[quote style=”boxed”]The earlier you fail in your life the luckier you are. I have experienced failure very early on in my life and it has taught me a lot.[/quote]
Piyush Mangukiya is the founder of a socially responsible online education company, EduCare. EduCare provides online one-on-one tutoring and develops educational mobile apps for K-12 and college students in the United States and with every tutoring session completed or a mobile app downloaded by a student, they help educate an underprivileged child in need through their Global Education Movement. EduCare was founded with a mission to promote education globally.
Before founding EduCare, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University by graduating a year early with a magna cum laude honor in May 2010. He is also a StartingBloc Fellow.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently working on getting my first social for-profit venture, EducateNCare off the ground and thereby spurring a Global Education Movement. EducateNCare is a socially responsible ed-tech start-up that focuses on providing online one-on-one education/tutoring to students using live teachers who could be located anywhere around the world.
Where did the idea for EduCare come from?
The idea for EducateNCare came from my personal experience while growing up in India and finally coming to the US for higher education. Through these experiences I found that there was a huge disparity in education access among students in the United States and other developing countries. Along with that, I also saw that students in the US were lacking in key skills like math and reading even though there was a huge amount of money being spent on education. So, we started thinking about finding one solution to both these problems and that’s how EducateNCare came into existence. EducateNCare uses technology and great pool of teachers/tutors to provide quality education to students in developed countries and use this revenue to educate children in underprivileged countries.
What does your typical day look like?
My day starts at 8:00am and by 9:30 am I would reach office and start checking my email inboxes. I spend my mornings to get all the analytics about our platform usage for the previous day. Then we try to analyze these data to see which marketing campaigns have worked and which have not. Later part of the day goes into conference calls, meetings, replying to new emails and reading and replying to tweets.
I leave my office around 8:00 pm and reach home by 8:45 pm. After the dinner, I listen to music, watch news and meet my international friends via skype to source new opportunities for collaboration, growth and expansion of EducateNCare. At around 11:00 pm, I am done with the day and asleep.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I follow the cycle of – 1. Brainstorm, 2. Come up with idea, 3. Do research on the idea, 4. Form a team and 5. Execute the idea with an initial prototype.
3 trends that excite you?
- Content Discovery: Until now, it was about “we searching content on the internet” but we are now seeing a new phenomenon of “content searching for you”. With the use of social media networks we now have products that can provide you the content that you need it without having to search for it. And companies will have to adopt this phenomenon and develop content that is social media friendly.
- Social Activism using Social Media: I am excited about how people are using social media to make a positive change. We have seen this happening in many developing countries like Egypt Tunisia and India where for the first time in their history the youth was united using social media networks to make a positive change in their respective countries.
- Affordable Technology: Since the technology has now finally become affordable we would see its widespread use in areas that we never imagined earlier. For example, $35 tablet recently launched by the Indian Education Ministry would now make it possible to reach digital education to students located in rural communities.
What is the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?
EducateNCare has been my first venture and the first job. I never had a job before starting EducateNCare.
If you were to start again, what would you do differently?
If I were to start again, I think we could have done a more comprehensive research on the solution that we are trying to build.
What is the one thing you did/do as an entrepreneur that you would do over and over again and recommend everybody else do?
I think there are two ways a business can be done – you can be a Kiva.org or you can be Bank of America. Entrepreneurs have to make a decision on what they want to be and how they want to do business. So, I would recommend that entrepreneurs choose business models that make a difference in the community.
Tell us a secret…
The earlier you fail in your life the luckier you are. I have experienced failure very early on in my life and it has taught me a lot.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
I would like to see the idea of personalized digital content delivery been explored a bit more. Due to the widespread use of various social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin there is lots of information about the end-user on the web. If we can use this data and provide a personalized digital content based on the user’s interest then that would be something great.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read, and why?
I would recommend reading “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale. This book has been one the best books that I have read and has helped me to know how positive thinking can be a powerful source for inspiration even during failure.
If you weren’t working on EduCare, what would you be doing?
I would have been probably working on building products for some other company.
When is the last time you laughed out loud? What caused it.
The last time I laughed out loud was while watching Russell Peter’s stand-up comedy DVD called “The Green Card Tour”. He has the greatest ever jokes targeted at the South Asian community and all the immigrants. Yes, he literally made me LOL.
Who would you love to see interviewed on IdeaMensch?
Arvind Kejriwal, a social activist in India who is currently trying to change the stubborn political system in India against all odds. I love his simplicity and fearlessness. He is not a well-known guy but you can learn more about him by Googling his name.
Connect
Company: www.educateNcare.com
Piyush Mangukiya on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AcerPiyush
Piyush Mangukiya on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AcerPiyush
Mario Schulzke is the Founder of ideamensch, which he started a decade ago to learn from entrepreneurs and give them a platform for their ideas.