BodhBridge is a Chennai-based education and training institute which empowers school and college students through their journey to employment. Their products are innovative and available to students from class 9 through graduation and beyond. Founded in 2008 by a group of like-minded IIT graduates, BodhBridge’s goal is to bring quality education to India’s youth regardless of their economic or societal status.
We talked to Balaraju Kondaveeti, who gave us a glimpse into the institute, its products, services, and goals.
An IIT Madras graduate with an MS in Entrepreneurship, Balaraju’s initial focus was on developing a cybersecurity product as part of a domain in 2005. During his course at IIT, he filed for four patents, two of which were licensed to LaserSoft, later acquired by Polaris. Along the way, Balaraju’s focus shifted to education, wanting to give back to the community. Coming from an agrarian background, with most of his community having little or no time for education, Balaraju was keen to give his generation and those to follow a path to employment through education.
Balaraju recalls the early days. “It was in 2009 that I started BTechguru.com. It was a fun learning portal for students, where we could share knowledge. We started receiving training opportunities and conducting workshops. So, within three months, we went commercial. Because of our IIT background, my friends and I were able to come up with various activities and workshops that actually made a difference to these students.”
The next step came when Balaraju acquired the distribution rights for DVDs and CDs from NPTEL, a government-funded IIT initiative. NPTEL is one of the largest repositories of IIT material, which means practically every lecture from IIT can be accessed on this NPTEL platform for free.
Realising the vast opportunities that opened up through edtech and learning, Balaraju decided that this would be his journey. Together with his team, Balaraju began to create a customised bank of lessons and videos. “That’s when I created a platform called Placement Ready in 2011, which contains over 4,000 videos and 30,000-plus practice questions, created in-house to date. Since IIT’s NPTEL already provides academic lectures, we decided that we would offer campus placement preparation,” explains Balaraju. The portal helps students prepare for job interviews through English language fluency and IT skills, complete with practice assessments, which were a great hit. Mock interviews prepared the students in real time for the interview day. “We used to serve 300 colleges and have touched 4 lakh students to date, but I could see the emerging competition and decided to branch out.”
Balaraju recognised the potential in edtech and decided to diversify to stay ahead of the looming competition. In 2014, he launched a career guidance platform with the help of IIT alumni and faculty for all the students. Balaraju’s experience and research showed him that students who came from rural and semi-rural areas invested heavily in coaching classes for programs they were not interested in and/or qualified for. My Choice My Future (MCMF) was launched in 2015 in collaboration with IIT Madras faculty and alumni to provide psychometric tests for children to make informed career choices. The MCMF Tool is accessible in English and Indian languages to help school and college students and young professionals alike understand their personality so they can find a career match early in their journey. Balaraju elaborates, “As part of this assessment, we also train and certify counsellors, and they use this as part of their one-on-one counselling. The certifications are from Pearson and IITM Pravartak, and in the last ten years, we have created a large network of trained counsellors.”
Balaraju Kondaveeti, Co-founder and CEO, BodhBridge Education, and Prashanth Kumar G, Head of Operations
“BodhBridge Education Services is the legal entity, and the business model initially focused on low-cost digital education products such as BtechGuru Placement Ready and MCMF. We work on a high-volume, low-cost model. I realised early on that digital education is a short-term engagement. So, our charges are never more than Rs. 1,000, and that’s our differentiator. We touch tens of thousands for certain products and lakhs for some others,” smiles Balaraju. However, he saw the writing on the wall that this low-cost model was not really scalable.
2022 saw a shift in their model with the introduction of FundaSpring. “This is basically an aggregator platform offering a variety of educational programs, including career counselling for school students, career counselling certification programs for teachers, entrepreneurship training, and certification courses in partnership with IITM Pravartak. The teacher training programs are free, but we charge them for certification exams,” explains Balaraju.
FundaSpring also offers free training programs for aspiring entrepreneurs; however, they pay to take the certification exam online. “Once they pass, they get a certificate from IITM Pravartak.” IIT Madras and IITM Pravartak have numerous teacher training programs, and BodhBridge offers these on the FundaSpring platform. An aggregator for different courses and service providers, this platform allows students to choose from and access any kind of program that is relevant to them. Students have access to Aha Guru, which provides JEE/NEET courses, Aasha Academia, which provides online tuitions, and Kids and Beginners Coding courses, among a myriad of other programs.
Apart from this, FundaSpring also offers a wide selection of books—from self-help to soft skills, exam prep books to trade journals and magazines. Balaraju says, “We try to bring good resources for the student community, with nearly 100 service providers with whom we have partnered. We keep adding new resources regularly: Rubik’s cube classes, free mental health counselling, STEM and robotics classes, and a lot of school-specific classes. The baseline is that we, instead of providing services alone, give customers everything they want, all in one place.”
From its inception, BodhBridge has served students and teachers in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, and even the Middle East. Over 5 lakh students and 40,000 teachers have been trained and continue to be users of the many products of BodhBridge. Their teacher training program brings 1,000 registrations per batch and 400 live attendees for Zoom sessions. The low cost of entry and relevant, researched materials is irresistible across strata. The company has partnered with the Punjab Education Board to provide online teacher training, with plans for in-person training in the future.
The BodhBridge team
“If you provide quality, you’ll be in the game forever. We offer real value and have built a solid base over the last 15 years. We cover government schools, NGO schools, CSR-funded projects, and rural schools. We are constantly reaching out to our learner base to update them on the latest products, and our word-of-mouth referencing is strong. This helps sustain marketing reach and expand our customer base, which was quite a challenge initially. Now we have reduced traditional advertising and marketing methods and communicate directly, mainly through WhatsApp, among others,” says Balaraju.
His marketing strategy is seemingly simple: to offer free training to teachers, who then share the program with their students, resulting in organic growth without paid promotions. “We began customer testimonials only a year ago, but we’re able to stay at 4.9 out of 5 consistently,” Balaraju smiles. The company offers numerous workshops and informative sessions, helping increase the network base. The faculty is top-notch, with IIT alumni and experts in their fields, dedicated to offering quality education consistently.
Balaraju focuses on curriculum development and product design, while his team handles operations. His advisory team includes his faculty mentor from IIT Madras, Prof. L.S. Ganesh and industry experts such as Mr Ramana Akula and Mr Balakrishnan, and his school friend, Mr Prashanth Kumar, who has stood steadfast by his side. His vision is to expand into horizontal courses and high-value, in-person training programs. It’s a prudent balance of idealism and practicality that has brought Balaraju to this juncture. He has won numerous accolades and awards, and touches lakhs of students and teachers across the nation. But Balaraju feels he still has miles to go. His background in IT and agriculture helps him focus on his goal to bring education to the underserved and underrepresented sections of the rural population. In the process, he hopes to maintain BodhBridge as a sustainable and impactful venture.
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