Stupidsid crowdsourced reviews of engineering colleges from students

Jinesh Bagadia, Shubham Doshi and Tumul Buch were once commuting by the local train back from college in Mumbai. One of them got a call from a junior who was an engineering aspirant. “He called up to ask about the admission procedure (it’s a bit confusing with the CAP rounds), and about various colleges,” says Jinesh. When the trio spoke to him they realized that all queries by him were something which had crossed their minds too when they were at that stage. The trio thought of aggregating all this information from students studying in different colleges to get honest reviews about every college.

Later they decided to put these reviews up on Stupidsid, and found them to be an instant hit among the student community. With Stupidsid students were getting honest reviews about colleges, more than what a college brochure could provide. “Content and information may be abundant but genuine information and good content is scarce, and this is what Stupidsid plans to provide students with. We started with genuine free information but over time we have started providing paid academic content,” adds Jinesh.

The startup offers previous year’s paper solutions which it plans to compliment in the coming semesters with notes, synopsis and last-minute cramming material. While local books aren't something students were satisfied with, the reference books which the university prescribes is very difficult to understand for most of them. The trio observed that students followed the pattern of using the previous year’s papers to prepare. “We thought of getting their concepts cleared from the basic fundamentals via these papers’ solutions. With this product we want the students to start learning from basic concepts,” he states.

Stupidsid recently added study material (paid content) after sensing the demand. “We have started with the solutions to the previous year’s papers which are written by experts and moderated by some of the well qualified teachers,” says Jinesh.

The startup competes with Shiksha and Minglebox but since they aggregate information from college websites and not from students, it gives Stupidsid a much better edge. “We have been able to garner really good traffic even with covering only engineering in a few cities whereas these sites list colleges across various cities,” he adds.

Founded in 2010, Stupidsid has grown 50 times in terms of traction. “With 300 average daily visitors in the first year to 15,000 daily visitors now without any paid marketing. Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune contribute maximum traction for us,” he adds.

The startup hasn’t faced major hurdles in disseminating free content on the site. However, students aren’t willing to pay for premium (paid) content. “Since our content isn't printable, students have been a bit averse to it,” reveals Jinesh.

Stupidsid offers content for engineering students in Mumbai only, though it plans to provide study material for VTU (Karnataka engineering colleges) along with other major technical universities across the country. Besides offering solutions to the university papers, Stupidsid plans to provide synopsis, last-minute revisions content and online doubt solving sessions this year.