1. Describe about your Business and founders.
Hi, my name is Rudro Mukherji and I’m the founder of PrepApp. I started with the vision to help students revise, organize and memorize. Revision is as important as learning. With newly learned facts, we tend to forget the old, unrevised ones. And another challenge is, there is perhaps an infinite stock of information out there on the internet. So, all we need to do is to organize things according to our need and skill set. With almost twelve years of experience in Ed-Tech, I started PrepApp on 5th August, 2020 as a tech driven platform and the very first of its kind to help students transform information into knowledge.
2. What is the biggest challenge of being a CEO and how do you overcome it?
There are a lot of challenges that I face as a CEO. I will mention five crucial challenges:
a) The first one is to create such an inspiring vision that attracts talented workforce and motivate them to make my vision their vision.
b) The second one is to design such a product that actually solves a real problem and add value to the market.
c) To strategize the growth and distribution in such a way that we reach product-market fit as soon as possible.
d) Resource allocation, proper work culture, fund management and taking care of the interests of the stake-holders.
e) And of course, last but not the least, a number of daily decisions that might affect productivity, company’s mission, team spirit, growth and customer satisfaction.
Whenever, I’m stuck, I talk. I talk to my teammates, ex-colleagues, mentors and friends. And I read. I read on a daily basis.
3. Where do you see the company in the next five years and how will you bring about the change?
We have a vision to serve school children from standard one to all government job aspirants within the next five years. And we plan to do it by providing personalized value in terms of both content and technology, making proper use of the user generated data, understanding their strength and weakness using proper Artificial Intelligence and providing a customized and structured revision solution to them.
4. Did you ever feel like giving up on being a CEO and what motivated you to pull this off?
Recently, no! As I have been working as a CEO (for other companies) for years. Now the present situation is, I don’t actually like it when it’s a Sunday! But yeah, throughout the journey, I did feel like giving up; as it’s stressful, hectic, tiresome and a lonely journey as a CEO of a start-up. What motivated me to go on was of course my vision, my positive attitude, a sheer faith that I would make it one day. And of course, my supportive family, my wife, Amrita especially.
5. Describe your biggest achievement.
From the entrepreneurial point of view, my last company, Zero-Sum got acquired within three years of establishment. But, for me surviving through the bad days of my life, being depressed, distressed, jobless, bankrupt, without friends, has been my biggest achievement so far.
6. From where did you get the idea for the business?
I have closely worked in the education industry for more than a decade, so I observed, surveyed and understood the pain points of the students and realized that the immense capacity that the students have can easily be ignited through a proper education model. It’s not important from whom or which source you learn, rather the most important factor is how you process what you learn. So there, practice, organization, memorization and revision play the most crucial role.
7. What was your aim to start the company?
There are some great companies out there in Ed-Tech arena. They are doing their job fabulously. And the market doesn’t want me to repeat the same thing that they are doing. So, I tried to find a market gap that can generate a life-changing product and add value to the existing value created by other organizations. As a responsible entrepreneur, my job should be to jump from that point where the other organizations are heading to.
8. Tell us some of your failures.
We, entrepreneurs treat failures as cut marks of war and wear them with pride. I failed a lot. Three of my previous companies failed; one was on wireless technology, other in tourism industry and another in management service. One time it was a potential one but I had to quit because it was not adequately funded and hard to sustain. It’s hard to accept failure. It’s like the snake and ladder game, you reach to a certain height and all of a sudden…But at the end, I’m grateful to the Almighty for considering me to be qualified enough to fail and start all over again. All my failures made me what I am today.
9. What is the role of your family in your successful career?
Family plays the most crucial role in your success. My family supported me from all possible ways. They sacrificed their comfort and fought with the uncertainty of the future. They went further, fought with the society as well. I’ll take this opportunity to show my gratitude to my parents, in-laws, other relatives, my wife and my dear son. My special thanks go to Noah, my eight-year-old son, who unknowingly imbibed overreaching capacity in me and pushed me to think beyond my limits. He often showed me some great features from different successful apps and asked me: “Papa, can you make something better than this? For my sake?”
10. What is your message to the young generations and to their parents?
For the next generation, I would say, develop problem solving capacities, try something innovative and execute your dream. Enjoy the process, don’t fear failure. Of course, aspire success, but always remember, it’s more important to be happy than to be successful. For the parents, I will request them to understand the fact that the world is changing and the parents must help their children find new avenues, support them to work on their passion, teach them to accept and learn from failure, guide them on mental health and let them live their lives to the fullest.
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