Ex redBus employee starts up SkillSpace to help people learn from others around them

Lokesh Motwani is a computer science graduate from Satyabhama Institute of Science and Technology. After graduating, he went on to work at Accenture and then redBus as a developer for a combined time of around 4 years. Transitioning from Accenture to redBus, the startup bug bit him, and he launched SkillSpace in November 2012.

SkillSpace brings together people with various skills on a single platform, providing other users an option to learn new skills from them. "SkillSpace democratizes the learning system by giving an option to the users where they can choose people from whom they wish to learn," says Bangalore based Motwani.

Every user at SkillSpace has the access to the skills, professional details and educational details of other users. This information about a user shows his expertise and is helpful for other users to decide whether they can learn something new from that user.

Once a user sends request to the person from whom they wish to learn, the platform connects the two and the teacher can come back about the topics he would teach, price, date and the venue. SkillSpace takes a 20% cut of the price decided."At present SkillSpace offers 100+ unique skills which users can learn from other SkillSpace users and this number is growing on a daily basis," says Motwani, the sole driving force behind SkillSpace currently. The motivation for starting up was primarily because some of the flaws he saw in the training space. He shares that if someone wants to learn making icons on Photohop, taking up a 4 week course on Photoshop doesn't make sense. "There are online options as well but when nothing works as well as a direct relationship between the teacher and the learner," he adds.

The training market in India is huge and reports have valued the market northward of INR 50 billion. This market is curretnly captured by coaching and training institutes mainly and this is where SkillSpace will try to come in. Mumbai based Trait tried doing this but the project has been currently put on the backburner so gaining traction is the challenge in the space.

Although a clone of an existing US model, (a pivot from Skillshare's marketplace model to a more location based online community) one very encouraging fact is that these are early signs of a growing startup culture wherein successful startups serve as a breeding ground for many other startups. This certainly points towards a healthy and encouraging work culture at redBus. One can expect more of this happening as we see more success stories arising.

Website: SkillSpace