Gaurav Goel, Co-Founder and CEO, Top Rankers, speaks on creating a profitable and student-oriented career-building platform
Coming from a small village, Muzaffarnagar, in Uttar Pradesh, Gaurav Goel began Top Rankers to provide students with options beyond engineering and medicine. “We do careers in law, management, humanities, architecture, design and we are adding many, many more,” explains Goel. He adds that career choice continues to be a big problem with families and students.
Education is an ever-evolving sector and there is still a lot to be learned in the space. Goel believes that the recent trend with digitisation has pushed people to only look for solutions in that one space. He states, “Anybody who comes from a tech background thinks that you can solve a lot of problems related to education only through the use of tech.” Goel argues that this is not the case and it is instead a combination of tech, offline and experiential learning and “getting deep into solving student needs.” Goel also advises educators and people in this space to work closely together. He says, “What I have realised in this entire journey is, stay close to your student, see what are their needs, keep solving those and I think you will do well.” This sentiment stretches to education brands and edtech companies as well.
Amidst the shake-up being experienced by many startups in edtech last year, Goel suggests turning inwards for answers. He states, “Focus on why you started something. What problem you were trying to solve? Are you adding value to students or the team you are building? Are they aligned in this entire ecosystem?” On the business side of things, one needs to look at the costs and find ways to be profitable, he says and points out, “A lot of companies sometimes feel that we will become profitable tomorrow.”
In the last 12 months, Top Rankers has expanded from 120 to 350 team size, opened up 14 offline centres alongside its online platform and has expanded its categories beyond engineering and medicine and plans to keep adding more in the coming year.
The most important thing is to take care of students’ emotional and mental wellbeing. To ensure that they choose subjects they want to pursue and have a talent for, otherwise, they are plagued with doubt. “It’s part of their holistic development,” states the entrepreneur.
