How Vishal is helping educators undergo digitalization

This startup story is of a startup called towardsdigital.co by Vishal Rewari in the Edtech space with a simple objective of the digital transformation of educational institutes. Here is the startup story of Vishal in his own words

I am the son of a retired Chemistry teacher and studied under the top educators in the world.

I lost my job as a product manager in Sep 2019 and then I started working at my brother’s firm which was an educational institute and realized firsthand the problems of running an offline institute.

Any coaching institute has 2 problems

1. Wait for the batch to start
2. You can have student only once

In June 2020, one academy came searching for someone who can help them take their business online.

I took up the consultation and enjoyed the work as helping others with digital technologies come naturally to me. I was able to quickly create a plan for the entire transformation

Helped the academy transform into an online business where a student can purchase service by the institute. Adding to it, made a plan to convert it to a subscription business like Netflix

We went a step ahead and added the gamification capability to increase the engagement and took up some pro-bono project to help an educator in America.

I feel I have received such a good education, I can help educators earn a better living by solving their sales, marketing, infrastructure problem, and online education engagement problem.

With the current focus on consultation, we intend to make a product soon so that we can solve problems for more people and trying to find more clients.

What are the business strategies Vishal is adopting

1. Invite your prospect to podcast guest

2. They end up asking about us and then we introduce yourself

3. Gain trust and give them a platform to share their vision

4. Cover the podcast with the problem, challenge, and road ahead faced by the institute

5. Ask for a small project that we can do for them at the end of the podcast

This helped us creating pipelines faster than any other method.

As I write I have 7 guests ready to come, 1 of them has already asked for our proposal and 1 of them advised me to make something bigger and not get stuck in consultation (this person runs a 20M USD Education Firm.

So this is, for now, seems positive. Also, this puts me in front of decision-maker instead of subordinates

What were the mistakes Vishal did and what did he learn?

Tried regular outreach approach of sales – failed

Could not use referrals much because the academy is yet to come for the first client

Tried Webinar approach – failed again

That’s why I would like to suggest:

• Work as much as possible
• Don’t run after some trick or sales-hack because there is not any
• Focus on the customer problem and not your problem.

---

Check out stories of other aspiring Entrepreneurs

Also, check out our most loved Startup Strategy Stories below