We invited Anish Kumar Rathee, Founder of Learnr for an interview with Most Popular Stories to know more about his entrepreneurial journey.
Anish Kumar Rathee is B2B/B2C-oriented developer having more than two and a half year’s experience designing, implementing, integrating, testing and supporting impactful applications developed in diverse, collaborative environments for mobile and tablet devices on the Android platform as well as iOS platform, working on providing the best education to the world through Learnr.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur.
Well, it all started when I was in my 2nd year of engineering and I got a backlog, that made me wonder when I am the one paying the fees(Which was a lot by the way) and the college is the one collecting it, won’t it be their responsibility to take care of my studies as well.
I then started to research about the current system and what is the drawback, I did my research and was really surprised by the fact that the system was never designed to encourage innovative, creative and out of the box (Curriculum) ideas as there are no marks for going out of the box (Curriculum) and don’t get me even started on the absence of communication in the system, something that’s the basics of what we are today is completely absent and moreover discouraged in the current system.
By the way, let me remind you system does not mean teachers, they’re the only ones supporting education and yet they’re underpaid, I feel they should be paid as much as doctors because doctors can perform heart surgery and save a life but a great teacher can touch that heart and make a life. All these things made me realize that there’s something really wrong here and I set out on a path to change that forever.
- Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
Ah! that, as I finished my engineering, I was also doing my research on education, which made me realize that there are a lot of people who don’t have access to education at all and a lot of the people can’t afford education even after having access to it.
This made me really sad as it’s not a service it’s an experience and every child in the world no matter where deserves this experience, because it’s not about the students who are just 20% in population but it’s about the 100% future that they’re going to make and I wanted to be a change-maker which requires a different path known as entrepreneurship.
It’s not like I did not take a job at all however, I did take up only the jobs that helped me in understanding the journey of an entrepreneur as I was clear about it from the beginning.
- What was the vision behind it?
The idea was to bring Communication and networking at the core of learning, we wanted to do this as communication is the one big reason why we have reached till here as a race. It’s the simplest solution to all the problems in education, as a student communicates and creates a network of the teachers whom they personally like this approach helps the students build a very personal environment for learning specifically, opening vast opportunities for collaboration on research and education.
I believe that if we can customize healthcare, cars, and Facebook pages, we can customize education. I believe every student has different dreams, different interests and a different speed to learn, but they study the same 6 books from the same teacher all year round.
- Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?
When I completed my research and found the problems, I needed to get a solution and that’s where I called in my friend and an amazing developer Ashutosh and a product geek, and together we build Learnr.ai – a place to communicate and network for education.
Learnr allows you to connect to any teacher/student/professional around the world to get answers to your questions regarding learning. Our approach, which is to connect and communicate changes everything about the process of learning, for one the education here is proactive not forced, you can study at your own time and more importantly at your own speed. Now that’s what communication alone does, coming to networking when a student comes to learnr our AI engines start suggesting them to connect to teachers, professionals, and more importantly other students allowing them to form a private network and helps them create a very personal environment for their learning and education.
Whereas in the current system there is one teacher for an average of 50 students whereas on learnr there is a whole network of teachers for one single student. In one line it’s like your personal class for learning.
- How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
First of all, I accept it and then take action to help myself. I do a lot of physical exercises and yoga. I love meditation, it helps me calm down and sit back and look at the problems with a different perspective.
- What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
I believe that the only thing in or control is our health and to give your 100% to anything first and foremost we need to be 100% healthy because if your health is not 100% no matter how hard you try you can never break your own threshold.
- How your company is helping India to grow?
We are literally helping the students to learn better and thus shaping the future of this country. We believe that the best way to change the future is to make our education better.
Even after 150 years we still haven’t changed education it’s still the same old one class 50
different students having different dreams and one teacher. Education is the least tech-enabled field even though the source of all this tech was education.
- In your opinion what are the keys to success?
The keys to success for me have been, the first one is discipline, fitness, and then focus. And all three have been really important I don’t think I would have been where I am if I had missed any of the three.
- What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
One and only one piece of advice, make something get it out there in the market, get feedback, and iterate. The only thing you need to remember is that everything feels really easy in the head but its the progress we show outside that matters.
To Check out Learnr Website, Click Here!
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