I decided to work on a start up at a very young age and went ahead to co-found one. I was still in college when I started working on JAG Educate. While I was giving my blood and sweat in developing our product, I had a tough time convincing the school authorities to try our product. I visited many schools and colleges and tried to get a slot to address their students on career counselling and to introduce our deep learning Critical Reading content to them. I went to different institutions with my proposal. However, each day ended with zero converts. One fine day, one of my colleagues pointed out that people usually trust experience when it comes to education. It struck me then that the institutions’ authorities would have thought the same when I went to them, and to add to that our product was new.
I planned to revamp my appearance so as to look more professional. As soon as I thought of formal wear, the first name that came to my mind was Allen Solly. I rushed to a nearby Allen Solly store. I was a little apprehensive about buying a blazer as I was not sure if I would get the right size for my body type but all my worries faded away as I stepped into the Allen Solly store. I bought myself a pair of business formals that fit me like it was tailor made for me. I didn’t get a positive reply in the meeting right after that but the outfit did help me look more professional and eventually I got better. I could talk more confidently about our product, its importance in the industry of education and how it was going to be the future of learning. I cracked one of the seminar slots in the most prestigious engineering college of Odisha. I along with my team addressed a crowd of 200 students.
Just like that ABGL played a big part in getting the first seminar for my company. I strongly believe without ABGL I would not have been able to take the leap and come this far.
At college, the best job through campus placements was the call centre job at TCS. I believed I could do better and was determined to give myself a chance. I prepared and qualified for SPIJMR, ISB YLP (finalist) and SDA Bocconi in my first attempt. It felt great, as it was a sign of recognition of my potential from the best business schools. I chose to wait for ISB and dropped others from my list. Unfortunately, it all came crashing as I got a 43 in quants in GMAT. I am not afraid of maths, but my re-attempt got me the same score. It was a tough time, and I was unsure of myself. I was filled with self-doubt and my self-confidence had hit a low.
Then I read about Edison and Jack Ma, legendary entrepreneurs who were not so great at maths, and felt I was in good company. I learned that I could always seek help on my weak areas and still be successful. I dusted off the setback and re-focused on our Start-up, JAG Educate, more optimistic. I started working on developing our unique content and pedagogy.
To develop JAG’s verbal content, I sought help from Odia literary and history expert Padmashree Debi Pattnaik, and designed unique content with local cultural inputs. The idea was to make complex concepts simple, especially for students from Odia medium, and scale-up later. JAG has now become Odisha’s highest rated test-prep company in a span of just two years. I reappeared for GMAT again and improved my score by 50 points.