Kyle
Although the fundamentals of communication are often taught in schools, sometimes schools, colleges and universities have the hardest time communicating with students and even parents. That’s the problem that Indian startup EduBuzzer is fixing with their simple and easy to use application.
EdBuzzer makes it easy for any school teacher, or administrator at any level of education to communicate quickly with one set of students, a single student or the entire student body. EdBuzzer makes it easy to send out assignments, grades, and even newsletters without the cumbersome nature of bulk and mass emails.
The startup based in Chandigarh India, prides itself on absolute simplicity. They want busy teachers and even secretaries to be able to help communicate important messages at anytime.
EduBuzzer is actually a product from educational startup Chalkpad which bills themselves as “Educational Technology Specialists”.
We got to talk with Abhiraj Malhorta a trailblazer at Chalkpad and one of the co-founders of EduBuzzer. Check out the interview below.
Edubuzzer is a super easy online platform for Schools, Colleges, Universities or any kind of educational institution where the institution staff needs to share information to a group of students and/or their parents, on a regular basis. Examples of such information could be academic progress (marks, attendance), news and events (including photographs) or academic information like circulars, planners, class notes. .
In layman’s terms, how does it work? (In other words how would you explain it to your grandmother)
By the way, grandmothers are quite smart. Don’t underestimate their intelligence :-). Anyways, in simpler words, it is a website where users from the school can login and share specific information with specific set of students and/ or their parents.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Kabir Khanna – CEO of Chalkpad Technologies that is the parent company and is working in the Education space to simplify education management & collaboration.
About Kabir Khanna: A Computer Science graduate with over 18+ years of rich transnational experience in globally benchmarked organizations and has developed & delivered software products from concept to release that resulted in multimillion dollar sales
Abhiraj Malhotra – Trailblazer at Chalkpad Technologies & Creator of Edubuzzer.
About Abhiraj Malhotra: A computer science graduate with 8+ years of experience in developing rich web apps. Has also worked with Infosys for a couple of years after which he moved on to develop web apps for the education industry at Chalkpad
Aasheesh Bhatnagar – Marketing head at Chalkpad Technologies About Aasheesh Bhatnagar: Aasheesh has done B.Sc and PG Diploma in Computers & Statistics. He brings with him more than 18 years experience in different sectors of sales and marketing. He has worked with companies like PC Point (P) Ltd., Franchisee Sprint RPG India Ltd., MF-NIIT Ltd., IDS Infotech Ltd., INSCOL Academy Ltd., and Educational Initiatives (P) Ltd.
More details about the parent company are available at: http://www.chalkpad.in
Where are you based?
We are based out of India, in the city of Chandigarh. Chandigarh is one of the most beautiful cities of India, located in the foothills of Himalayas and provides the perfectly balanced quality of life for people with creative work professions.
What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?
While Chandigarh is not touted as the silicon valley of India, with it’s much talked about quality of life, it has seen a lot of quality startups grow in the last decade. This has led to a lot of quality talent also flow into this city resulting in some revolutionary products being developed here.
How did you come up with the idea for Edubuzzer ?
Education institutions(Schools, colleges, universities ,coaching centers etc. ) have always had a need to communicate with students and parents. Research has shown that parents who are well informed about the progress of their wards in in the institution, or are aware of the activities in the institution can better engage on the academic front with their wards. Traditionally, institutions have relied on diaries for all kinds of “messaging” communication between school, students and parents. From our experience in the education field, interacting with thousands of parents and hundreds of teachers we identified a need for a simpler, better, more efficient and faster way for academic information to flow from the institution to students and parents. Thus Edubuzzer was born. Edubuzzer is the easiest, quickest and the fastest way to share information between an institution and it’s parents/students.
How did you come up with the name?
Since it was a kind of messaging product with the basic idea of notifying parents & students with immediate information, Buzz was one of the initial words that came to our mind. Being specific to Education and the domain availability limitations we ended up with “Edubuzzer” and found it good enough to go ahead.
What problem does Edubuzzer solve?
Edubuzzer is a small & simple web based app solving the problem of sending important information or updates like circulars, lecture notes, homework, news & announcements etc. which schools and colleges usually send as printouts or in school diaries to students and parents. This involves printing for each student which involves cost, distributing to each student which requires enough people or better distribution mechanisms, and finally making sure that the right information reaches the right person and in the right time which is the most difficult and hence the complete process becomes complex, time consuming & painful.
With Edubuzzer Schools, Colleges and other Educational institutions can send any kind of information or documents online to students & parents in quick time and its super easy. We would not like to speak more than that and let the app speak the rest. Go for a free trial available at http://edubuzzer.com and experience it right away…
What’s your secret sauce ?
The secret sauce definitely is the ease of use packed with the compelling but focused feature set
Are you bootstrapped or funded?
We are a bootstrapped company.
What is your goto market strategy?
One of the key pillars of our go to market strategy is online marketing. Through various channels like Google adwords, twitter, Facebook (pages, posts and adwords ) , display advertising , direct mail and Linked In, we are targeting our product in specific geographies and to specific audiences, primarily decision makers in the education industry. Schools, colleges, Universities, Tuition centers and practically any institution that has a need to communicate with specific sets of users is a potential client of ours. Additionally, over the years of developing and selling Education ERP solutions in our parent company, Chalkpad Technologies (www.chalkpad.in), we have built substantial relationships in the education industry, which we can now leverage to spread the word about Edubuzzer.
What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?
We have been able to control our hiring costs by getting more interns instead of more employees and this has helped us save a lot especially in our initial days.
What’s next for Edubuzzer?
We plan to become the defacto web application to be used by education institutions across the world for their need to quickly and efficiently share information in a controlled manner with their students and parents.
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