How this career-counselling platform is mapping the right direction for young minds – Unravel the success story of CareerNaksha
- ByStartupStory | December 22, 2021
“In today’s world most of the young teenagers are unclear about their goals and the career they want to pursue further. Building a roadmap which allows raw minds to seek clarity of their future while allowing them to choose a personalized counselling service is the need of the hour and the service that we deliver,” said Nimish Gopal, the co-founder of CareerNaksha, in an exclusive interview with Startup Story Media.
A country of rich culture and diversity, India has the largest population ranging from the age group of 15-25 years. At a novice stage, students are often perplexed about their future careers and usually succeed with the choices made by their family members in the past while ignoring their own interests. To help de-stigmatize the Indian households and map the way for students to find appropriate careers, CareerNaksha was conceived by its founders.
An early age startup, CareerNaksha offers diverse students a one-stop solution to all their career needs. By using a mix of career counselling and a unique in-house psychometric test, the startup analyses the best career path for students which inclines with their passions and interests. Allowing students to choose from a range of personalised career counselling, career guidance and skill development courses, CareerNaksha ensures that students make accurate career decisions.
Putting the pieces of puzzle together
Conceived out of personal experiences of the founder, CareerNaksha was founded in 2018 by Nimish Gopal. An IIT Roorkee graduate, Nimish was a young mind who was exploring his life and interests at the peak of his career. Following his graduation, Gopal went on to find his true calling in entrepreneurship and pursued his masters from Claremont Graduate University. After working for a couple years in the Silicon Valley in a biotech company, Nimish discovered a true cause that he wanted to work towards.
On his return to India in 2018 to his parents based out of Gujarat, Nimish began the entrepreneurial journey of CareerNaksha at the epicenter of education in Vadodara, Gujarat with the aim to help students discover their passion and de-stigmatise the Indian philosophy of pursuing science related courses.
Revisiting his experience and the launch of his venture, the CEO and co-founder of CareerNaksha, Nimish Gopal told Startup Story Media, “The startup was born out of my individual experiences in life. I didn’t want students my age to go through a lengthy process thus giving up the zenith years of their life trying to explore their areas of interest. When I was a teenager, I had no understanding of my passion and curiosity and had no means of self-assessment so I went ahead to pursue an area of expertise which was considered as a norm throughout India. However, through CareerNaksha our team wishes to eradicate that hindrance from the Indian education industry by allowing students to find the precise choice for themselves through self-assessment.”
Finding the Naksha for business
The market for career counselling has been concentrated with various giants taking up a major portion of the market through aggressive marketing and a strong network. Making a mark in this segment was thus a challenge for the team, given that the target audience was primarily middle class Gujarati families. However, carving a niche for themselves was not hard for CareerNaksha as their business model has diverse offerings ranging from the classic B2B model to a social model which gives the startup an edge over the others. Further the approach followed by the startup is unbiased and the services offered are all put together through their in-house faculty making it a home-grown brand.
By providing career counselling, skill development and career mentorship to the clientele in their vernacular languages apart from the conventional Hindi and English, CareerNaksha allows parents and students alike to get a thorough understanding of the counselling module and its due significance.
Talking about the business model, Nimish told Startup Story, “We have two diverse business models that we focus on. The first being a classic B2B model whereby we collaborate with educational institutions and the founders of such institutions which believe in our cause by providing them customizable services. Further, we also have a social model whereby we collaborate with local authorities and regional educational ministers to ensure that the students in rural areas get access to career counselling which is essential to ensure that their future is earmarked with a successful path. To ensure that the underprivileged segment gets a roadmap for their career path ahead, we have tied up with counsellors who are proficient in the vernacular language which allows us to facilitate better understanding amongst the crowd.”
Turning Adversities to Possible Victories- Battling Covid
With the onset of the global pandemic, the entire nation was forced to enter a lockdown resulting in closure of all businesses and centres. This in turn had a devastating impact on the industrial segment of the country, CareerNaksha included. With the closure of all its centres in Vadodara along with restrictions on visiting educational institutions and rural localities, CareerNaksha witnessed a lull in its striking operations.
With adversities comes an opportunity to develop an engaging and promising set up which challenges out of box thinking and CareerNaksha set out to do just that. Leveraging the vast ocean of opportunities brought by the internet, the startup went aboard the digital trail during the pandemic.
“The fact that our organisation is nimble and that we do not have multiple offline centres but rather touch points across the state is what saved us from encountering huge monetary losses. On the contrary, we set out to take all our operations online during the pandemic which in turn helped us garner a larger audience for our startup. Additionally we also orchestrated multiple live sessions on our social media handles with industry experts from diverse fields which resulted in an increased outreach which we are leveraging till date. Though we encountered a downward plunge in our sales and revenue, we are able to navigate our way through the adversity due to our unique approach and nimble volume,” revealed Nimish.
Fastening seat belts for future
Looking ahead, the startup aims to expand across the entire country by successively replicating a similar business model in other states as well. Furthermore, CareerNaksha aims to augment its product offerings by diversifying and focusing on the corporate segment thereby allowing corporate professionals to extract professional courses from the startup. The career counselling startup aims to become a full stack career gateway in the near future thus catering to the career needs of the entire country.
On asking what advice he would give to young entrepreneurs who are on their journeys to find the most appropriate business idea, Nimish emphasized on the need to be patient and resilient about one’s goals and ventures.
“In the world of entrepreneurs, the one who succeeds is not the person who has his numbers in place but the one who is able to create an impact with the product or services the venture offers. If building a valued product takes 3-4 years then that’s completely fine. One must be patient and resilient to sail across a storm of struggles to the ocean of success,” highlighted Nimish.
With a sea of opportunities ahead of them, CareerNaksha is all set to navigate its way to map a better future for changemakers across the country.
Follow CareerNaksha Here:
Contact: 79901-48919
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