Today, we can see a tremendous growth in niche communities. And with the focus on creating an active B-School community, MBASkool started its journey. We recently got a chance to interact with the startup co-founders and got to know more about their journey, vision, and challenges.
What would be an elevator pitch for someone who does not know about your company?
MBASkool is an online knowledge portal for MBA students and business professionals. It’s a knowledge portal containing management documents, business articles, brandguide, business concepts, quizzes, popular lists and discussion forum, to create a community to study, learn and share concepts of management and business, and B-School activities.
What is your company’s core value proposition? What problem are you solving and for whom?
MBASkool offers high quality knowledge content on management and business for free, which students & business professionals can read and share.
While other MBA websites focus on admission & aspirants, MBASkool offers a knowledge platform for MBA students and business professionals.
How do you plan to check on the user satisfaction? How do you track that the students love what you do?
We have undertaken various initiatives which help us understand user satisfaction & track their involvement. A few are mentioned below:
- Surveys and feedback forms help us understand our offerings, user interface and areas of improvement
- Our Official Campus Coordinators give us updates about the experience o students, committees, interns etc
- We also study traffic analytics, which help us understand the content & sections users like
What is the driving passion, why are you passionate about this company?
The appreciation that we have received from our users ever since we have started MBASkool, and the fascinating new opportunities which we have experienced, has enhanced our passion for MBASkool. Opportunities like interacting with students, conducting internships, giving seminars, organizing contests, getting media recognition etc have all contributed in our growing passion.
What is the biggest need for your startup?
We think that a portal like MBASkool needs to reach out to a lot of students. It is a free of cost content portal where the content is generated by students and professionals and also consumed by them. We have a good reach amongst B school students in India and abroad but we still think we can reach out to all corners of the world. To achieve this we need publicity and positive word of mouth.
Tell us about your team, who do you have supporting you? How did this start?
MBASkool was started by Manmeet Singh and Divij Sahara. We did our MBA in 2010 from NMIMS, Mumbai. We have been always been supported by our parents and friends. They have been a constant source of motivation.
We both were together during our MBA and we shared common passions like football, online gaming and became close buddies. It was during our MBA we realized that there was no website dedicated to the MBA students who are seeking knowledge and content related to management. There were sites for aspirants having admission information, but none which MBA students could use during their course time for connecting with the MBA fraternity.
How is MBASkool different than other online student hubs?
Almost all the MBA sites in India target the MBA aspirants and assist them in competitive exams like CAT, GMAT etc. However, we at MBASkool target the MBA Students who are already in B-Schools and also professionals who need information on management. There are a few sites that target MBA students, but they are not well maintained or the content is not freely available. We provide all the content free of cost to students and most of the content is generated by students themselves.
The other differentiator is the quality of content. MBASkool team follows a process of approving every article or document uploaded by people to ensure that quality is maintained. Also by collaborating with many B-Schools, we do a lot of projects which are not only high in quality but also generate contemporary & relevant content.
What/Who motivates you? Any thought leader or companies with innovation which you follow for success?
MBASkool has given us the opportunity to reach out to millions of students across the world, which is one the biggest motivation. We have been inspired by many leading entrepreneurs who have given the people innovative services and products.
What are the biggest challenges of your startup?
We faced a lot of challenges in the beginning but we learnt a lot from them. The main obstacles which we faced was on the technical front and taking the brand to students and also maintaining the content inflow. Running a knowledge content based website like MBASkool can bring in many challenges on a regular basis but finding a solution is a challenge which we are willing to accept. These obstacles teach us a lot and help us in becoming more robust and bring the best out of us.
Where are the future plans for MBASkool? (Where do you see MBASkool in 6 or 12 or 18 months from now?
In the coming few months, we would like to have a substantial team having content managers, sales managers & web developers. Our aim is to first reach out to Tier2 & Tier3 B-Schools in India, and later to international B-Schools.
