Why Buddy4Study and How it started?

I feel blessed and fortunate because of good education. Vision to start Buddy4Study is to share this fortune with every meritorious student of India.

I am Ashutosh and this is my story.

I borne and brought up in Patherdih, a coal dominated area in Dhanbad district (Jharkhand). My parents are non-matric, who struggled and sacrificed a lot to provide good education to me. Where I studied in a CBSE school, my 3 brothers studied in government schools and colleges. My family never had enough money that we can buy new books or afford tuitions in class 11 & 12.

There was no awareness about existing scholarships, which could potentially help my family to afford good education. (My brothers are highly meritorious, however, they struggled very hard to make a future for themselves (1))

Being among the top performers in class 10 and 12 board and then qualified IIT JEE in 2002, I joined MERI Kolkata for my Marine Engineering program. In 2006, I joined British Petroleum (BP) as Marine Engineer Officer and served the organization for 3 & half years worldwide.

In 2010, I joined IMT Ghaziabad for my MBA program and then I came to know about NTSE scholarship, which pays the scholar INR 500 per month for class 11, 12 and then for higher studies. I was unaware of this scholarship, when they come, how to participate and prepare. If I would applied for it, I may have received it. My school fee was only INR 350. So, my family could have afforded my younger brother education in my school.

I realized the loss of opportunity due to lack of awareness in 2010-11. And then, I started my journey to connect with Ghaziabad / Noida school students, teachers and parents. How many of them know, there are scholarships, which can fund their education or talent? We did 3000+ students primary survey in 12+ schools and got to know that 95%+ students, parents or teachers are still ignorant about the scholarship world and their benefits and hence, students were not participating. 

Many IMT friends (2) & Professors (3) come out for help. We did hundreds of brain storming sessions with friends, seniors, professors and realized, we need to create an online portal to list all authenticated scholarships at one place. We hired a freelancer (4) who developed the website where any student can register themselves and can access all scholarship information from anywhere and anytime.

We do not have any address in Delhi-NCR for incorporating the company, so I moved to Kolkata to register my company on 26th August 2011 and then we launched Buddy4Study on Deewali night on 26th October 2011 (5).

I opted out from final placements as I want to focus my full energy on developing this platform and finding right kind of scholarships for all students use. In March 2012, when I was graduating MBA, we had 650 students, 12 schools and 70 teachers registered in our Buddy4Study portal accessing scholarship information.

My all savings from BP was spent on funding my MBA program and developing the website. I was left with no money to rent a space and start the venture full time. All my friends and batchmates, who started the journey with me, joined their jobs as they need to return their education loan amount (6).

Still I thought, this idea needs my full time and dedicated efforts to make it sustainable and scalable venture, which will be serving the entire student community.

My batchmates, family and well-wishers always asked, how am I going to manage the start-up without funding and office space. I always have the faith on God and remember the lines of Om Shanti Om movie:

???? ?? ??? ???? ??? ?? ??? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?????? ??? ????? ?????? ?? ????? ??? ?? ???? ??.

It actually happened with me. Which gave a strong base for Buddy4Study to grow organically for next 4 years and I met my future co-founder and CEO (7).

Next article: How I fund first 5 years of venture and evolution of business models

References:

1. Brothers: Bade Bhaiya Santosh Barnwal (BCA + MCA from IGNOU; M.Tech + PhD from IIIT Allahabad) Shiv Bhaiyya (B.Com, Railway Station master, topped exam out of 46000 candidates)
2. Batchmates: Nishant Pilania, Bhaumit Patel, Neha Agarwal, Arpit Khullar, Bharat Maddali, Anubhav Garg, Dhruv Goel, Debanjan Das, Dileep Bajaj: Batchmates, who visited all local schools in Ghaziabad for survey.
3. Professors and Mentors: Rashmi Agarwal, Santanu Rai, Sandeep Puri, Lipi Das, Anand Khanna, Sachin Choudhary, Mrinalini Shah, Vinita Sahay, Shalini Tiwari
4. Freelancer: Multi talented Rajkishor, who become my co-founder and strongest pillar during formation of Buddy4Study foundation for all these years.
5. 26th October 2011: Deewali festival + Shahrukh Khan starer Ra.One movie release day. 
6. Education loan kills more entrepreneurial dreams then anything else. Many of my batchmates, who were working on some innovative idea, had to take the placements only to pay back their loan EMIs.
7. Manjeet Singh, my MERI senior, my hostel floor mate, mentor, advisor and serial entrepreneur. He was running 2 successful companies.