[This article is a part of our First Person series, where entrepreneurs write about their lives, jobs and careers.]
A start-up is like a newly born baby which needs extra care and guidance so as to raise well. Here in this blog, we will be telling you a story of “College Vidya” which is now the one and only platform where you can list all the online education providing universities and know their each and every factor. A story of how it started, and where we are now with an enthusiastic and hardworking team. Give it a read…
College Vidya: the Inception in Online education Paradigm
Yes, they said many things and laughed at times before we were taking a step to make a platform, Of course, it’s hard to be confident and stick to that one plan of yours with all the criticism around. But somewhere inside I was confident & convinced enough about my vision to start one platform for all the online education universities and its program.
It is our start-up, and start-ups sound amazing but the fact is whenever you try to bring a change in society be it old times or the society of New Normal i.e. Social Media it’ becomes the most difficult task because we the people don’t accept the change easily, we love to go old fashioned way or monotonously. So yes, it is where we just have started and we have a long way to go.
Our Roots
I was already a part of an organization named Blackboard Education & Research Foundation (BERF), since 1996, starting from a computer center of NIIT under the franchisee model for consecutively 7-years till 2003, and with such experience, we decided to stand to make our own stand so we started with forming our own education company i.e. (ICFE) that is based on imparting vocational training into accounts and finance. In ICFE we were successful in creating 75+ training centers, approximately 1000+ students in 2013, and it is when we moved into working with top universities that are offering online learning courses with an overall student strength of 25000+. Then we successfully managed to multitask and with the aim of providing the right guidance to students, we started to work with universities that are offering online learning programs.
Started From The Scratch!
When we finally got into our comfort zone and were good at our work again we felt like taking another step as we believe never to be in a comfort zone because from then on you can only work! Work! Work! and work monotonously and no experiments will be there which results in zero creativity. So after deep research, we finally came to know that there are several education platforms but no such platform for only and foremostly online education-seeking candidates. It hits us as for years online education has got several myths amongst the students and educators. So with our platform, our aim is to enlighten people with the rise of online education. An education consisting that has been revised with inculcating the latest technologies keeping in mind to make it a trustworthy platform.
What’s In The Name? It’s all in the Name!
It is a platform only for the online education programs and universities offering the same and also to clear out all the myths people have about online education that there are no jobs, the degree has no recognition, no placements by doing it, quality of education hamper, etc. But how will they acknowledge you? For that, you need a name that says it all. A name that will give us recognition in the future.
So it is a big challenge for us as there are 100s of names floating in our minds and we have to select one. So altogether out of the list of names, we shortlisted 20, and still, the challenge is going on as we have to select one out of the best 20. So we decided to make a to-do voting and it works. So we finally came up with one name that I’ll become the future hub of online education.
Here we’re introducing one of its kind “College Vidya”, a name that says it all, a name that covers all the colleges, universities, and online education programs with showing transparency. College Vidya came into existence on the 20th’ July 2020, the day we finally generated our work and the workforce. We speed-up the work and started making logos and we selected one out of 10, the best of all time for another challenge, that is what makes our portal different from the others.
What is so unique and student-friendly which will build trust amongst the students and drag them towards our portal so yes we’ve got the answer. The unique and unbiased idea behind this portal is that we introduced a compare feature, a feature where one can compare all the colleges and universities offering valid online education.
Dreamers… Do it!
I, Mayank Gupta, Director & Founder of Blackboard Education Research & Foundation and College Vidya.
“I believe in us, and not just me as it could be a vision of one man but execution and workforce is what really works out, so to start and run any project we need a teamwork together”
Now, here I’d like to share some of the names of my team, my College Vidya team from the day we were just four to now 300+ in just one year of hard work.
Rohit Gupta, Co-founder of Blackboard Education & Research Foundation and College Vidya, tremendously works on the upliftment of the company and has brought out commendable outcomes.
Sarthak Garg, I would say our Young and enthusiastic lad and Head of the digital team. No matter whether it’s day or night he works very hard with result-oriented.
Not to forget the hard work of a complete digital team be it the designers, content creators, SEO, and Social Media Marketers, we cannot be here without their hard work and support.
We believe that enthusiastic teamwork and a correct vision for the welfare of society without harming anyone’s sentiments lead to success only. We’re still working and will achieve our break-even point soon with the support of our well-wishers and transparency in our work.