Buddy4study.com- Our Startup Story

Dear Rodinhooder,

I am Ashutosh, and a New member of Rodinhood Community.

I have founded one Educational portal “Buddy4study” for School Students, who belong to such places, where information availability is non existent.

About Myself, I belong to a remote located town “Patherdih (District-Dhanbad) of Jharkhand, born and brought up in a middle class family of 6 members.Our school too is superannuated in terms of exposure to opportunities. 

I experienced following gaps in my education:- 
GAP#1: No Relevant Information availability: No KVPY, NTSE, Olympiad, NEST information provided.
GAP#2: Lack of Proper instruction & quality resources for understanding Science concepts in class 11 & 12.
GAP#3: Lack of Mentorship: No one in my family or in school or in society could explain the difference of various engineering colleges and the streams, after clearing IIT JEE (AIR4255), CET Karnataka(AIR208), CBSE (AIR 3151), Jharkhand (State Rank158)

With my gut feeling, i joined Marine Engineering from MERI Kolkata, 

After MERI, i worked for British Petroleum Ltd, one of the best company to work for & with the best Professionals.
 
After 3 years of my professional life, I was Confused, Unsatisfied and Directionless, I did not  know, what truly I wanted from my life. With this  Dilemma, i appeared for CAT exam, and got  admitted in  IMT Ghaziabad Full Time MBA Marketing. Still, i was not knowing, what i really wanted to do with my life. Again, the Motivation and Cause , both were missing. Again, i reached a place,  unsuitable, unsatisfying  and non-tempting to continue further.
 

Buddy4study Ideation to Implementation: 
In first Trimester of MBA, We 3 friends, Ashutosh Burnwal, Nishant and Bhaumit Patel, conducted survey in Ghaziabad schools to gauge the awareness level of their students. Survey results were astonishing:- 80% students, confirms their unawareness beyond school curriculum and classroom teachings. Also they carried baggage of huge doubts and worries related to career and higher studies.
 
So, we decided to establish such a Platform which provides all these pieces of information in very simple and interactive way. Jyoti Kumar (My childhood friend since Nursery class + Senior Software Engineer) joined our vision and together this Brand “Buddy4study.com- Advancing School Education” was born. (Thank you Bhaumit for this Catchy unique Name). 

Website development- 
I needed a professional web developer & met Raj Chaudhary (a computer engineer with 3+ year experience) and website development  get  a head start. He worked full time in an established company and then worked for Buddy4study at night as freelancer everyday.
 
Gathering Scholarship information-
Due to absence of a common platform for scholarship information, I had to read 17 newspapers in our IMT Library in search of latest scholarships between 2AM to 6AM everyday and kept posting them on our website.

In my 2nd year MBA, 23rd October 2011(Deewali night), we launched  Buddy4study website with 60 current scholarship information and class 12 study materials. Students & Teachers liked our platform and idea and soon all India traffic on our website started growing up.

Critical Moment: To go Ahead or Not
In March 2012, when I was passing out, Statistics confirmed that we are on right track, we are creating value for school students, teachers and parents. And it needed to be taken Full time. However, Buddy4study.com was unsustainable as we are not seeing any business model in providing free information and study materials to non paying students.

However, Raj and I decided to adopt a professional serious outlook and come with a Gut to move forward. Raj quit his job, I opted out from the placement process of IMT and My MERI Senior Manjeet Sir helped us by incubating our team within his Noida sector-58 office premises. 

Idea evolution & full time commitment:-
Our Technical team had increased, we recruited two Trainee Engineer, to provide help to Raj. In the mean time, I started adding the content on website and visited numerous Delhi NCR schools. Delhi schools were hard to penetrate and convince to connect to our portal, as we were not offering any paid services to them, they were suspicious of our Free model. However, the new website development work were going on.

It took 6 months of full time work from 3 Web developer to complete this new more user friendly, technically advanced and a better futuristic website. We discarded the whole old website and launched this new one on the 1st anniversary day of Buddy4study i.e. on 23rd October 2012.
 
Growth Story:
Since launch, it has been 10 months, We are seeing a continuous increase in our traffic and registration from our target school community, but we still lack the business part. We are financially supported by friends, family and many other people who appreciate the idea and have confidence and trust on our capabilities.
 
Today, Buddy4study sums hundreds of important scholarship and competition information on time, However, with total 10% internet reach in India, we need other effective communication channels to reach out to potential students and we came to this new idea of Scholarship SMS alerts.This will also serve as a business model for our idea to sustain. (Eureka Moment..:) !!)

Now any one can subscribe for our Informational SMS alert services as per their need and category. The Cost of availing our SMS alerts service is Rs 100 per Student per Year. 
 
To support Idea and help me out with the increasing work, my childhood friend Sandeep Kumar has joined our team full time. He is an Alumnus of IIT Delhi (B. Tech, Mech. Engg, 2002-06 batch) and had worked with Applied Materials for many years.

He is looking after the complete business part, operation and the strategy formation. He brought the much needed professional touch on our work & sustainability part. 

Present Status:-

In this 10 months post launch of new Buddy4study, We have 2.2 million pageviews & 35K registered buddies  which includes 25K+ school students and 5K Parents. Rest are teachers, college students & professionals.

We are partnered with The Hindu, Prabhat Khabar & Amar Ujala newspaper’s weekly educational magazines “Education Plus”, “Awsar” & “Yuvaan”  for their Scholarship Alert columns. Total collective prints of 3-papers are 12.5 lakh prints weekly. www.buddy4study.com/news-papers 

We are also officially connected with 150+ schools. 

“Buddy4study Mantra:- To provide relevant information with proper mentorship to all students.”

Buddy4study Team:- (from left) Ankit, Romil Chaudhary, Raj Chaudhary, Ashutosh Burnwal, Sandeep Kumar & Dilip Kumar

Telegraph Coverage

Jamshedpur Exhibition for School Students.

Please share your views, suggestions and comments about our portal.

Ashutosh Burnwal

E: ashutosh@buddy4study.com