From Edvice to Get Advice
My moment of inspiration to create an impact in what I do came from The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.
The way Randy uses a brick wall as a metaphor to drive home the point that quitting ain’t an option was a medicine I needed at that wayward point in life.
After having got stuck in the rat race & gotten to one of the best tech schools in the country, I was deeply disappointed & disturbed with the looming Rat Race 2.0 for the next 4/5 years.
I decided to take matters in my own hands & not get stuck in it at any cost. As college passed by and a couple of successful personal projects & internships saw the light of the day, I looked forward to an adventure to be able to create beautiful products.
My Eureka moment was when I was trying to help out my sibling from the hassles of his rat race. Motivated by this Eureka moment, I along with a bunch of friends decided to build a SaaS solution for test prep institutions. We envisioned a future where kids would get instant rigorous analysis of their shortcomings in tests and a data-driven approach to fixing those loopholes instantly.
Like I said, we only managed to envision it. Most institutions thought it was useless as their definition of personal attention meant personally counselling a select few toppers and ensuring their quota of a few top ranks were fulfilled. People shut their doors in our face, hung up or did not even return our calls. With literally no money and boiled eggs for dinner, we continued to fight for 8 whole months to no avail.
Around Feb 2015, we did get pragmatic and pivoted to a consumer centric app called Edvice through which a student could get connected instantly to a tutor & clear his doubts. While a shift from B2B to B2C brought its own challenges, we survived, continued to fight and achieved a successful exit through an acquisition by HashLearn in June 2015. We were one of the very few in 50 years of BITSian history to achieve a successful exit while at BITS.
The average age of my team at the time was 21.42 years old and we were all still undergraduate students at BITS Pilani. Well, still are.
We continued to be a part of HashLearn, rebranded Edvice to HashLearn Now and today it is loved by thousands of tutors & students who use it on a daily basis.
Shuttling between Pilani and Bangalore, we kept the cogs running and today HashLearn Now is a well-oiled machine in the capable hands of Jayadev & Gokul.
Ever since we announced our departure from HashLearn, a lot of folks have asked me the reason and every single time I can think of just one answer.
It’s okay to make crazy decisions when you love doing what you do.
Throughout the journey so far, we learnt a lot, kept up the fight and did reasonably well.
However, what keeps me up at night are the crucial decisions that led to this point and how timely advice in an array of aspects could have turned things for the better.
What’s more astonishing is that my peers who have taken up jobs at different organizations across India & abroad didn’t feel any different either. The reason was simple. The new-age industry’s demands were poles apart from what we were taught in college.
So we decided to take matters in our own hands and put up a new fight. A fight to bridge the gap between education & industry. A fight to facilitate knowledge sharing & democratizing it. A fight to help you learn & even un-learn wherever necessary.
So, how the hell are we going to do that?
It’s pretty simple. You shall help us do that.
TapChief, as we call it, is a fight to find your Commander-In-Chief for different problems you encounter through your professional life. We do this by connecting you to industry experts through a simple phone call. It’s that uncomplicated.
Join us in this journey as we fight to help you love what you do.
Shashank Murali
Co-founder & CEO, TapChief
