| Elements Akademia | 2007 |
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Nishant Saxena | Gurgaon | Education
Nominated on Sep 8 2008 9:37PM | by
NEN
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| Elements Akademia - Snapshot |
| Build skills to land your dream job
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| Business Basics |
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| Company Name |
Elements Akademia |
| Founded in |
2007 |
| Headquartered in |
Gurgaon |
| Company website/URL |
www.elementsakademia.com |
| Industry |
Education |
| Stage of the company |
Several customers or locations |
| Source of idea |
Systematic search for business opportunity |
| Awards & honors |
In the past 8 months since launch, we have been:
a) Selected as One of 8 Indian Emerging Companies by Nasscom for Personalized Mentoring....> Read more.. |
| Awards & honors |
In the past 8 months since launch, we have been:
a) Selected as One of 8 Indian Emerging Companies by Nasscom for Personalized Mentoring.
b) Shortlisted (final round in December) by Endeavor as one of 4 High Impact Entrepreneurs in India.
c) In the press 70+ times - including Times of India, Economic Times, Hindustan Times, Business Standard, Dainik Jagran etc.
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| Partnerships & Tie-ups |
1. PARTNERSHIP WITH 18 TOP MNCs ACROSS 6 SERVICE SECTORS THAT HELP IN COURSE DESIGN AND THEN ABSORB OUT STUDENTS.
A. Genpact (India's largest 3rd p...> Read more.. |
| Partnerships & Tie-ups |
1. PARTNERSHIP WITH 18 TOP MNCs ACROSS 6 SERVICE SECTORS THAT HELP IN COURSE DESIGN AND THEN ABSORB OUT STUDENTS.
A. Genpact (India's largest 3rd party BPO for last 3 years as per Nasscom survey) has signed an MoU with Elements Akademia. Per that, Genpact helps us design the course content that increases chances of selection in Genpact by 20X. Their experts also lead the Train-The-Trainer for our employees. They also have shared an order book of 3600 openings where our students can get placed. They also reimburse the entire course fees to the students few months after selection into Genpact - so students do the course free! We are also allowed to use their brand name and logo in advertisements. Finally they do monthly assessment to see if training is resulting in desired improvement in trainees.
B. An identical contract has also been signed with Max New York Life (India's fastest growing private Life Insurance company) for 1600 openings in their Direct Sales Team.
C. Other MNCs like WNS, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Oberoi Hotels, Accenture, Reliance Retail, Mobile Store, Radisson Hotels, HDFC Standard Life, Bank of America Continnum have reviewed our course content, given suggestions to make it more in line with their hiring requirements, and have been recruiting from our campus.
2. PARTNERSHIP WITH ONE OF INDIA'S TOP 20 BSCHOOLS TO HELP IN ACADEMIC RIGOUR AND ENDORSE OUR FINAL CERTIFICATE.
KJ Somaiya, one of the Top 20 Bschools of the country, has reviewed and endorsed our content and academic rigour. The final certificate is jointly given in ours and Somaiya's name. Theur Director General also sits on our Board.
3. PARTNERSHIP WITH VARIOUS STATE GOVERNMENTS TO MAKE THE UNDERPRIVILEGED EMPLOYABLE AND THEN GET JOBS.
MoU with MP government where they line up SC/ST/OBC candidates, and we work alongwith our corporate partner(s) - in this case Genpact and Team Lease - to select trainable candidates, provide intensive training and then help in getting the students placed with our partners and beyond. True social entrepreneurship where society and business objectives are in sync. Similar partnerships being worked with Uttar Pradesh and rajasthan government (advanced stages of discussion).
4. ASSOCIATE MEMBER, NASSCOM
5. TIE-UPS WITH HALF A DOZEN TOP PROFESSORS FROM VARIOUS IIMs (refer website) WHO HELP WITH FUNCTIONAL EXPERTISE
6. TIE-UPS WITH SOME COMPANIES TO PROVIDE EARN-WHILE-YOU-LEARN SCHEMES FOR STUDENTS
7to9 Retail, Norbell (Airtel's Lucknow based BPO), Adecco (Bhopal), MNYL (jaipur) where students study in the morning, and work in the evening
7. TIE-UPS WITH A DOZEN LOCAL COLLEGES WHERE COLLEGE PAYS FOR THE TRAINING OF ALL STUDENTS
These include Ram Swaroop and Sagar (Lucknow), Sant Hirdaram and People's Group (Bhopal), DAMS (Kanpur) etc. All these colleges have 100+ students who study Personality Development/Grooming and Business Communication through us. College pays us directly.
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| Business description |
Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 12 IIM Alumni - is India's first Finishing School aimed at bridging the gap between academics and industry requirements, thereby making Graduates Employable
India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but faces an acute shortage o...> Read more.. |
Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 12 IIM Alumni - is India's first Finishing School aimed at bridging the gap between academics and industry requirements, thereby making Graduates Employable
India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but faces an acute shortage of skilled manpower, despite the presence of a large graduate pool (15mn+, 2.5mn new graduates every year). A part of the malady is perhaps in our university education system which offers degrees but often fails to make graduates "employable" - which is why the organized Sector employment in India is still at a pathetic 13%!
Elements Akademia aims to bridge that gap by offering a 6 month part-time vocational course designed with the help of our corporate partners, who are leading players in various service sectors like Insurance (Max New York Life, HDFC Standard Life), BPO/KPO (Genpact, WNS, Accenture), Retail (Reliance Retail, MobileStore), Banking (Kotak Mahindra Bank. Bank of America Continnum) etc. The content covers the entire hiring requirement in these companies, so students have a 20X greater
chance to get selected versus applying without doing this course. It includes Business communication,
Personality Development/ Grooming, Managerial Effectiveness, Basic IT and Domain knowledge in areas of KPO/BPO, Retail,
Insurance and Banking/Accounting.
We have a bold '10x10 vision' Making 10,000+ Indians Employable by 2010 - reaching out to 20 non-metro cities to attract students, train them, and then help them get placed with our partners and beyond. We focus mainly on Tier II cities where 'employability' is a major challenge.
The academic rigour of the programme has been very well received by existing students with 91% students rating the course.
Excellent (in a bi-weekly confidential survey). The first few batches have graduated with an 80%+ placement, mostly at starting salary of Rs. 10,000 CTC per month. The course fee is approx. Rs. 20,000 for the six month course. There is also a merit-cum-means scholarship upto 50% - for students with monthly family income of less than Rs. 6000. Some corporate
partners also return the fees to the students after few months in job, so effectively, the students do the course for free.In the past 8 months, we have scaled upto 5 cities (NCR, Bhopal, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kanpur) with plans to open 5 more offices within 08/09. We have more than 500 students already registered with us, and are attracting 200 new students every month (will have 2000 students by the end of this year).
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| How does the business make money? |
| We charge tuition fees from students and placement fees from companies
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| Team information |
Vinay Sharma, COO (IIM Calcutta 1996), Formerly BU Head of Marketing of Airtel. Ankur Agrawal, CFO (IIM Lucknow 2003), Formerly founder of 2 startups. Prof. Tapan Bagchi (IIT Kanpur), Honorary Dean, Formerly Founding Dean of IIT Kanpur Bschool.
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| Competition |
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| Competitors |
Tier II/ III MBA/ BE Colleges, IIJT, Hero Mindmine
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| How different is your product or service? It has... |
Substitutes that differ in function |
| In what way is your product or service different? |
Job oriented (100% Job commitment for those who clear our internal assessments), High quality course (free re-training if student's feedback falls bel...> Read more.. |
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| By The Numbers |
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2006 |
2007 |
| No. of employees |
26-50 |
26-50 |
| No. of locations |
2-5 |
2-5 |
| Turnover |
11-50 lacs |
1-5 crore |
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| Primary source of initial funding |
Angel investors |
| Primary source of additional funding |
Angel investors |
| Raised institutional capital? |
No |
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| Why is this startup hot? |
A. The Education Sector in India is Huge ($30bn... ET) and Hot (Top 3 sectors to invest in... Evalueserve). Within that, Making Youth Employable is a sunrise sector with $0.5bn market size. Years of socialism has unfortunately resulted in multiple low quality, high cost players. "Employability" is a burning market need: we have 17mn new jobs and only 2.5...> Read more.. |
A. The Education Sector in India is Huge ($30bn... ET) and Hot (Top 3 sectors to invest in... Evalueserve). Within that, Making Youth Employable is a sunrise sector with $0.5bn market size. Years of socialism has unfortunately resulted in multiple low quality, high cost players. "Employability" is a burning market need: we have 17mn new jobs and only 2.5mn annual graduates, but still Organized Sector employment is only 13%! A credible player who can actually deliver results (placements) at an affordable price will fill in a huge value equation gap. High Quality IIMs cater to only 0.3% of population (320,000 appear in CAT, 1000 get selected). Barring the top 25 institutes, the remaining 1300 BE/MBA colleges generally have poor quality.
B. Very credible management team: Investors and Core Management team from the IIMs with 10-20 years of industry experience. Dean started IIT Kanpur Business School and then SP Jain Dubai and has 30 years of experience in industry and teaching.
C. Fullfilling a social cause: Its an opportunity for us to make some positive contribution to our country and society. Giving a career to a deserving candidate and a lifestyle to a family, surely is as satisfying( if not more) as giving returns to shareholders.
D. Early Financial Indicators very positive: $1mn+ revenues in first full year of Operations, $5mn valuation in last funding round with just 6 months of Operations, Offer from a Top Indian company to buy 20% stake.
E. Fast Growth: 5 Centres, 50 employees, 500 students within the first 8 months. 2000+ students expected by the year end.
F. High Quality Affordable training: 90% of students in a biweekly confidential feedback rate the course as Best Ever. 80%+ placement of the first 6 batches(compared to 10-20% placement in leading private education companies). Fees are at least 5 times lower than other organised players offering similar employment opportunities.
G. Zero percent attrition amongst all Employees: Not one of the employees who was performing average or better has left the company (we have removed some underperformers). Constant and personalized mentoring of employees from IIM investors.
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| What keeps the team awake at night? |
a) Scaling up without losing focus on Quality: Our vision is to reach $10mn revenues by 2010 (30 months from launch, currently on track). And ensure Tier I quality (currently 90%+ of students in a biweekly confidentia survey rate our course as Best Ever, 80% plus placements as current). Usually quality tends to go down during rapid expansion phase (especially if you use quick options like Franchising). Getting a handle on both Quality and Revenues will be a challenge.
b) Employees as Evangelists: In a Service Sector company like ours, Employee energy (who interact with our customers day in and day out) is not just desirable, it is essential (superior training quality leading to Top MNC placement is our core differentiator amongst the myriad educational outfits). So far, we have been personally maintaining contacts with every employee and have ensured zero attrition (in a sector that has 20-40% atttrition) with our 50 employees. Will we be able to continue this even when we have 200 employees. |
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| Voting Closed |
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| “The idea has innovation in terms of product and service and marketing........” > Read more.. |
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| “The company has got its basics right and have done their homework properly......” > Read more.. |
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| Entrepreneur's Details |
| Name |
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Nishant Saxena |
| Age |
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31 |
| Hometown |
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Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh |
| Family background |
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First gen entrepreneur |
| More than 1 company? |
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No |
| Education |
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Masters |
| Graduated from |
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IIM |
| Former employer |
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P&G Asia Pacific |
| Former designation |
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Head of M&A |
| Area of responsibility |
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Head |
| Favorite book/movie |
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The Shawshank Redemption |
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