Page 57 - EducationWorld September 2020

India and the US for more Leadership
than two decades. To meet
continuous demand from missionary
test takers, the two com-
panies have published 60
hardcopy titles and devised HOBHIT MATHUR is executive
30 simulated online tests director of the Delhi-based
for GRE (Graduate Record SVision India Foundation
Examinations), GMAT (regst.2014) and co-founder and
(Graduate Management dean of the Rashtram School of
Admission Test), SAT, Public Leadership, located within
TOEFL (Test of English as the newly promoted Rishiwood
a Foreign Language) and University, Sonipat (estb.2018). A
ACT (American College highly qualified alum of IIT-Bombay,
Testing) etc, serving over Udeshi: test prep material pioneer University of Washington and
100,000 students annually. ISB-Hyderabad, Mathur previously
Vibrant Publishers also publishes A decade later while vacationing worked for Amazon.com in Seattle
self-help books popularly known in the US, Udeshi became aware and served as Joint National Orga-
as the Self-Learning Management of the massive price differential nizing Secretary of Youth for Seva, a
Series, as well as vocabulary flash between text prep books produced Bangalore-based NGO.
cards to assist Indian school-leavers in the US and India. Spotting a busi- Newspeg. The Rashtram School of
to learn and improve their English ness opportunity he set up Vibrant Public Leadership, an initiative of
language skills. Publishing. Vibrant test prep books Vision India Foundation, was all set
Newspeg. A strong proponent of printed in India and sold in the US, to start its two-year fully residential
flash cards as memorisation aids, are priced at less than half the mar- Masters programme in leadership,
Udeshi launched an updated second ket price of $75-150 in the US. but has deferred its launch to next
edition of 1,500 English language Direct talk. “Last year, over 4 million year because of the Covid-19 national
vocabulary flash cards on August 15. high school-leavers in the US wrote lockdown.
“Flash cards help school-leavers the ACT and SAT exams, and over History. Together with IIT-B class-
and graduates to improve their Eng- 100,000 Indian graduates wrote mates — Sahil Aggarwal, Kumar
lish vocabulary and learn and master GRE to qualify for admission into Subham and Raghava Krishna —
new words. We have always had universities abroad. We have been Mathur conceptualised and estab-
flash cards in our product portfolio offering value for money to students lished the Rashtram School of Public
which contain as many as 4,300 by pricing our books and solutions Leadership (RSPL) in 2019. Prior to
words. Our recent research indicates at affordable rates. We have a team undertaking this initiative, the team
that students can do well in SAT, of 50-60 content creators who write has been running an annual Policy
GRE and other English language content that our young readers can BootCamp and providing fellowships
tests by concentrating on only 1,500 understand easily,” says Udeshi. Mathur: leadership lacuna solution
words included in our latest edition Future plans. Udeshi is bullish about
of flash cards,” says Udeshi. growth of the test prep books which
History. One of the first providers are still popular in India. In particu-
of online test prep material in India, lar he believes that the large teen-
Udeshi’s entry into this business age population in India’s tier II-III
was quite by chance. During his cities has huge business potential.
last semester at the Mumbai-based “We have been focused on metros so
Thadomal Shahani Engineering Col- far, but are now looking to expand
lege, Udeshi’s penchant for software our reach to small-town India and
programming prompted him to the US. We also believe the lucid-
create digital versions of then avail- ity of our content, particularly our
able GRE, GMAT and other test prep Self-Learning Management Series,
books. The unexpected demand for makes our reading material ideal for
his online tests led him to promote students in higher secondary schools
Educational Software Technologies across both countries,” says this go-
and enter the test prep publishing getter edupreneur.
business 20 years ago. Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)

SEPTEMBER 2020 EDUCATIONWORLD 57