forward to becoming one of the leaders in the e-learning industry this year,” says Diwakar. Diwakar is from Ajmer, Rajasthan, where he studied at Maheshwari Public School. He did his BE in Industrial Engineering and Management at Siddaganga Institute of Technology, Tumkur, Karnataka, where he designed the website for their department newsletter and saved more than Rs 60,000 that used to be spent for the print version in earlier years. He then did an MTech from International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, where he won an award from Adobe for designing a virtual wardrobe website that could be used by online shoppers to try different clothes shown on fashion portals.
Shilpi is from Jaipur and did her MCA from IGNOU. She was a technical architect at IBM before moving to Intellipaat. A sportsman since childhood, Diwakar believes that hard work and team work will never go in vain. “I was lucky to work with new teams at big MNCs, where we had to solve issues that startups usually face and it gave me a sense of how a startup environment would be. This is helping me with current situations,” says Diwakar.
His role model is Narayana Murthy, Founder of Infosys, who “gave India Inc visibility on the global stage, and was able to actualise his vision through clarity of thought and a focus on achieving results, with the right team”. Diwakar is on the lookout for a mentor to guide them in the entrepreneurial journey.
Diwakar loves watching movies and enjoys chatting with friends and family when he finds time. For details on the courses, visit www.intellipaat.com.
— rohit@learnbizsimulations.com