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ManagementParadise.com | Inviting Investors

By Meheer Thakare on 27 Comments / 2275 views

 

We are the pioneers.

Before there was a scribd or Docstoc.. before there were forums or even social networks, we’ve been there. We’ve really been there. Since 2004, we’ve been striving to add value to the management education sector in India. We started off with a simple HTML page and a dial-up connection that would run into Rs 30,000 per month telephone bills.

We’ve struggled. We’ve really struggled. Fighting our parents and reasoning with the professors we have strived to revolutionize management education in India.

All this for what, they asked?

All this for THIS, we say. All this for creating an unshakeable base that would bare the thrills of any Godzilla roaring at us.

So here we are presenting a deck on ManagementParadise.com. A couple of mails exchanged with Alok who suggested the possibility of Management Paradise being easily crowd-funded.

We would really appreciate Angel and VCs to connect with us realize (LIVE) our dream.

*****

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27 Comments

  1. please re-embed in max size and also add an image to your post (maybe your logo)

  2. Good luck with the fund raising. Recommend you get rid/reduce the shadow effect on the header of each slide as it is interfering with the text. Recommend https://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-deck to further strengthen your pitch deck.

  3. Founder is wrongly spelt as ‘Fonder’ under Kartik’s name on the 9th slide.

  4. Good Luck Guys!! May I ask you 2 questions:

    1. How much is yr EBITDA (%)?

    2. What % of your revenue comes from sources other than ad sales?

    I liked your concept. Would suggest you to add GMAT application filling, and MBA form selling in your revenue. They have good ticket size. All the best !!

  5. Thanks for your recommendations, Varun. 

    I will go through your deck. I have in the meanwhile, taken away the shadow effect. 

    Regards,
    Meheer

  6. Hey Rajat, Appreciate the finger point… Have updated the PPT with the current version. 

    Great eye, btw. Do shoot in any recommendations that you may have.

    Thanks,
    Meheer

  7. Thanks for the inputs, Alok. 

    We appreciate this.

  8. Hey Abhishek, thanks for your comment.

    1.) FY 11 – 12, recorded an EBITDA of about 40 %.

    2.) Revenues apart from ad sales are negligible. However we are exploring other shoots like our recent ecommerce play ( books.managementparadise.com ) .

    Our primary offering is in the management education space. Your GMAT and MBA form selling suggestions are interesting propositions that we are evaluating as we speak and I agree, the ticket size is good.

    Feel free to send in any further recommendations that you may have or connect with us on the email id’s mentioned in the deck.

  9. Please correct the spelling of Management here: “So here we are presenting a deck on MangementParadise.com“. you can also make that a link for people to click and reach your website directly.

  10. Well this embarrassing. And excitement should not justify typos. 😛

    Recommendations, executed!

    Thanks, Alok. 

  11. IMAGE

    Good content, each slide was crafted for its purpose & the readers.

    I would like to raise a simple question,

    By what ways managementparadise.com will be DIRECTLY helping B-Schools to come out from this unequality and limited in – Reach, Content and Community.

    And what will be the the product / service that u would offer which would not only show results but would also be contributing a good % in the revenues.

  12. Thanks Kartik…. will let you know if I come across any individual investor….all the best !!

  13. The Sub domain works : https://books.managementparadise.com/
    Though the main Domain does not seem to be working currently ? : https://www.managementparadise.com/

    HTTP Error 500 (Internal Server Error) – You can check this and update accordingly

    This is also true while clicking on the homepage or the Logo of the Subdomain from the books…. Maybe works after 15 minutes not sure if temporary issue though

    Ok this is what I tested from Kartiks FB page link : it is https://www.managementparadise.com/ there how ever if typing in just http://www.managementparadise.com does not seem to work, maybe I am wrong !! editing the url adding the https:// makes it work…

  14. Hello Darshan,

    We’ve recently migrated our servers to more powerful one’s at a different hosting provider . There are some server related issues that come up temporarily while they check for mis-configurations. 

    Apologies for the inconvenience caused and be rest assured, they are getting sorted as we speak 🙂 

    Feel free to send in any further recommendations that you may have or connect with us on the email id’s mentioned in the deck.

  15. Hey Yasvhir,

    The education sector in India is strongly controlled by the government and is thus closed in certain aspects. This gives us a slim chance to level-out the inequalities and limitations. The challenge is to stage up the maximum possible exposure to both Students and B-Schools. Thus our approach has always been to encourage inter-stakeholder collaborations, be it amongst students or b-schools bridging the Reach, Content and Community gap through our platform.

    Various target segments prefer different ways to consume content on ManagementParadise.com in form of discussions, articles, videos, blogs, etc. Our primary focus is going to be to continuously assess the need gap and make the best possible content available. This has worked well for us in the previous years, and we believe it will continue to do so in the future as well.

    Hope this answers your queries.

    Feel free to recommend and/or ask any further queries.

    Regards,

    Meheer

  16. Yes, most of it did, Thanks for replying.

    Okay, so did u mean you’ll be helping B-schools in just ORM?

    How are you differentiating yourself (managementparadise.com) from your competitors, say Sikhsha, PagalGuy, MingleBox etc

    In my opinion as a user, Prima facie the other sites, say pagalguy.com or mingleBox.com has got a lot of space for ads which at some moment may disturb the actual content & the TG. But management paradise looks like it has got a single focus / goal, which is the “End User”

    Its like others are yahoo & you are Google 🙂 thumbs up for the person responsible for Site Architecture (BTW may i know who is he?)

  17. Meheer,

    Since one of the avenues for fund raising is crowdfunding, have you guys considered raising money from your members.

    If you guys have 3 lakh+ members and have managed to build a strong community, then some of the users might not be averse to spending some money to invest in the company.

    If 1% of members agree to invest a thousand bucks each, thats 30 lakhs.

    Not only would it validate the strength of your community but you can also take it potential VC’s with the same.

    cheers

  18. Great effort, best wishes Kartik.

    One suggestion from slide 8, Linkedin and Scribd should not be counted as direct competitors. As their market or industry segment is not educational arena. My humble opinion to all the entrepreneurs is the way we have list of competitors, also think through if you would be on radar or on the list of your competitor, if not then we are unnecessarily fighting monster which doesn’t exist.

  19. Nice Preposition, Abhik,

    But as I am informed, ‘Crowd Funding’ does not have an all-out go ahead in the legal infrastructure of India. There are limitations to the number of investors and also equity dilutions for a private limited company.

    Regards,
    Meheer

  20. Hello Yasvhir,

    The differentiation is that we are focusing on business education and not specifically on entrance exams or classified listing for institutes. The value chain starts with the business students and as a part of the value creation process extends to help b-schools in their branding.

    Thank you for your appreciation. We take regular feedback from our users and their feedback is key behind shaping ManagementParadise.com. Thumb’s up to our members for it 🙂

  21. well, you could try sending out a feeler to see how many in your community might be interested…then take that data to VCs to show traction 🙂

    even if you don’t end up raising money from the community, it will give you a sense of the interest levels.

  22. Hey Arun,

    Thank you so much for your suggestion. 

    Management Paradise, as a community, pretty much leads the management education landscape in India. So we like to break our offerings into different deliverable parts. The performance determinant of each part are a competitive service and its consequential value addition of the management community. With that sense Linkedin and Scribd become justifiable competitors to our service.

     

  23. I meant a hybrid model – here people see the proposition and directly invest, without an in-between!

    so, in a way, its exposing an opportunity for funding!

  24. I’m glad to inform that one of our early members did connect with us and offered to contribute towards the seed fund.

    Apologies that I’m unable to grasp the hybrid model or crowd funding concept since a lawyer mentioned that we cannot attract more than 49 investors in a pvt ltd company. 

  25. Have you tried charging a membership fee to your members ? Yes, Crowd-funding is the way to go. I love the site. Keep it up….

  26. Hey Puneet,

    Thanks for your comment. We do not intend to charge the members for membership.

    Glad to hear that you love the portal 🙂 .. Many thanks !

  27. Meheer,

    I am not sure if you are still pitching to investors, but if you are, here are few thoughts that you may want to consider:

    What you have outlined here is an interesting concept, and one on which you have demonstrated traction from users and execution capabilities of the team. However, investors are not impressed merely by good products or websites or content. They invest in a good business case, which I would urge you to highlight in your presentation.

    Typically, a pitch presentation for investment should cover three points:
    1) What are you going to do – concept, value proposition, problem/opportunity you are addressing

    2) How are you going to do it – implementation plan, goals, etc. (including what you have done so far)

    3) How are you going to make money – the business case – revenue streams, business model, cost & revenue estimation, etc.

    Also, I would urge you to break up your funding requirent into two phases. For the first phase, raise just enough to prove the business model around the foundation that you have already built. Now that you have enough content and the platform in place, could you raise a much smaller round to test the various possible revenue streams, and the business models?

    Lastly, communicate what your vision and scale of aspiration is. Helps people know what their investment is likely to turn into if you succeed.

    All the best.

    Some personal observations on your website:
    – I thought it is too cluttered, fonts are too small and difficult to read (but may be younger folks find it ok)

    – I personally found the ads too interfering and intrusive… and too much in the face. This is a serious topic for your audiences… and hence, you have to see how you can protect the space for audiences, and yet create elegant branding options for customers. This like a media company and create ‘properties’ rather than just digital real-estate to showcase banner ads on. E.g. can some bank sponsor the finance section? Can Accenture sponsor the management section, etc. Do it elegantly rather than like an ad-filled site. (Also, websites with just advertising as the revenue stream is unlikely to get much interest from investors.).

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