Elite - The Beginning
Most great inventions have been the result of someone asking questions.
The questions could be intended or unintended, like what happened with Alexander Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin. If Fleming had just thrown away the spoiled petri dish without asking the question of why the staphylococcus colonies did not grow near the mold that had contaminated the petri dish, we would not have antibiotics to treat our myriad illnesses. The key is to ask relevant questions and strive to find answers.
The Edsanta team’s endeavour to develop Elite has been a journey riddled with questions and answers. In Rohan Krishna’s own words, “Every time we tried to find a solution to a learner’s problem, we discovered something new. Our primary focus has always been the learner and all of our products have been just a means to enhance learner experience”
We started out with a simple question that was plaguing us,
“We have so many tools that allow us to compare and buy flight tickets and groceries online. Why not have something similar that will let learners find courses and learn easily?”
This led to Get Me A Course – the world’s largest course aggregator
But we were not satisfied. An independent survey of 10,000 youngsters working in various fields revealed that most of them did not know where they wanted to be in 5 years. When 5000 college students were asked the same question, most of them came back with very definitive answers!
This strange divide made us ask another set of questions.
What happened to these youngsters from the time they were in college to when they got into jobs?
Why did they lose focus?
How do we motivate them and get them back on the track of learning and fulfilling their goals?
We realised that humans learn better when they are focused on a goal – an achievable goal.
Our AI-driven career map engine was conceptualized as a result of this.
The usage analysis of the platform revealed that users spend quite a bit of time on the career map. We now wanted to develop a method that would tie the members’ learning to their interests and goals.
This led to another question.
Does the average learner have the time to spend on a 15-20 day course?
We realised that smaller nuggets of information in the form of videos and podcasts would help learners who did not have the time to spend on structured courses.
We also realised that a person’s capability should be measured on their knowledge and not on certificates. This resulted in our reimagining a learning model where the learner could gain a skill through unconventional learning resources like videos and podcasts too. The skill could also be validated through peer reviews or our own internal review mechanisms.
Thus Elite was born out of this continuous striving for motivation for learners to reach their full potential.
This journey of discovery is not over, we are in fact at the very beginning.
Like Kurt Vonnegut said,“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
