Gyaanexchange: Enabling Development of Skill Sets via Knowledge Exchange

Monday September 03, 2012 , 4 min Read

The discretionary education market has a huge potential. There are many things that people want to learn beyond academics to improve their skillsets and to pursue their passions. The formal education sector has failed to cater to this market and the only option for them is via the internet. Gyaanexchange is one player in this growing trend of people coming to learn/teach online. It is an online community where anybody with a skill, knowledge or idea can teach and anyone with a desire to learn something can learn.

Gyaanexchange enables people to learn things, which they cannot or could not learn in school or college, expand their horizons and broaden their perspective beyond what they do in everyday life. It also enables anyone to become a contributor to their community by sharing knowledge and skills with others. Gyaanexchange is working towards establishing a community based collaborative learning and teaching environment. They intend to do this by connecting every learner and teacher in the city and neighborhood.

Founded by **Siddharth Bhansali,** a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, Gyaanexchange has come a long way in the sector and has a proper team in place. Assisting him is **Vishad Shanghvi, COO.** Vishad graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and worked as a consultant for 3 years. **Shonali Bedi, CFO**, is a Masters student from Stanford, an ex-Morgan Stanley and brings some order to the craziness of the team. **Mihir Lunia, Head of Community Outreach**, is a graduate in BMS from Jai Hind College. Mihir realized at an early stage that working in a corporate sector is not his cup of tea and left is cushy job at an insurance firm to jump into the madness of a startup. **Sanjana Kothari, Head of Design,** graduated from the Raffles College in Mumbai and is the creative genius behind all of Gyaanexchange’s design work.

A learner gets to browse through all the classes in different cities and register for the ones they are interested in. From a learner’s perspective, Gyaanexchange gives them the opportunity to discover new opportunities, interact with teachers online and enroll and pay for classes using our online payment or cash pickup facility. From a teacher’s perspective, Gyaanexchange brings to teachers the convenience of creating and managing (monitor registrations, online payments, etc). The platform also has in-built tools to easily promote classes via social media properties.

Gyaanexchange.com earns through commission charged to every student who enrolls for a class. The other form of revenue is through advertising. Their users are young adults living in urban areas and are active on the Internet. Teachers are both individuals and organizations that regularly conduct classes and workshops. They have had over 700 classes listed till now.

“Our biggest challenge is getting people to use Gyaanexchange as a tool on a regular basis. Many people are not familiar or savvy with the internet and they create their class profiles and then don’t bother about it. Our goal is to change that mindset to get people to use Gyaanexchange as an online convenience rather than just a listing,” says

They are planning to set up online classes in the near future. They intend to appoint campus ambassadors in all metro and ‘mini metro’ cities, so as to increase their reach.

This Teachers' Day, Gyaanexchange brings you an opportunity that allows you to acknowledge your teacher in the most earnest manner! Participate in the "Tag Your Teacher" Contest and give your special teacher the most precious gift of all - Appreciation & Acknowledgement. All you have to do is send across an interesting write up of 100 words narrating an incident with the person whom you would want to tag as your special teacher. The incident can be any small anecdote which inspired you to nominate him/ her as your teacher. Remember, the write up needs to aptly describe why you tag that certain person as that special teacher in your life. There are some amazing prizes as well!

Do visit Gyaanexchange! Also, you can check out their Page on YourStory Pages!

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