L.A. Balamurugan, BookMyTrainings, an Online Training Marketplace

Bala, tell us about BookMyTrainings.

BookMyTrainings is an online training marketplace. People can browse, evaluate and book training programs online. Bookmytrainings.com is one stop platform for all training needs.

What is your market differentiators?

We operate by a 5-point differentiator model: We list and promote training in a user friendly way. We provide content through blogs and articles to help end-users. We collect payments and have multiple flexible options. We have a direct sales team for corporates to help their Learning & Development team. We are a neutral training marketplace.

What is the story behind BookMyTrainings? How much capital was required to implement the idea?

The idea came up when we were discussing the need to choose and evaluate various trainings and training providers at one place instead of searching all around the web. We have put in 3 Lakhs till now.

Tell us a little bit about your background.

We are 3 co-founders and we come from IT and consulting background. One of us is also an SAP trainer and a cost accountant. Our collective industry experience is more than 35 years.

Please share some success stories with us.

Yes, good acceptance has been there from everyone. So far, to whoever we have discussed, whether it’s a provider or a seeker, they felt it’s a new and good concept. All the training providers were very receptive to our idea and are getting their training programs promoted through this platform. Corporates are also curious to try out this concept. A couple of the training providers are interested in funding us. But given our neutrality principle, we are unable to get funded from any training provider.

So, where do you see BookMyTrainings five years from now?

We want this to be ‘the’ go-to place for all training needs. We want our start-up to become a makemytrip for training.

What is your revenue model?

We take commission for confirmed seat bookings from training providers.

How big is your team?

We are about 7 people. 3 founders, 2 full time employees, 2 part-time employees. The team is from an IT, Marketing/Sales and Training background.

Let us know about your expansion plans.

We are right now based in Bangalore, with our direct sales and operation team. We want to expand to Pune and Delhi with a sales/operation team in the next 3 months. We are now more focussed on the class room training programs. We want to expand to offer e-learning programs in a big way.

Any stats that you want to share with us?

Within 2.5 months of website launch, we are able to see an average of 1100 page views per day and approximately 65 unique users visiting our website daily. We have about 100 training programs listed in our portal on any given day and it’s growing. For training, Pune is only next to Bangalore. Hence our expansion plan includes Pune as our next city. Training in Android and Cloud Computing are the ones most asked for on the portal.

Do check out http://bookmytrainings.com/ for any details!

Please let us know your views on BookMyTrainings by writing to us at feedback@yourstory.in