Every challenge is an opportunity in disguise - A story.

Every challenge is an opportunity in disguise - A story.

The year was 2006. I had just completed a course in BMS with a not so great 68% result.??

The BMS course was launched only in the year 2000 and resources to learn from were scarce.?

At that time, I was also building?managementparadise.com , the edtech social learning platform for BMS and MBA students.

I realised that every other course had solved board papers of past years, except for BMS.?

"Let's publish a solved board papers book for final year BMS students" - I said to my team.

Here I was, someone who hadn't scored a distinction, wanting to write a book so that others could score well in their exams.

Not surprisingly, my team was rolling on the floor laughing ( except?Pratik M ?)

My team pointed out the 3 most important challenges.

1.) The total student audience pursuing this course was very small. So we wouldn't have economies of scale working for us. This would drive the printing cost high.

2.) Students would xerox the book as it would be cheaper instead of buying the book.

3.) The book was going to be a single book covering all subjects and so it would become very bulky and run in thousands of pages.

They said - If it could be done, other publishers and professors would have already done it !!?

But we were relentless and we spoke to many a printing press and the cost and weight of the book would just be too prohibitive.

I had almost given up on the idea and then one fine day I overheard my dad speaking to his friend ..

"They are smuggling phones in containers that import raddi paper" - I overheard.

What's Raddi paper? Turns out it was a super thin paper that weighed very less.?

My eyes twinkled and I immediately started my research. To my amusement, I found out:

1.) Raddi paper was very light, my book would shave of a lot of weight if it was printed on raddi paper.

2.) Raddi paper was very cheap, it would considerably reduce the cost of the book.

3.) You cannot xerox anything printed on raddi paper since the print is very light. In about a year, the print almost disappears as if nothing was printed on it. This not only meant students can't xerox it, it also meant seniors can't pass it on to juniors.

And so it began. We published the book with Pratik Mehta as the co-author. The team did a fab job marketing it.

In a short span of time, Professors ordered it in bulk for their students.?

Students came knocking to buy it from far away places.

Come exam day, almost every student had it in their hands in the college corridors.?

A challenge was turned into an opportunity. One that paved way for our startup to feature in the top 10 educational portals of India.

What challenge are you converting into an opportunity this year??