Mumbai based twin brothers start up Professorbuddy; MCQ based online tests offered

With the burgeoning number of students in the age group of 8-18 in India, and the "supposed" declining quality of the education offered in schools, tuitions or coaching classes have gained popularity. With the proliferation of tuition classes for students of all age groups, it has become mandatory to run them professionally, and provide proper education to the enrolled students. Entrepreneurs who early caught on the frenzy include the founders of some of the leading coaching classes that now have a pan-India presence. In the current scenario, there are a lot of entrepreneurs building businesses that run on the fringe of or are an integral part of a coaching class. One such startup is Professorbuddy, an online exam portal that enables students to appear for MCQ based mock exams.

Purav Kothari shares with us his entrepreneurial journey,"It all started when we ourselves experienced the lack of testing part in coaching classes when we were taught for professional courses. While studying forms one aspect of education, self-assessment forms the other. We recognized a void that existed between teaching and assessment of what one has to learn. To fill this void, we at Professorbuddy felt the need to create a testing and assessment avenue to help the professors, and the students appearing for professional exams."

Professorbuddy offers login to students through their coaching institutes and equip the professor with a backend login that allows them to keep a track of the students' progress and provide indepth analysis. Most of the online exam portals present today are student centric, and hence, Purav feels, that Professorbuddy has its own space in the market. Also, they have created a unique dashboard the offers a detailed report, called the Buddy Report. The dashboard is integrated with features such as individual analytics of students; upload notes for a batch and batch certificates. For students, detailed analysis of their result is provided.

Professorbuddy's target audience includes coaching classes of C.A- CPT & CS-F, that can outsource their test series. Also, there are approx. 10000 coaching classes and 1000 private tutors for this segment in Maharashtra. This target segment is catered to, by twin brothers Pratik and Purav Kothari. They cofounded Professorbuddy in mid-2012. A Chartered Accountant (CA) by profession, Pratik has been a driving force behind the idea of an education portal.

Starting with CA-CPT, CS - Foundation, Professorbuddy provides conceptual mock test for CFA exams, IIT-JEE, NEET. "Going ahead our target will be to create MCQ exams subject wise for students in Secondary and Higher Secondary (SSC , HSC , CBSE ,ICSE), evaluating & conducting written test series for coaching classes for all levels & professional exams. We aim to release apps for android mobile, iPhone and ipad - to provide wider accessibility. Integrating the portal on a CD or DVD especially for secondary & higher secondary students who are not able to access web."

On the operational front, a login is issued to students through their coaching classes. The charges are levied per login per user depending upon the course with an idea of an affordable testing platform for coaching classes. Since its inception, this duo has personally met close to 90 professors of coaching classes and have successfully tied up with a few classes. They're expecting a huge turnout for the June-attempt for CPT and CS Foundation course.

This bootstrapped startup, is the first to launch CS Foundation course in India, and looks forward to raising capital in near future.