ApnaCourse: India's Unique MOOC Platform for Online Education Date:   Friday , December 05, 2014 Satish Rajagopal, Founder, Director & CEO of ApanCourse, was always fascinated with the magic that technology can wield in education which drew his interest. This is where he decided to start his own company to live his passion. Thus in 2013, Satish put his feet into the realm of online education through his company ApnaCourse.com focusing on three principles - Quality, Comfort and Affordability. While everyone was focused on classroom-training and distance-learning, ApnaCourse took the route less travelled and transformed itself to be India\'s only MOOC provider through its globally recognized certification courses. The idea of initially focusing on global certifications was born out of the issues faced by some of his friends who were preparing for certifications like CFA and FRM like no proper institute, lack of expert faculties, timing issues and several others. Understanding this need of the hour, ApnaCourse.com mapped technology with education to cater the best online global certification courses. \"Our initial market launch proved fruitful over a period of 8-10 months. This gave us the confidence to enter domains outside the global certifications space as well,\" says Satish. Today, ApnaCourse.com is the fastest growing unique online courses platform offering high value training at low cost. The 14 months old company is now the market leader in global certification space with the successful launch of its first course in August 2013, with 2nd in October and 3rd in early January 2014. Undoubtedly with a lucrative business model and partnership with top-notch experts, ApnaCourse launched 5 courses in last 2 months. But it was not an easy journey. Like every other startup, ApnaCourse.com too faced the initial crunches of fund and knowledge expertise of academic veterans. The company breathes a sigh of relief when Spearhead Group took away the funding challenges at the time of acquisition. Spearhead Group is a well diversified group with global presence across verticals of Managed Business & Consultancy, Financial Planning and Wealth Management, Education and IT Consultancy Solutions. With a mission to provide education anytime, anywhere and to anyone, every course on ApnaCourse is online and the enrollment to them are free of cost. The idea is to impart quality education to a wide market at affordable prices. Constant tie-ups with best and renowned experts not only helped the company in building brand visibility in the market but steadily increased the new customer registration over time. \"With an audience spread across the globe, currently around 50 percent of our users are Indians and close to 30 percent from the U.S. and UK, we plan to tap the opportunities across the domains of education to cater the demand,\" adds Satish. Creating a Flexible Work Culture ApnaCourse.com believes in non-hierarchical organizational structure to provide highly enjoyable work culture to its employees. To enhance the work spirit of the employees, the company also has innovative team meetups such as \'The Forum\' and \'The Hackathon\'. The Forum is briefing on the task what others are doing and its impact on achieving organizational goal as a whole. Whereas The Hackathon is a competition within 3 team members to find the bugs or defects in other teams work. This initiative not only helps in identifying the problems but also rectifying it before it is released to the market. What\'s next? Through innovative and sustainable use of technology, the company\'s idea is to be the leading education company in India. \"Our recognition today by siliconindia as the \'Startup of the Year\' is a significant step in this direction. We will strive to bring more quality, in-demand courses to the market that can greatly benefit employability of youths,\" affirms Satish. With a strong foothold in Global Certification space, the company will soon be entering the entrance exam space as well as High School Tutoring space (popularly called K12 tutoring in India). Panel: Offices: Bangalore Clients: 1. Stratagem Financial School 2. Hewlett-Packard 3. Pearson Edurite and many more Services: Online Training, Certification Training, MOOC, PMP Certifications, CFA Certifications, PMI ACP Certifications, ISTQB Certifications, CFP Certifications, FRM Certifications, Learning Management System, ITIL Certification and CBAP Certification Key Management: Satish Rajagopalan, Founder & CEO Satish handles responsibilities covering Strategy Planning and Business Development. Prior to founding ApnaCourse.com, Satish was the Founder Director at Spearhead EduOnline Pvt Ltd and had been a Research Analyst at CRISIL. He also held key roles in Sundaram BNP Paribas amongst other organizations. CEO Speak: ApnaCourse is a one stop online learning portal and India\'s only MOOC platform where users access best in class courses across different domains to help advance their career. Our aim is to make life simpler for anyone who wants to experience quality learning with ease of access, at an affordable cost. We take utmost efforts to ensure that the courses on our platform are delivered by experts with vast industry and teaching experience and the courses adhere to stringent Audio-visual quality checks to ensure viewers get a pleasant learning experience.