Wordpandit is a product of Learning Inc., an education and content development company that provides content for competitive examinations like CAT and writing services for organisations. It helps us to learn English using visuals and a lot of uncoventional methods. Prashant Chaddha is the founder of Learning Inc.
Story behind the Startup: Prashant Speaks
I have been teaching English for the last 7 years, and surprisingly, I am an engineering graduate. During the course of my engineering, I realized the field was not for me. I left the field after completing my degree, did six months of soul searching, and starting teaching students for CAT. Not being formally trained in the language, and with no degrees in the subject, meant only informal education was an option. But it turned out to be blessing in disguise. A lot of innovation and creativity went into my teaching practices, and I have steadfastly shied from conventional methods. Wordpandit was an outcome of those methods.
The first version of Wordpandit was only about visual vocabulary. Essentially, the site was a vocabulary blog. I kept on adding various sections on vocabulary, included ones like learning words from context, using youtube for vocab enhancement and contextual vocabulary. At some point of time, I realized that a lot of the content I was adding was really useful for exams such as CAT/GRE/GMAT. That is when I added sections for CAT/GRE/GMAT, and from then on, it has only been about expansion.
Revenue, RoadMap and On having a lot of Interns
Prashant earns his revenue by successfully running Language and CAT workshops in Chandigarh. Along with this, he works as a consultant in the education field, helping organizations develop their education products. All this money has been invested into building WordPandit. As of now, Learning Inc. has no direct revenue model. He has a series of books lined up, and is looking at various publication routes. Also, few online services are in pipeline.
Recently launched product Testpandit has gotten an awesome response in two months since it began functioning. With more than 500 registered users, it is expanding very fast. In the near future, Prashant & his team would be launching a section for school kids as well. Also, Learning Inc. would undergo a major transformation – and would transform into a complete language development portal from a vocabulary and test prep portal. Their domains for improving grammar and reading skills are almost ready for launch, along with a fun portal, ‘Lets’ build a dictionary’ lined up for launch. Mobile apps are under development too.
As of now, Prashant has 4 full time and 3 part time employees. He also has a host of interns working for him. During his college days, he found it next to impossible to find an internship that offered quality as well as learning. He offered the first internships to the students of his engineering college. With lot of online applicants willing to work with words, the internship program has grown. Learning Inc. will launch a new round of internships soon as the existing one draws to a close.
On Education & Entrepreneurship
We quizzed Prashant on what is a better way for students to learn instead of mugging up. A few things are must, according to him:
- Learning should be fun and rote-based.
- Visually, it is easy to capture the essence of things.
- You need a genuine reason to learn, marks can motivate to you level but not beyond that. The search for marks in a way destroys your soul and makes you a mechanical robot. Learning is for development and enhancement, and in the long term, all forms of learning have only one objective: to understand life better. That is where I think word-learning comes into picture, and helps you understand the ways of the world better.
As an engineer-turned-teacher-turned-entrepreneur, we seek advise from Prashant for entrepreneurs. Here are his tips:
- Follow your heart and take up the field you love
- You may undertake anything in life, as long as you are true to it, things work out in the long term
- (short term gain, long term loss) versus (long term gain, short term loss), this is the ultimate question that all entrepreneurs are faced with. Choices have to be made wisely else you might suffer in the long term. We might be blind-sighted in the short term and this is something that should be avoided.
TTP’s take on WordPandit
WordPandit makes English learning fun. We can learn words through Hinglish , Youtube clips and by context. The overall execution is very innovative. A little marketing would help Wordpandit get the right attention it deserves.
Here’s wishing Prashant & his team the very best!
