Business Description:Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 12 IIM Alumni - is India's first Finishing School aimed at bridging the gap between academics and industry requirements, thereby making Graduates Employable
India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but faces an acute shortage of skilled manpower, despite the presence of a large graduate pool (15mn+, 2.5mn new graduates every year).
A part of the malady is perhaps in our university education system which offers degrees but often fails to make graduates "employable" - which is why the organized Sector employment in India is still at a pathetic 13%!
Elements Akademia aims to bridge that gap by offering a 6 month part-time vocational course designed with the help of our corporate partners, who are leading players in various service sectors like Insurance (Max New York Life, HDFC Standard Life), BPO/KPO (Genpact, WNS, Accenture), Retail (Reliance Retail, MobileStore), Banking (Kotak Mahindra Bank. Bank of America Continnum) etc. The content covers the entire hiring requirement in these companies, so students have a 20X greater chance to get selected versus applying without doing this course.
It includes Business communication, Personality Development/ Grooming, Managerial Effectiveness, Basic IT and Domain knowledge in areas of KPO/BPO, Retail, Insurance and Banking/Accounting.
We have a bold '10x10 vision' Making 10,000+ Indians Employable by 2010 - reaching out to 20 non-metro cities to attract students, train them, and then help them get placed with our partners and beyond.
We focus mainly on Tier II cities where 'employability' is a major challenge. The academic rigour of the programme has been very well received by existing students with 91% students rating the course.
Excellent (in a bi-weekly confidential survey). The first few batches have graduated with an 80%+ placement, mostly at starting salary of Rs. 10,000 CTC per month. The course fee is approx. Rs. 20,000 for the six month course. There is also a merit-cum-means scholarship upto 50% - for students with monthly family income of less than Rs. 6000. Some corporate partners also return the fees to the students after few months in job, so effectively, the students do the course for free.In the past 8 months, we have scaled upto 5 cities (NCR, Bhopal, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kanpur) with plans to open 5 more offices within 08/09. We have more than 500 students already registered with us, and are attracting 200 new students every month (will have 2000 students by the end of this year).
Industry:Education
Founded in:2007
Source of idea:Systematic search for business opportunity
Significant Competitors:Tier II/ III MBA/ BE Colleges, IIJT, Hero Mindmine
Company Details :
Company Name:Elements Akademia
HeadQuarters:Gurgaon
Stage of the company:Several customers or locations
No of Employees (2006):26-50
No of Employees (2007):26-50
Office Locations(2006):2-5
Office Locations(2007):2-5
No of companies promoted:No
Profits (2006):
Profits (2007):
>Partnerships:1. PARTNERSHIP WITH 18 TOP MNCs ACROSS 6 SERVICE SECTORS THAT HELP IN COURSE DESIGN AND THEN ABSORB OUT STUDENTS. 2. PARTNERSHIP WITH ONE OF INDIA'S TOP 20 BSCHOOLS TO HELP IN ACADEMIC RIGOUR AND ENDORSE OUR FINAL CERTIFICATE. 3. PARTNERSHIP WITH VARIOUS STATE GOVERNMENTS TO MAKE THE UNDERPRIVILEGED EMPLOYABLE AND THEN GET JOBS. 4. ASSOCIATE MEMBER, NASSCOM 5. TIE-UPS WITH HALF A DOZEN TOP PROFESSORS FROM VARIOUS IIMs (refer website) WHO HELP WITH FUNCTIONAL EXPERTISE 6. TIE-UPS WITH SOME COMPANIES TO PROVIDE EARN-WHILE-YOU-LEARN SCHEMES FOR STUDENTS 7. TIE-UPS WITH A DOZEN LOCAL COLLEGES WHERE COLLEGE PAYS FOR THE TRAINING OF ALL STUDENTS
Initial Funding:Angel investors
Addl Funding:Angel investors
Institutitional Capital:No
Revneue Model:We charge tuition fees from students and placement fees from companies
Awards & honors:a) Selected as One of 8 Indian Emerging Companies by Nasscom for Personalized Mentoring, b) Shortlisted (final round in December) by Endeavor as one of 4 High Impact Entrepreneurs in India.c) In the press 70+ times - including Times of India, Economic Times, Hindustan Times, Business Standard, Dainik Jagran etc.
Promoters Details :
Promoters Name(s):Nishant Saxena
Age:31
HomeTown:Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh
Education:
No of companies promoted:No
Family Background:First gen entrepreneur
Job:Head of M&A at P&G Asia Pacific
Ex-Job Description:Head
Favorite Book/Movie:The Shawshank Redemption
