UniApply: One-Stop Solution for all Education needs

Choosing your career is an important step because your future is at stake. It is generally observed that a large section of students are unaware of what they want to achieve in life or how they can achieve their goal. This amounts to a situation like boarding a train without knowing one's destination. Undoubtedly it may result in waste of precious time as well as money.

Team GeekOnNet comes again with one of the hottest startups "UniApply" (www.uniapply.in) of Bangalore (Bengaluru).
Three IIT Bombay alumni started UniApply (www.uniapply.in), an educational portal in July 2010 with a vision to eliminate information based discrimination among students. UniApply is a one-stop solution for all your education needs in terms of choosing the right institutes and most importantly applying to them. This trio furthers the goal of a successful transition of more students from high school to college and also help them in career advancements.
In an exclusive interview to the GeekOnNet team, Ranjan Banerjee, co-founder of UniApply (www.uniapply.in) speaks about his company, its targets and future plans.

Venture Name: UniApply (www.uniapply.in) Founder(s): Ranjan Banerjee, Kamlesh Laddad, Akshay Ukey.

The Geeks: How did you get the idea to start UniApply?

UniApply: Each and every one of us in our student life has surely been through the "All pain, No gain" application process and it was this realization that led to the need for automation in this sector. Today, almost all the students apply to multiple academic institutions before taking admissions in any vertical. However, there is a lack of connection resulting in a huge gap between various institutes and student/parent community. Hence, we aim to bridge the gap through our products and services by bringing all the stakeholders in education - students, parents, institutes, etc into a common platform.
UniApply aims to serve as a technological link between the educational institutions and students. While eliminating the prevailing information arbitrage, we aim to smoothen and strengthen automated education processes backed by a strong and updated technological base. UniApply team also develops innovative technology to enable students to successfully manage their educational and career plans. Its data-driven solution helps to bridge the transitions between high school, college, and career, by making certain that students take the necessary steps at the right time to reach their goals. Last but not the least; the collaboration platform will enable effective communication among the stakeholders in the educational ecosystem viz. institutes, faculty, students, alumni etc. Our basic objective is to help students to take informed decision about their academic and professional career and to help and guide them in preparation for competitive examinations. We also look forward to provide all sorts of information about admissions, different colleges, various career avenues, and entrance exams to students enabling them to make the right choice in selecting a career and institute option.
Our highly motivated team with its indelible technological background is determined to create a benchmark in the whole education process.

The Geeks: Give some details about the Team background and work experience.

UniApply: I (Ranjan) have completed my graduation / B.Tech from IIT Bombay. Post IIT, I worked at Zinnov Management Consulting, a business strategy consulting firm where I got an opportunity to work with Fortune 500 companies in projects related to market entry / expansion, go-to-market strategies, offshoring advisory etc. I have always been passionate about entrepreneurship and have been part of the core team at The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay. There when I met my other two co-founders, Kamlesh Laddad and Akshay Ukey.
Kamlesh and Akshay, both have completed their post graduation in Computer Science from IIT Bombay. Kamlesh was Senior Consultant at webMethods (now Software AG) in technical consulting division. He traveled round the globe during his tenure at Software AG and worked very closely with Business analysts and Functional analysts of MNCs and has a great understanding of industry processes.
Akshay was software engineer at America Online (AOL) and worked on key AOL properties like AOL Portal, AOL Autos, AOL Real Estate, etc. He has contributed to several open source projects and features of the Apache SOLR and has a publication in IEEE journal.

The Geeks: What is your market and how has been the response?
UniApply: With our aim to be the ultimate technology connect between the Educational Institutions and the students/parents community, we plan to associate with the institutes and have a parallel increase in our reach in the student community through online as well as offline campaigns. Our concept is being widely accepted. However we all know every new venture does have initial ignition issues yet undoubtedly there is arms open welcome to the concept.

The Geeks: Who are your competitors? How do you differentiate your products/services from that of others?
UniApply: All the portals providing education/career related information are our competitors. However, the domain of UniApply is yet unexplored, as very few startups are offering services related to admission application process. There is certainly a huge demand from the institutes’ side for automation of the pre-admission process and helping them enhance their reach in the student community. We are different from other education portals as we provide a platform for applications and admissions into an institute the student wants to join rather than just information on the institute. We aim to revolutionize the admission application process enabled by Information Technology and to remove information based discrimination among students. Our services are aimed not only at the application stage but also at the admission stage of an educational institute. Our focus is to automate and combine the areas of admission processes and thereby provide a single window for the students to apply to various institutions.

The Geeks: What are the rewards of running a business over a nine-to-five job? What are the challenges you have faced?
UniApply: There is always a joy of creating something new. Every day brings a new challenge, together with an opportunity to learn, create and innovate. Moreover, driving a business in itself is pretty exciting as you can mould the pre-existing concepts into an advanced level ideas and figure out the best possible ways to enhance your business and most importantly we are into a business that aims at making a student’s life simpler which is a huge impetus for us to keep going. However, since we are in start-up phase, we face challenges like recruiting the right person, funding etc.

The Geeks: What are the UniApply growth plans?
UniApply: Education industry is witnessing a fast paced growth so this sector has a promising growth going forward. There is significant increase in the number of institutes and students every year. Moreover, with the entire world getting tech-savvy and internet friendly, UniApply and all other education portals would achieve greater heights. Especially with regards to UniApply we intend to transform the application procedure and we are sure we would. We are looking for expanding horizontally and aim to broaden our reach both in terms of institutes as well as number of students. Apart from this, we are also looking forward at launching few more products/services targeted at helping students in their exam preparation.

It was a very interactive and informative talk with the team of UniApply. If you have any queries or suggestions please write to me (ranjeet@geekonnet.com) or info@uniapply.in

Be a Fan