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Avagmah

Avagmah

About the Company

Avagmah was founded in November 2013 to help fulfill desires of working professionals who aspire for mid-career correction or enhancements by pursuing long term higher education. Professionals in their mid-career take up additional degree and long term certificate courses which help them catapult their career and/or move to allied verticals. The idea is to help working professionals earn quality higher education online so that they do not have to leave their jobs or take sabbaticals for higher studies. 

Current Market Landscape

Over the last two decades most sectors in India witnessed prolific advancements. The education sector in India did not keep pace and were able to produce only dismal number of top quality manpower resources. In the last two decades’ millions of students joined the workforce but are hitting the glass ceiling for want of apt knowledge and competence. In the developed world working professionals take an academic sabbatical a few years into their working life, however in India because of various reasons at their personal front this is not an option. Distance education was also not an option because of poor quality.

With millions of working professionals aspiring to compete with their global counterparts, there is a huge requirement for edu-tech companies to bring in high quality programs, delivery of which is done leveraging technology advancements of today’s times. There are millions of Indians who are registered on the various open online learning platforms. This shows that individuals are interested to learn online. However, success of these open platforms is limited due to lack of a structured learning process. Avagmah was started to meet this opportunity by helping good universities in reaching quality contemporary Continuing & Executive Education via technology and internet.

Addressing the Challenges

India aspires to be a knowledge economy and there is a lot of talk around it. However, according to a 2014 study by Asian Development Bank, India is still 109th in the list of 145 in Knowledge Economy Index at a score of 3.06, the average for Asia-Pacific being 4.39 and in OECD Counties 8.25. The root problem is in the Indian academic system. 40 percent of the faculty positions in the top most Institutes in India are vacant - IITs, IIITs, Central Universities and IIMs top this list. The situation gets worse in other Universities (600 of them) and Institutes (35,000 of them). 40% is an alarming figure. The education received by Indian graduates is substandard and are therefore not able to perform the jobs assigned to them at the workplace as expected. Most working professional realizes this as soon as they start working. While initially they put in all efforts to learn at the job, but then surely what they missed during the 4-year full term at college cannot be learnt at work. The situation is magnified for people who did not educate themselves in the premier institutes and thus always have a steep climb up the corporate ladder.

Avagmah helps universities leverage technology to deliver high quality programs to a much broader audience eliminating limitations of physical infrastructure. Through Avagmah Technology Platform, education is not just confined to classroom, accessibility of quality faculty and program is increased by manifold neutralizing the challenges of student-teacher ratio.

Services

Avagmah provides cutting-edge intuitive Avagmah Technology Platform (ATP) to universities and Institutes of repute. ATP is an amalgamation of cloud-based SaaS technology and is available on a managed services model; assisting universities with application-based and web technology solutions for delivery of courses. Avagmah offers end-to-end web and mobile app platforms, helping universities manage marketing, student counseling, virtual classroom, student engagement and retention. The firm emulates a successful model in the US, where there are many technology companies focused towards higher education and who help universities operate more efficiently. The only difference is Avagmah operates in a much larger market with expenses being dismally low.

Differentiating Factors

In India, there are many companies offering short courses catering to immediate enhancement in skills. Avagmah helps to meet the pent up demand of quality long term continuing education amongst working professionals by helping existing universities use technology to reach out to them. This increased desire amongst many mid-career professionals to complete a graduation, post-graduation or a specialized degree that will help professionals grow in their career in the long run is what Avagmah helps meet.

Clients

Avagmah is currently working with, Los Angeles-based UCLA Extension, NMIMS University, Pondicherry University and Bharathidasan University. In the last 18 months, the firm has enrolled 3,651 students.

Organizational Culture

Avagmah is a team of young, technology focused energetic professionals and thus the culture in the company is very open and informal. The firm celebrates success, promotes innovation and autonomy, encourages risk-taking and embraces failures and learns from its mistakes. Since its employees are of the same demographics as its end users, Avagmah realizes that lot of the dreams and aspirations of our end users will be resonated in its employees. The firm has thus implemented policies in the company which supports the learning aspirations of its employees.

Harboring Innovation

The firm believes that first step to building a culture of innovation is listening to employees. It has many open forum and town hall events where it invite ideas from the larger team, have constructive debates around these ideas and take it forward from there.

Having an open door policy helps as employees are not afraid to speak up and share ideas. It has very strong rewards program that promotes a healthy competition among teams and this spurs them to better than the next person, to solve a business problem, to contribute to the growth. This is where the innovation comes from; people are hungry and they always strive to do better for the company and for themselves. 

Avagmah also focuses on hiring people for the cultural fit. It looks for people who understand its vision and align with its culture. Having a team that shares one vision and works together helps the organization run smoothly.

Go-to-Market Plans

Currently Avagmah’s focus market is India and all its energies are directed towards acquiring new customers and making out technology better for its end users who are the Ambitious Young Hungry Busy (AYHUB) working professional, Avagmah is now focused on scaling its success to grow 10 times in the next two years.

Quick Facts

1.Year of founding: Nov. 2013

2.Funding information: $ 5 Million from marquee investors including Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder and former CEO & MD of Infosys, Atul Nishar, founder of Hexaware and Aptech Computer Education, Singapore based Lionrock Capital, serial entrepreneur and investor K Ganesh, founder and former CEO of TutorVista and Neeraj Bhargava, founder and CEO of Mumbai-based investment firm Zodius Capital

3.Founding members: Karthik KS, Sankar Bora, Prasad Palla

4.Office locations: Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi

5.Company strength: 63

6.Website: www.avagmah.com