SUMMER INTERNSHIP PROJECT REPORT

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AND SALES OPERATIONS OF

STUDIROOM
FDS INFOTECH PRIVATE LIMITED

PROJECT REPORT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR

THE DEGREE OF
MASTERS OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
BY
SAURAV
16020441309
MARKETING & INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS (B-43)
2016-18

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

PROJECT GUIDE PROJECT MENTOR

Mr. Anand Altekar Dr. Vanishree Pabalkar
Product Manager Associate Professor
FDS Infotech Private Limited SIMS Pune

1
 CERTIFICATE OF PROJECT GUIDE

This is to certify that the project report titled “Product Development and Sales Operations of
StudiRoom”, was carried out by Saurav, under my guidance.

Dr. Vanishree Pabalkar

Associate Professor
SIMS Pune Signature of Project Guide

2
 DECLARATION BY STUDENT

I hereby affirm that the project entitled “Product Development and Sales Operations of
StudiRoom”, is a sincere reflection of my work at FDS Infotech Private Limited, which was
carried out with accuracy and proficiency on my part. This project has never been associated
with any other degree, award or similar titles.

Saurav
16020441309
Marketing & IB (B-43)
2016-18

3
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

My experience as an intern at FDS Infotech Private Limited was fulfilling as well as

knowledgeable. It helped me get a complete hands-on at a start-up. It helped me to
understand every aspect of starting a new business from product development, pre-sales, sales
to new product development.

I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Anand Altekar, Product Manager at FDS Infotech
Private Limited who gave me the opportunity to experience the work culture of a budding
startup and also provide ocean of opportunities to understand different aspects of the business
in Ed-Tech Industry.

I would also like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Brig. (Retd.)Rajiv Divekar, Director,
SIMS, my internal faculty guide Dr. Vanishree Pabalkar for their support and encouragement
in this endeavor.

4
5
6
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Project: Product Development and Sales Operations of StudiRoom
Objective: To develop an interactive platform which will make exam preparation easy
through digital technology and sell it to coaching classes so that it would be a one stop place
for students preparing for different competitive exams.
The major objectives encompassing my work at FDS Infotech Private Limited are as follows
1. Pre-Sales: To understand the digital scenario of India and internet penetration in
India including future probable trends. To make pre-sales calls to generate lead. To
understand which all websites the students are visiting for exam preparation. Carry
out a survey to understand what students prefer in a coaching class and how much are
they comfortable with the use of online platforms to study and prepare for the
competitive exams.

2. Lead Generation – Making cold calls and maintaining and updating the database
regarding every call made. Using email marketing to create a contact with the
potential customer.

3. Sales and New Product Development - To go out on the field and visit customers
with whom the meeting got fixed, try to sell the product. The main focus was to
convince them to get them registered with our online platform and to understand what
are extra features or requirements of the customers. After onboarding two coaching
classes. We took inputs from our customers and our investors regarding the features
and personalisation’s that every coaching class might require and build a new product
called Studiroom 2.0(We changed the name from StudiRoom 2.0 to Examify.me).

This project involved a complete hands-on the product StudiRoom, which is an interactive
platform which will assist students preparing for competitive exams. A survey was done to
understand the preference and inclination of students preparing for competitive exams,
towards e-learning in Pune city. It was also done to understand the factors which are
important for the students to select a coaching class so that the features can be included
accordingly. The survey was conducted on different age groups, working and non-working,
freshers and repeaters. During the survey, instead of asking direct questions, second level
questions were asked so that the response in the subconscious mind of the respondents can be
captured and biases can be eliminated. Result suggested that students are already using the
internet for studying. The results were in the favour of the product.

7
 TABLE OF CONTENT

Sr.No CHAPTER Page No.

1. Project Objective 9

2. Introduction 10

3. Methodology 11

• Pre-Sales 12

• Lead Generation 25

• Sales and New Product Development 27

4. Major Findings 31

5. Recommendations 32

6. Conclusion 33

7. Bibliography 34

8. Turnitin Report 35

9. Appendix 36

8
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. No. Name Page No.

1. Figure 1 - Digital scenario in India 12

2. Figure 2 – Internet penetration in India 13

3. Figure 3 – Google trends on IBPS exam 15

4. Figure 4 – Interest in IBPS exam region wise 16

5. Figure 5 – Students preparing for different competitive exams 17

6. Figure 6 – Graph showing important factors for preparing for 18

exams

7. Figure 7 – Factors important for selecting a coaching class 19

8. Figure 8 – How much people rely on user rating 20

9. Figure 9 – How many people spent time in rating coaching classes 21

10. Figure 10 – Reaction of people on the offering of online videos 22

11. Figure 11 – Graph showing how students want coaching classes to 22

operate

12. Figure 12 – How often students purchase online study material 23

13. Figure 13 – Data showing websites students visit for study 24

14. Figure 14 – Sample mail sent to customers for email marketing 26

15. Figure 15 – Domain names with their pricing year wise 29

9
 CHAPTER 1

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

The project has been undertaken in Ed-Tech Industry. The budding industry in education
sector.
The following are the objectives of the project:
1) To understand the product StudiRoom
2) Do presales research
3) Do cold calling and email marketing for lead generation
4) Sell the product

10
 CHAPTER 2
INTRODUCTION
The Ed-Tech Industry
Ed-Tech industry or Education Technology Industry consists of everything starting from small
things like teaching maths and science to preparing for an entrance exam.
Education sector being one of the biggest sector in the world now met the technology and the
industry is known as Ed-Tech Industry. India’s Ed-Tech industry is expected to grow at almost
eight times to hit $1.96 billion by 2021, with the number of paid users rising six-fold from 1.6
million now to 9.6 million, according to a joint report by Google and consultancy firm KPMG.
A figure of 44% of total education-related searches are now started coming from outside of the
top six metro cities in India. Also, there has been a four-fold growth in the consumption of
educational videos on YouTube in the last one year, the report added.
If we arrange things funding wise, then the top 3 sectors are as follows –
• Online learning – 28 per cent
• Marketplace – 20 per cent
• Blended learning – 14 per cent
Our product StudiRoom is also an Ed-Tech product and we worked a lot on our product to get
maximum out of this sector.
Traditional education systems are inherently inefficient.
Worldwide, the combined education and training industries account for spending of more than
$4 trillion, representing a huge 84 percent increase since 2000.
Despite this, reading and maths scores have remained stagnant in the US, while it is estimated
that 85 percent of every dollar spent on education is spent delivering it – the costs of bricks and
mortar and teaching staff, amongst other things.
A bunch of ed-tech startups have raised funding over the past one year. The reasons for this
lack of funding are likely two-fold –
• These businesses are capital light
• These businesses are viewed as too risky for VC’s to invest in
There is a huge opportunity in the Ed-Tech Industry but since it’s in nascent stage the fund
raising seemed to be a bit difficult as compared to other industries.

11
 CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY FOR THE PROJECT:

1. Pre-Sales – For the pre sales process the methodology was to do the research about the
trends of internet usage and internet penetration in India. Secondary data was collected
from the internet using google trends. With google trends we come to know about the
search behaviour regarding certain competitive exams. The data for the internet penetration
is taken from IAMAI, World Bank, CNNIC, Technopak Analysis. We created a list of
prospective customers whom we targeted during the cold calling process.

2. Lead Generation–

• We used cold calling and email marketing for generating the leads

o Surveyed, instead of looking for contacts on Internet - We surveyed Pune

city and looked for the hoardings, pamphlets, local newspapers like
“Sakaal” to search for the contact details of the coaching classes. We used
this method because most of the contact details that was available on the
yellow pages and just dial was wrong. Hence, we decided to collect data
from the local sources instead. The process was a bit more time consuming
but the data was accurate and we were able to collect data of 160 coaching
classes in Pune itself.

3. Sales and New Product Development – During our sales process we used two sales
methodology
• SPIN Selling: Spin Selling involves asking questions to understand the buyer’s
situation, concerns and issues.
SPIN selling has proven to be a great technique but requires good communication
skills. It focuses on asking questions that are based on the customer’s preferences
and this is done to understand the needs of the customers and make it in sync with
the product or service that we offer. The goal of this is to establish trust and help us
align our solutions with the services and product that we provide. This is a classic
sales methodology which is best suited for smaller and more transactional sales that
don’t have a large number of stakeholders involved in the buying process.

• Solution Selling: In solution selling we sell solutions instead of selling a service or

product. At StudiRoom as well we projected our product as a solution for the
coaching classes to go digital and provide an ad-on service to their existing coaching
class infrastructure.

12
 3.1 PRE- SALES

Pre-sales can be defined as a process which is performed before the actual selling takes place.
It is used to provide the customer an insight about the actual product. It is also used to initially
create interest about the product in the mind of the customers. In pre-sales, the activities that
are carried out are used to know about the target market and prospective customer as well.
During pre-sales, we carried out following activities:
• Analysed the digital scenario in India: This analysis was done to get an insight about the
internet users and internet penetration in India. Since the product StudiRoom was mainly
in EdTech Industry, so it was important for us to know the statistics about the current usage
and mode of internet access in India.
The number of internet user in India are increasing rapidly and is also expected to increase
in future. The user base of India’s internet users is estimated to reach a figure of 550 million
by 2020 with a penetration of approximately 40%. This is a significant increase from the
current 35% penetration
In last few years it’s been observed that there is a substantial growth in the number of
internet users in India.

600 45%

40%
500
35%

400 30%

25%
300
20%

200 15%

10%
100
5%

0 0%
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Total Internet Users India India's Internet Penetration % of Population

Figure 1: Digital Scenario in India

Source: IAMAI, World Bank, CNNIC, Technopak Analysis

According to a report by the management consulting firm Technopark, the digital

learning market in India is estimated at 2 billion dollars. As the number of internet users

13
 in India will reach 540 million by the year 2020, the e-learning market in India is also
expected to reach 5.6 billion dollars. The increase in this number is significant as it is
an increase of 35 percent from 2016.
• Internet Adoption in India:

Figure 2 – Internet Penetration in India

The above data shows that the internet adoption is highest in the age group of 19-25 yrs. In
India more than 50% of its population is below the age of 25 and more than 65% population is
below the age of 35. And if we see the targeted audience for StudiRoom, they are mainly the
people who fall under the age group of 19-30 yrs. In Studiroom we targeted people who are
preparing for the competitive exams because Studiroom is a competitive exam preparation
platform.
The e-learning cannot replace the conventional teaching in India, this is what we came to know
by visiting different coaching classes and asking students about this. According to a survey
done by Google and KPMG the online education industry in India is estimated to grow 8 times
to reach 1.90 billion dollars by the year 2021. From mobile devices the growth has been three
times and it witnessed a two fold growth in online searches for education. The major factors
driving this growth includes convenience, maximum reach and personalisation offered by
online channels.
This growth has been witnessed in metros as we can see from the digital penetration chart that
for metros its 77% where as for tier two and tier three cities its 20% and 3% respectively.

14
• Market segmentation
In StudiRoom we segmented the targeted market based on the exams for which the students
were appearing for. We Targeted the students and the coaching classes which are providing
classes for competitive exams for example IIT-JEE, NEET, UPSC exams etc.
The age group for this segment of market lies between 16 yrs to 35 yrs. We selected the
coaching classes based on the types of competitive exams. Since the analysis is done in the
month of April – May, we selected the coaching classes which are providing coaching for MBA
entrance exams, IBPS exams because the entrance tests for these classes will start from the
month of September end. Hence it was very crucial for us to tap those classes where the most
of the students were coming in that period. Because in that time students who were coming to
these classes were the students who were either taking the regular courses along with the
students who were taking only mock tests. Hence the footfall in those coaching classes
increased in that period. We used google trends to find out what is the most searched
competitive exams on google.

Here is the example of IBPS Exam Preparation search trends

Source – Google trends(Top searches – 1 is most searched)
After searching “IBPS Preparation” on google trends, got the following data
1. IBPS RRB
2. IBPS RRB Preparation
3. IBPS PO 2016
4. IBPS PO preparation 2016
5. IBPS PO 2015
6. Bankers Adda
7. IBPS clerk 2016
8. IBPS PO preparation strategy
9. Gr8ambitionz
10. IBPS SO 2016
11. Bankersadda
12. IBPS PO admit card
13. Freejobalert
14. Indiabix
15. Sarkariresults
16. IBPS SO preparation
17. IBPS PO English preparation
18. IBPS English preparation
19. IBPS PO syllabus
20. SSC
*The highlighted named are the websites that students usually visit for preparing for
competitive exams. These names were crucial as they will provide an insight as to what students
look for while visiting any exam preparation website.

15
Figure 3 – Google trends on IBPS exam

16
 Figure 4 – Interest in IBPS Exam Region Wise

Based on this segmentation we made a list of coaching classes in Pune and started calling them
for our product.
Our initial aim was to target those coaching classes which are famous in Pune but are not pan
India Coaching Classes and classes owned by a single person e.g. “Subodh Classes”. The
reason for selecting these kinds of classes was to get a pool of classes on our platform so that
when we approach big classes then there will be significant number of coaching classes to
show. Our main focus while on boarding big classes was to show them that most of the classes
are using our platform and if they don’t want to miss the bus they should also consider our
platform.

17
• Survey
The survey was done on the students who had taken any competitive exam or are preparing for.
In the survey, we used second level questions. Second level questions in a questionnaire are
the questions which are asked indirectly and try to get the unbiased answers, Since the
questions that are asked are second level questions, hence there are very less chances of the
introduction of personal bias in the survey.

25

20

15

10

Number of Students

Figure 5 – Students preparing for different competitive exams

Analysis –
• This question was put in the questionnaire to understand which exams are popular in
the Pune city region. From the graph we see that people appearing for the management
entrance exams are the most. If we see the percentage of people who are appearing or
appeared for the management competitive exams then we can see that 46.83% of the
total students who were surveyed are going for management entrance exams.
• After managemnet entrance exams comes the engineering entrance exams(graduation
and post graduation).

18
 Figure 6 – Graph showing important factors for preparing for exams

Analysis –
• This question was used to find out whether students are shifting completely towards the
digital platform or still rely on the physical classrooms or blend of both. This we tried
to find out by asking this indirect question. The students who responded more towards
the self study are the people who can be prospective customers for the online only
courses and students who responded more towards coaching classes are more relying
on the physical classrooms and personal assistance. The students who are in between
that is around the scale 2, 3 and 4 are more likely accept the online platform as an ad-
on service to the coaching classes.

• We were projecting our product as an assistance and an ad-on service to the existing
physical classroom teaching .The results are also showing that using SaaS model
(Software as a Service) for our product will not only prevent a direct competition with
the coaching classes but it will be easier for us to convience that we are not their
competitor but falicitator for their business growth.

• If we look at the respondents data, we can see that 63.29% of respondents are in between
the self study and coaching classes bracket. This means most of the students want
coaching classes and also rely on the self study. By this we were able to show the
coaching classes that there are significant number of students who are like this and
hence they should use our product to help students during their self study and by
providing this extra service to their existing students they are increasing the quality of
their service because most of the students think that there is a significant value addition
if the coaching classes provide online study material as well. This is verified by the
response of the sixth question in the survey.

19
 Figure 7 – Factors important for selecting a coaching class
Analysis –
This specific question in the questionnaire was used to understand the factors on which students
select the coaching classes. For our product this question was useful in the sense that it provided

20
us the factors on which we should select the coaching centers and how much is online study
material relevant to the students.
The most important factors while selecting a coaching class, as we can see from the graphs
above are faculty, past success, fees and online study material.
Faculty - In the survey most of the respondents indicated that faculty is the most crucial factor
for a coaching class. Fees also plays an important role in selecting a coaching class. But during
the survey we asked students that if the faculty is really very good then in that case will the
fees still matters a lot. Most of the students were ready to compromise on fees if the faculty is
really very good.
Online Study Material - The next factor that was crucial from our product point of view was,
the availability of online study material. If we see the graphs,we will see that there is a huge
peak at the scale of 3 and there are substantial amount of respondent in the scale bracket of 4
and 5. This was a good indication for us as there were substantil amount of students who thinks
that the online study material is important for them. If we look at this percentage wise then we
can see that 27.84% of respondents feels that online study material are important whereas
41.77% are on fence but can be convinced to use our product.

Figure 8 – How much people rely on user rating

Analysis –
This question was put in the questionnaire to check the feasiblity of one of our feature that we
were going to include in our product. Hence we tried to check if the ratings of coaching classes
were provided then how much they would rely on those. From our survey we found out that
30.4% of the respondents would rely on the ratings to some extent and there were significant

21
number of people who were there in the scale of 3 which fall in the category of customers who
can be convinced to trust the rating over a period of time.
The initial result of the survey seemed to be very promising as the most of the factors that we
considered and features that we planned to include had seen a positive response.

Figure 9 – How many people spent time in rating coaching classes

Analysis –
At StudiRoom we were planning to introduce the rating feature in our platform. We thought
of making students fill the ratings so that on one hand it will be for students ,by students and
this will also increase the reliability and authenticity of the ratings.

22
 Figure 10 – Reaction of people on the offering of online videos

Analysis –
This question was put in the questionnaire to see if our product is getting in sync with the needs
of the students. Generally coaching classes takes feedback from students and implement which
facilities does students want. And by this result, it was easy to convince the coaching classes
as well that students are inclined towards e-learning as well along with the traditional classroom
teaching.

Figure 11 – Graph showing how students want coaching classes to operate

Analysis-
This was the main question in the questionnaire whose result was supported by the result of
some previous questions in the questionnaire as well like how much value do you think will be
added to your learning, if the coaching classes also provide the online videos and test along
with the normal classroom teaching. And based on this we get the result as most of the students
wanted a blend of both online classrooms and traditional classrooms and this is where our main
idea of selling our product came into picture. At StudiRoom we have always conceptualise our
23
product as an enabler to provide good and quality experience to the students so that they will
be able to get most out of what they are paying for.

Figure 12 – How often students purchase online study material(eg e-books)

Analysis-
This question was used to check the behaviour towards one more feature of our product that
was related to making available the online study aterial to the student. In this we tried to get
into the minds of the students to see how comfortable are they while studying online and how
frequently they will tend to buy the online study material if made available by the coaching
classes.
As we can see from the pie chart as well that only 34.2% of the respondents never bought any
online resource like e-book. Whereas rest of the respondents have purchased any online study
material out of which 17.7% bought books frequently and 46.8% sometimes bought the study
material.

24
 45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Number of Students

Figure 13 – Data showing websites students visit for study

Analysis –
We included this question to know about the engagement of students with the websites that are
available for exam preparation. If more students used to visit a specific website then it would
have been hard for us to move them form their preffered website. Because it would be
convincing them on the basis of extra features that we are going to provide.
But as we look at the result of the survey we can see that most of the students don’t have any
preferred website to look upon for their exam preparation. Hence it was easy for us to introduce
our product in that gap. One thing to note here is that students are not using the websites like
Indiabix for their exam preparation and people are using websites of TIME only for giving
their online tests.

25
 3.2 LEAD GENERATION

Initially to generate the leads we did cold calling and e-mail marketing. But before actually
making the calls we were asked to create the database of the prospective customers in Pune
city.

Initial Data Collection of Coaching Classes -

Initially we started creating and developing the database of coaching classes by searching
online about the classes. Initially we target only those classes which we think were relevant
according to our initial survey. But as we started calling the classes we came to realise that
most of the contacts were wrong or are irrelevant as nobody was picking up the calls.

Cold Calling –
During our cold calling process, we followed three guidelines
• Who we are
• Purpose of calling
• What we offer
For us the main challenge during cold calling was to be clear and precise as to who we are. We
basically see the second and the third point as an opportunity to create curiosity in the mind of
the customer. During a cold call, we generally got two to three minutes to create curiosity about
our product.
Our end objective during a cold was to get an appointment to give a demonstration of our
product. Since we didn’t want to sound like a telemarketing company and since we were a
professional startup, we followed the appointment strategy. Sometimes the coaching classes
asked us to email them describing about the product and features and sometimes we were not
able reach a person on the call who can give us an appointment. And the main hurdle in front
of us was that many contact details that we got through the yellow pages and just dial were
wrong. So we decided to go to the areas and searched for the pamphlets, coaching centres and
hoarding for their contact information. Also during this we tried to find out if the coaching
class has a head office in Pune city itself. Because if the head office and the owner of the class
is there in Pune then it would be easier for us to close the deal.

E-mail Marketing –
During our e-mail marketing campaign, the first thing that we decided was not to buy the e-
mail details of people. The main reason for doing this was to stick to the target audience.
Because usually when we buy the email details of people we don’t know whether that person
is interested in this kind of product or not. And nowadays these mails goes directly into the
spam folder. Since we were a startup we didn’t wanted our companies email ID to be

26
considered as a spam because then it would have been very difficult for us to whitelist that and
ultimately that will create a bad impression of our company in the budding stage itself.
So instead of sending random e mails to some random people what we did was we made some
cold calls to the coaching classes and used to ask them for the appointment. Even if we didn’t
get the appointment 90 out of 100 people definitely ask for an email and this was the time when
we market our products through emails. After sending emails to the coaching classes we used
to call them again showing that we were really interested in that coaching class and were trying
a bit more to get the appointment.

The following is a screenshot of the mail that we used to send to the customer.

Figure 14 – Sample mail sent to customers for email marketing

Instead of attaching an image to the email we integrate the image within the email. Because
most of the people don’t open an image if it was sent in an attachment, also that breaks the
flow of an email.
The image in the email is the landing page that I created for Steps Foundation. After Doing
cold calling the requirement of the Steps Foundation came regarding the look of the
personalised landing page that we are providing. So, I developed this landing page for the
Steps Foundation mentioning the main coaching fields of the classes and about the owner of
the coaching class who would be making account on our platform.
Since we didn’t have a separate team for handling the email marketing campaign so we used
handle everything and we used to give the support ID as well as our personal contact number
for any further query or any kind of assistance.

27
 3.3 SALES AND NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
3.1.1 Sales –
The sales started as soon as we got our first appointment. The calling and the selling process
was done simultaneously. In the morning hours, we used to call coaching classes and after
lunch time we used to visit the coaching classes. The main reason for selecting this timing was
that in coaching classes the morning slots ends till 12:30 or 1:30 p.m. and the next batch usually
have classes starting from 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. So in between these times stamp it was easy to
pitch our product. And this was the reason we used to try to get appointments that were before
the evening batch starts.

Types of sales approaches that we used are as follows:

• SPIN Selling: Spin selling is a sales technique which involves asking questions to
the customer to understand the need, issues and concerns of the customer.
We were taught in our sales subject that a good sales person is one who listens
carefully to its customer, because if we don’t understand the need of the customer
then we won’t be able to convert that need into want, want into demand and so on
and so forth.
SPIN selling has proven to be a great technique but requires good communication
skills. It focuses on asking questions that are based on the customer’s preferences
and this is done to understand the needs of the customers and make it in sync with
the product or service that we offer. The goal of this is to establish trust and help us
align our solutions with the services and product that we provide. This is a classic
sales methodology which is best suited for smaller and more transactional sales that
don’t have a large number of stakeholders involved in the buying process.

SPIN selling at StudiRoom

During our sales calls we used to carry the tablet and portable wifi hotspot to give
the customer a demo of our product. To understand the product and to beforehand
figure out what could be questions in the mind of the educator, we created some
demo courses for the educators so that we had a better understanding of the product
and we would able to handle the queries of the customers more professionally.

Insights that we got through SPIN Selling:

Some of the insights that we were able to gather by asking questions to the educators
were :
o Most of the educators wanted their customised landing pages
o Some of the educators didn’t want all the features of our product, so there
was a need to give power to the educator to choose from specific list of the
features from where they can select and pay for that specific feature only.
o Some of the educators wanted to implement the attendance, notifications
sent to students and faculty feedback through our platforms.

28
 • Solution Selling: Solution selling is a selling process in which you don’t sell the
product or a service as what it is but sell it as a solution to the need of the customer.
But for this one has to be a good listener
Solutions that we sold to the coaching classes as a part of solution selling are as
follows:
o The major concern of the coaching class was how can they increase their
visibility and increase their profits.
As a part of solution, we suggested that by using our platform you can reach
more number of students without investing much because we were offering
our services at very nominal rates. Also if in physical classrooms they want
to increase the strength of the students or a batch then they have to invest in
their infrastructure. But with StudiRoom they can easily increase their reach
and there was no need to invest in the infrastructure.

o The other concern of the coaching classes was that by introducing our
platform to other coaching classes as well we are increasing the competition
and letting other coaching know about their strategies.
We told coaching classes that even if they are not using our platform, the
competition still exists. That’s the reason why most of the coaching classes
are there in a specific location. But if they use our platform then they will
be able to know what their competitors are doing which they wont be able
to do when they were not using our platform. With this we are providing
fair chance to everyone to come in the competition.

o Coaching classes also had a concern about the loss of their data that they
were going to put online
Initially our server was hosted locally but we moved our server to Amazon.
The service provide by Amazon in this field is extraordinary and there is no
chance of hacking, tracing and leak of data.

o One of the coaching class showed the concern about uptime of the server.
They wanted that the server should not break down because that will
ultimately dent the reputation of the coaching class.
We were already working on this issue from the beginning. We aimed to
provide 100% uptime with our servers and this was the also one of the
reasons why we had shifted our server from local hosting to Amazon Server.
During our selling process, we were able to onboard two coaching classes for our product. One
of them is a famous Pan India coaching class which has two centres in Pune city itself and
several branches in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.
The second coaching class that we were able to onboard was a famous UPSC coaching class
in Pune. This specific coaching class has some concerns regarding the product that we had
addressed during the second version of our platform.

29
3.1.2 NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT –
After onboarding customers for our platform, we went through some of the demands and
requirements of our customers.
We didn’t implement every demand of the customers as that would enable other customers to
demand more and more and ultimately it will dilute the should idea of our product which was
providing a common platform for all coaching classes.
Also we felt that StudiRoom is very common name and it’s caching much of an attention in
the market also some websites already had phonetically similar sound. Hence we decided to
change the name of our product.
• Naming for new product :
For searching for domains, we used google domains portal to get the pricing and
availability of the domains. Some of the sample search are as follows

Figure 15 – Domain names with their pricing year wise

We also searched for other domains as well like

• Smartstudi.com
• Estudi.com

30
 • Estudiroom.org
• Epreparation.org
• Digiprep.org
But after taking into consideration all the factors like availability of domain, the price
and the connect with our product we narrowed down to examify.me.
So, if we divide the name into two parts we will be to understand the relevance of the
name. The name “examify” will the tell us that we are equipping the students with all
the tools that he/she will require to excel in the exam and “.me” will project as if the
student is telling the coaching classes that “examify me” with all the tools.

• Features Implementation -
Some of the major changes that we did in our platform are as follows and this also
includes the recommendations:
o We completely focussed on projecting our product as SaaS rather than just
projecting as a product.
o We decided to use rating app as a standalone app that won’t be integrated into
the site but will work as a separate entity because we started focusing on rating
the coaching classes apart from our normal operations.
o The personalisation that we will provide will be as an extension of our main
landing page. For example, if there is a class naming “xyz classes” then the
space that will be provided will be like examify.me/xyzclasses.
o No personalization will be provided on our landing page as this will dilute our
brand identity.
o For coaching classes who had their own websites, we will provide competitive
pricing by reducing our cost of operation of website, raising funds and provide
more feature like students full performance analysis. Because the cost of
maintain websites usually cost at least 3 to 4 lakhs including the server and
hosting cost.
o We will incentivising students who will rate coaching classes for us. This will
be like ratings for the students and by the students and this will also increase the
authenticity of the ratings as well

31
 CHAPTER 4
MAJOR FINDINGS

Some of the major findings during my summer internship at FDS Infotech are as follows:
• Coaching classes are eager to go online because they know that internet is the new big
thing. But they are a bit sceptical about the outcome of that. When we introduced our
product to the coaching classes they showed interest in our product and asked questions
about our products working and pricing.

• Students want to study online for competitive exams. They want the convenience of the
e-classroom but they don’t want it as a standalone thing especially if they are preparing
for a competitive exam. They look for a blend of physical classrooms as well as online
platform for reviewing and taking tests.

• Students gives very less thought to the fees and the major concerns for the students
attending coaching classes is faculty.

• Coaching classes want to increase their revenue and student base with less investment
in infrastructure especially in physical classrooms and they are looking towards
digitising everything from their attendance to the faculty feedback.

• Coaching classes have already started investing to create their own online portals but
the vendors are charging very high even for basic features and this is where our product
excels with quality offerings at low price.

32
 CHAPTER 5
RECOMMENDATIONS

Since the duration of the internship was limited hence there were certain things for which
I would like to suggest some recommendation
• The monthly rental of the service should be a combination of fixed rental plus usage
based. We used to charge less if the number of students of coaching classes are
more on our platform. But my recommendation is that the company should charge
a minimum amount on monthly basis to get into the condition of break even.

• We should add a feature like referral program into our rating app and incentivise
the students initially. Benefit of this would be that we don’t have to look for more
students to get the review filled in our rating app.

• Initially we should isolate coaching classes from each other on our platform so that
the concerns of the direct competition can be reduced. Also, when the coaching
classes will get familiar with our platform and become more confident about using
the online platform we will expose them to competition. Because this is how a
market place will work.

33
 CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSIONS

The work done in pre-sales helped in segmenting, targeting and positioning our product. To
conclude I would like to summarise the project as follows:
• Our main aim while working on the product StudiRoom was to make sure that the
product is relevant to the current market. For this we did the research and the results
were fairly in our favour.

• We encountered some issues while looking for the contact information of coaching
centres but that was rectified by using offline channels as well for the data collection
about coaching classes.

• With a combination of cold calling and email marketing techniques we were able to
reach the targeted audience and were able to get a better engagement.

• The conversion of two coaching class was successfully done and the insights and
recommendation were given to the company for product innovation purpose.

• Successful implementation of the recommendations was done on the version 2.0 of the
product.

34
 CHAPTER 7
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Websites –
• https://trends.google.co.in
• https://domains.google
• http://www.worldbank.org/

35
TURNITIN REPORT

36
APPENDIX

37
38
39
40