While I was looking for a startup into the education sector, I got a chance to interact with Vamsi Krishna, Director – Lakshya institute. The startup is based out of Punjab, India and is co-founded by 4 young graduate engineers from IIT. Lakshya aims at coaching students to get through India’s prestigious undergraduate courses.
On choosing the name Lakshya, Vamsi says,
A student dreams of clearing these competitive examinations to achieve his ‘Lakshya’ of entering the portals of the most prestigious colleges of India. We inspire and teach our students towards their ‘Lakshya’, hence the name struck.
Lakshya Directors: Saurabh Saxena, Vamsi Krishna, Anand Prakash and Pulkit Jain
(from Left to right)
Transcript of the conversation;
What is Lakshya Institute exactly? A School/ Online Guiders/ A Private limited company? Tell us the concept behind naming it ‘Lakshya Institute’?
Lakshya is a dream child of four young IIT graduates conceptualized with an aim to revolutionize the way learning is perceived and teaching is delivered. Lakshya institute is currently started up in the very tangible segment of IIT-JEE, AIEEE and medical entrance examinations training where we train students for these competitive examinations which they give after their XII std.
In future Lakshya group will launch into other educational initiatives like Online learning, Awareness and counseling wing etc.
A student dreams of clearing these competitive examinations to achieve his ‘Lakshya’ of entering the portals of the most prestigious colleges of India. We inspire and teach our students towards their ‘Lakshya’, hence the name struck.
Holistically we believe education is an enabler for an individual to achieve something or become something. In either ways education empowers an individual towards to move towards his final destiny, his aim, his ‘Lakshya’.
"A dream is all it takes to create a future", but what about the dreams of a vacillating mind. Do you still provide a future?
A beautiful quote says "There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly". A mind which is unclear may have many reasons to it but that is not reason enough to deny him his dreams. A true teacher not just teaches, he inspires and through this he shows direction and gives clarity to those vacillating minds. At Lakshya we cater to all categories of students some of them are highly focused some are not. But even before teaching at Lakshya, every session, every year starts with a motivational talk and explaining the bigger purpose. Such talks are a regular feature which is continued year long. At the end of the year a student, irrespective of success or failure in the competitive examinations, learns values and attitudes which go with him for life. At Lakshya we believe that these competitive examinations are no one to tag a child successful or a failure. He should be able to dream, a dream of his liking and with proper awareness and skills he will be empowered to achieve his Lakshya. This is the bigger aim of ours.
We have experienced that reasons for such vacillating minds are because they were forced out of their choice/interest into such competition. Our society and educational structure has a role to play in this.
Tell us about your team members. How did you recruit them? Are you planning to augment your man power by including employees?
Founding members:
- Anand Prakash (B.Tech, IIT-Roorkee): Co-Founder and Executive director
- Pulkit Jain (B.Tech, IIT-Roorkee): Co-Founder and Executive director
- Saurabh Saxena (B.Tech, IIT-Roorkee): Co-Founder and Executive director
- Vamsi Krishna (B.Tech, IIT-Bombay): Co-Founder and Executive director
We are four friends who started Lakshya. For us Lakshya is a natural consequence of our friendship. Two of us were school buddies and also prepared for IIT together. In coming 4 years at IIT, the group was to take its final shape as four of us came together and passionately spent time and shared ideas.
Our founding team and the other members of our core team all follow this philosophy and believe in this power of education. All we look for in any individual who shares Lakshya with us is his commitment towards our common goal that is to empower individuals and make them thought leaders. We have started on the next phase of expansion where we are recruiting more people for teaching and business expansion roles.
How did you bootstrap? How much time did it take?
Being students and customers ourselves we knew that there is a huge demand for such services and there is a big gap in the quality of tutoring which was being provided. Based on our intuition and initial research of the region (seminar in schools) we started this venture.
We chose Patiala to start our venture because we wanted to create systems and do things at our terms not having to worry about competition. We did not have to worry about fierce competition (which this industry boasts of) and used this time to develop and test our pedagogy.
Our research was of 2-3 months which primarily consisted of going to schools and talking to principals and teachers. We started in January 06 and by end of March 06 had our first batch running. By the mid of April 06 we had 6 batches running and were catering to over 320 students.
“At Lakshya we believe in this true power of education and dream of getting it to masses.” How do you plan to do it? List the number of successes you’ve had till date.
Through conventional brick and mortar teaching we can increase our accessibility only to a limited region. Lakshya is developing online teaching and content delivery platform which will enable it to reach out to masses. We have successfully implements our very own VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) by the name EzVidya for our internal students. In this session we will be releasing a beta version for outside students too. These technologies will enable us to cater to a larger number.
Any news on funding/feature updates and some scoop on the revenue model?
Lakshya was started from a personal seed fund of around 2-3 lacs which was from our savings. Till date we continue to be self funded and have not taken any external funding.
We currently operate under three verticals:
1. One and two year IIT-JEE, AIEEE and medical training: Regular classroom instruction and Test series and distance correspondence education. We have till date catered to 1,700 students in this segment.
2. iClass: Where we go on a contract with a school to train its own students. This is our first year and have 110 students enrolled with us.
3. Junior Wing (Aakar): Started this year we have regular classroom teaching for IX and X class. We had tremendous response in this and currently cater to 120 students. We wish to scale this section up next year.
In terms of financials Lakshya In terms of financials we broke even in our second month of operation and never saw red after that. We had a turnover of Rs 26.8lacs (12.7 lacs profit) in our very first year of operation. In the financial year 07-08 we had a turnover of Rs 1.20 Cr with combined profits of Rs 78.8 lacs (including Rs 48 Lacs in fixed assets), an overall growth of 348%.
More importantly we have gained expertise and proven the effectiveness of our pedagogy by delivering record results and have established the brand of Lakshya in the region. We now are evenly poised for scaling up, whose process is currently underway.
What makes you so upbeat? What are the evolutionary features that Indian educational pattern is deficient of?
The environment and the attitude of the team members to leave a mark in the education space is a motivation enough to put in that extra here at Lakshya and this makes everyone upbeat.
“Yaar, koi fundoo tareeka soch ye funda bacchon ko chamkaane ka?” (“Hey, think of some creative way to make this concept clear to kids?”) – is the question you will find people discuss everywhere at Lakshya. We love this spirit of youth and undying passion for working for a purpose – to innovate ways we can make learning more effective and interesting. Our 49 member team comprises mostly of engineers and science grads, and we all love to experiment and innovate, maybe not with machines and hardware to a large extent, but with the ways we can make a child learn – not just the rote formulae but the deeper meaning of it which can be applied on a broader scale in life. Every day at Lakshya is a new playground, where we all learn, experiment and innovates for the better tomorrow, of us and of those thousands of students who trust us for their bright future.
Indian education system is very competitive in nature. Right from nursery a child here is repeatedly told and conditioned to come first. Indian system has been very successful in churning out exceptional bright people with amazing results but as a consequence many children are made to follow a herd and forced to perform in a stream in which he may not be naturally good at. Choice is an option which many children here do not have.
How do you plan to monetize Lakshya Institute? Content licensing, Ad, Partnerships?
We at Lakshya feel that in the history of mankind of all sectors, education is one industry in which maximum research has been done. Strictly speaking entirely new content is never created. All people do is repackage, modify content, develop technology. We do not plan to waste time monetizing educational content instead we have invested our time in integrating available content and pedagogy and have tried to be a good integrator. We are in a process develop and integrate a system, which will be a combination of ‘content + teaching’, this will be our USP.
Please compare the Indian Study pattern with American. What changes do you recommend for the parental pressure?
As mentioned above American system is not as competitive as its Indian counterpart. That brings other challenges with it though.
Awareness about career and various options available to both students and parents is critical to address the issue of competitive nature and parental pressure. Parents are not aware that an alternate career can yield same or even much better, financial gains for his child and engineering and medical are not the only options. India parents have a tendency to see things in black and white, for them there is only Engineering or Medical/Commerce. With awareness they will then encourage their child to look out for more avenues.
The concept about knowledge acquiring; as it is freely available on the net, but all you need is directing and focusing a juvenile mind. How do you do it? Have you hired counselors?
Emotional Quotient is very essential for a child who is appearing for such competitive examinations. Apart from subject knowledge we also dwell into the emotional well being of a child. We have employed a Yoga-acharya who regularly counsels students so that they are emotionally fit. Again a first of its kind service, in India, in this domain. We have stress busters, movie shows and yoga sessions in the mornings which help a child to relax.
Please share some of your experiences with Lakshya Institute.
“Are tum khud to bacche ho!” ( Hey, you guys are kids yourselves!)
This was some two years back in Patiala when we just started. We were looked at by the Principal of one of the most reputed schools as a bunch of kids wanting to address a huge gathering of their kids, claiming to change the lives of their students. We were mocked, sort of shooed away. The challenge was to first get the gathering, which we eventually did, and then, to leave an impact on those young innocent souls. We spoke our heart, motivated them, showed them the bigger picture of the things to come, and made them believe in themselves. What followed was truly heartening; there were kids crying, flocking us, wanting to talk to us, some even came to take our autograph. That was the most challenging day in our lives, as it marked the start of our venture and gave us the belief in ourselves that we have it in us to create a system which can do wonders to the educational scenario. Above all, it made us realize what we loved most to do, igniting minds.
What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had in the business recently?
During the end of our first year of operation we needed some cash to leverage our equipment. We had good profits and balance sheets. When we approached the bank, everyone was interested in some security or the other finally one of the banks agreed to it but rejected us on age saying minimum age is 24. That was really frustrating of the banking system as if they have tagged that a person below 24 cannot start a venture.
What was the most memorable day for you at Lakshya Institute?
Our first two year batch gave their competitive examinations in 2008. Before that from a small city of Patiala only a handful of students used to get selected in IIT’s and other good colleges (2-3 at max). Our first batch had 33 selections in IIT and 115 in AIEEE. This was a record not just for the city but for the entire state of Punjab. No other city of Punjab, no other institute till date in Punjab had these many selections. It was really a proud moment to see the systems and the pedagogy we devised was capable of delivering results and that too from our first batch.
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My son is IIT aspirant and is in plus one. do you have any progamme for week end tests or coaching.
satyavan