Story of nerdzz, how we started a new revenue stream, solving a real problem

Serin Paul
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

Getting job ready candidates right out of the college has been a challenge many companies face. The impact of it is millions of dollars spend on training and a large pool of jobless candidates.

Some Numbers

  • Number of engineering colleges in India — 3,345 in 2014–15
  • Which produces 1.5 Million Engineering Pass Outs In India Every Year
  • Percentage of Engineering graduates employable — just 3 % in software, 7% in core technology.

This is the story of how we recognized this problem, used a framework to find a solution and made revenue out of it.

The whole idea was to reduce this gap and increase the employability percentage.

It took us 5 simple steps to come up with the first build…

The framework used here is the famous design thinking framework.

1) Empathize

Who is my user ? What matters to this person ?

During our hiring journey ,we had to constantly engage with various Educational institutes & participate in Campus hiring programs.

During these hiring programs as recruiters we gathered the following insights about the graduating students.

  1. We find only 2 % of the candidate with the right development mindset, knowledge of new technologies
  2. Most of the students are unaware about the industry and its way of working.
  3. Projects and activities done are purely for scoring marks in academics.
  4. Practical application knowledge was lacking.

The only thing mattered to most of them was to get placed and land a job somehow.

Define

What are their needs ?

  • To be equipped with hard + soft skills which will make them job ready.
  • To be aware of the opportunities and get a job.
  • To get a job immediately after they pass out.

This phase gave us valuable insights on what their needs are.

Ideate

This is the phase for brainstorming and a stage to come out with as many ideas as possible, wild ideas are encouraged :)

Considering the above core problem, we decided to ideate on different solutions to fulfill the above needs of students. Here are some screenshots of initial ideas jotted down and the mails send to validate these solutions.

Mail send to check if how the users respond.
  • Campus connect programs
  • Programming bootcamps at office
  • Slack channel connecting to developers
  • Hackathons
  • One on one session with developers

A curriculum was developed and it was focused on filling the gaps that existed for the students.

Prototype

Build representation of one or more of your ideas to validate. How can i show my idea ?

We then decided to prototype these ideas to check out in the real world.

We created a simple website and asked students to signup if they are interested.

We invited a small group of students to come and intern with our team.

We created a slack channel and added students and developers.

We added open slots in our google calendar and shared with students.

We created a website to see how many hits we got , and students were willing to signup
We created a slack channel and opened the appointment slot in google calendar to connect with our users

Test

Share your prototyped idea with your original user for feedback. What worked ? What didn’t ?

The prototypes created above was tested and feedback gathered

We did look into google analytics data too to gathering insights into our user behavior .

We used inspectly to check where the users are getting stuck, what area of the website excited the user more.

Repeat …

We then iterated the above steps again and again to cater to different personas within the student community.

We then tied a business model to it by coming up with different pricing plans.

Conclusion & Moral of the story

  • Problems are out there, you need to have an eye always open to find them.
  • When you find them, just use the existing frameworks out there to start validate and experiment if the problem is real.
  • Once you see a traction, tie it to a business model
  • Voila, you have created a new revenue source
  • Now keep improving on it.

If you enjoyed this, please promote me with a clap :)

Learning Curve of my life

Thoughts on my journey with People,Business and Technology

Serin Paul

Written by

Product Manager, foodie and a always curious guy

Learning Curve of my life

Thoughts on my journey with People,Business and Technology

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