Minal Anand, founder & CEO of Guruq, one of the fastest growing online education platforms, recently interacted with NewsX, speaking about her company as well as online education and entrepreneurship.
Talking about Guruq and what sets it apart from other online learning platforms and ed-tech companies, Minal said, “Guruq is essentially a platform that connects students with the best tutors. We have tutors for school education, competitive exams, for studying abroad and language learning. So, we cover the entire spectrum of learning that a student may need. Guruq is different because, on Guruq, the student decides how, what, when and from whom they want to learn and how much they want to pay. So, it’s essentially a platform built for the students, the parents and the tutors. We don’t impose our will on students. If you want to study online, at home, in a particular budget, it completely replicates the real-world scenarios. We’re not saying, ‘please study in this manner’ or ‘use this curriculum’ or ‘study in this structure’.”
About striking a balance among affordability, accessibility and quality education, while facing challenges in 2020, Minal told us, “2020 has been a fabulous year for the ed-tech industry because, prior to ed-tech, the complete focus of education had been offline. Online learning, even if it was there, people did not want to use or accept it. Covid really brought online learning to the forefront. Now, Guruq is a platform where we provide home tutoring and online tutoring, but prior to Covid, we had no demand for online tutoring. Everyone wanted a home tutor. Covid brought online tutoring and learning to the forefront and forced parents and students to accept the benefits of online education.”
“I think for us at Guruq, we were always prepared. We always had a hybrid model, the option of both home and online. So, it didn’t really affect us much because we had always offered both. There was a complete shift to online but it did not really affect our business. In fact, it only catapulted our business because we went from being a platform that was focusing on home tutoring in Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, to a platform that is now prevalent pan-India. We have tutors from across India, teaching students from across India,” Minal added.
Speaking about the first round of funding and plans of expansion, Minal said, “We are in the process of the first funding round. We were completely bootstrapped till now and self-funded. So now, we are going out for external funding and, hopefully, in the near future, you should hear more about it from us. As I said earlier, we were focused on home tutoring and gradually expanding within India. But Covid catapulted us to offer our products and services across India, overnight. Hence, expansion is going to continue, we’re going to keep scaling to tier one, tier two and tier three cities and make sure that we have operations in all cities and, of course, the eventual plan is global expansion because our goal is to have teachers from across the world teaching students from across the world, keeping in mind affordability and accessibility, because tutors internationally, in the UK or US, are very expensive. So, yes, we do have great expansion plans, both nationally and internationally”.
Guruq is also launching its new app soon. Talking about it in detail, Minal said, “Our new mobile app is launching next week and it is literally a 15x version of what the current app is. It’s a complete game-changer, and the UI, UX is 15 times better than what it is currently. It’s easier to use, more accessible, students will be able to find tutors more easily and make their choices more easily. It’s a very big upgrade and there is going to be a huge jump from the current system. It’s going to be available on the iOS store as well as the Play Store.”
Minal also spoke about her biggest achievements. “I always say that my biggest achievement is when students or parents or tutors reach out to me. Now the world is so seamless that I have parents and students and tutors reaching out on Instagram or LinkedIn all the time. For me, that is the happiest moment, when I get that appreciation,” she said, adding an example, “I had a teacher reach out to me, who was a housewife, and she sent me this long message on Instagram about how joining Guruq changed her life and her family’s perception of her at home. Her mother-in-law and her husband respect her so much now because not only is she bringing in income, but she’s also a teacher now. To me, that’s the biggest compliment because that means that I’ve directly made a difference in someone’s life. When I get to hear feedback from students and parents about how Guruq has impacted their lives or the positive differences that we’ve made, that is my biggest achievement. No awards can match up to that feedback.”
Lastly, Minal talked about her own decision to switch from a corporate job to entrepreneurship and gave a word of advice to young women who wished to take that leap of faith. “I always tell all entrepreneurs that, personally, I love working. I wake up every day to work, and if I didn’t have something that I was motivated to do and working towards, my life wouldn’t be fulfilled. Having your own company, starting something from scratch and seeing it develop, it’s like having a child and nurturing her. I always tell women that if they can raise a child, then starting a company is much easier for them. So, I always push women to go out, to reach for the stars, because we can do everything we put our minds to. Nothing is impossible if we make the most of every opportunity that’s given to us and we work hard.”
“Honestly, persistence is key. Because nobody’s life is perfect and every day is not going to go the way you hope. You have bad days and good days, but you have to remember what’s important and the goal at hand. If you really want to achieve something, you really can. I think Covid has taught us to not wait and think about it too much. If you have an idea and you think you can do it, just go out and do it. What’s the worst that can happen? If you don’t try it, you’ll never know. So, I always say, please try. Once you try and really believe in your idea, give it your 100%, because we all deserve to have everything we can in life.”