Arun Prakash, Founder & CEO of GUVI, shares his success story after winning the ZEE Digital Award.

India’s first vernacular EdTech platform, GUVI, raced in the EdTech industry with its exemplary IT upskilling, virtual training services to 17 Lakh+ learners globally & got nominated for 'Zee National Achievers' Awards 2022' hosted by Zee digital.

GUVI stands out by winning the ‘India’s Most Trusted Vernacular EduTech Award’ in the modern tech world of competition, where continuous evolution of skillset is paramount for early professionals, students & other job seekers in the IT & Software industry. To stay relevant with the industry needs, even the existing professionals are expected to upgrade their skills, obtain certifications & level up in their career ladder. While the IT services sector in India created more than 5 lakh new jobs so far in FY22 (acc. to data by staffing company Xpheno), there is a growing need for IT job aspirants & career changers to fill their skill gaps for bridging the path towards the IT sector.

Let's have a Quick Chat with Mr. Arun Prakash, Founder and CEO of GUVI to know more on how he scaled GUVI from startup to an EduTech Brand by winning the Most Trusted Vernacular EduTech Award.

1. Tell us about the reason behind starting GUVI.

• It all started as a YouTube Channel in 2011 with a team of 3 members that included Sridevi Arunprakash, & Balamurugan SP along with me. Our idea through our channel was to post video tutorials, tech-courses & practice materials in common native languages  like Tamil, Telugu, & Marathi, making it accessible for learners who have difficulty to learn in english. Our channel became a huge hit & was well-appreciated by the viewers, which further inspired us to lay our foundation stone to establish GUVI.

2. From a Software Engineer to CEO of a fast growing Edutech startup, What are the major challenges being faced by you?

• With hundreds of entrepreneurs who have entered this Edtech field, we had our initial struggles to compete against them. Nevertheless, our team provided a better comprehensive proof of concept, & built our platform as a minimum viable product. This took about 5 years for the evolution of our business & to arrive at its best shape to meet the users’ needs. It is then we were welcomed into the Edtech market with good funding. Further, the addition of the latest pedagogies, & innovative techniques led to promote the growth among learners.
• Next, many aspirants lacked the confidence to step into the upskilling process through native language. However, we gained their confidence through placements backed by  200+ hiring companies.
• Then, implementing a tech innovation was easier but converting it into a new pedagogy for delivering a comfortable learning experience for learners was one of other major challenges. Our platform supports a gamified and active learning approach for all the tech-aspirants.

3) How is your feeling on being awarded as the Best Vernacular Edu Tech Brand by Zee Digital?

What kind of courses do you offer on the Guvi platform?

• It definitely is a proud moment. This prestigious award by Zee digital inspires our GUVI team to aim further high & achieve much greater success in the EdTech industry. GUVI always aspires to fulfill the aspirations of its learners. And, speaking of the courses that we offer, our GUVI platform offers a large digital library of tech-courses categorized under programming, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, web development, cloud computing & so on. Our reach is widespread all over India, say, our courses are PAN India level, as these tech-courses are available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, etc. Additionally, our online bootcamps, named, Zen class-career programs provide 360-degree career guidance, professional mentorship along with placement support for all the serious job seekers.

4) Tell us about your team and co-founders? How they supported and rooted guvi to success?

• It began with our first employee cum co-founder, Ms Sridevi Arunprakash, who formed a single figure sized team along with Me & Balamurugan SP in the Founding team.
• With a clear vision & mission, GUVI is now a three figure sized team, soaring high to impart tech-skills all around the world through our EdTech platform.

5) There are other online Edu Tech portals available in the market, where tech courses can be learnt. How is Guvi different from them?

• GUVI is unique for the fact that it is an online platform that not only provides tech-courses from industry experts but also enables the learners to understand the tech topics in their native language. This eliminates the barrier of ‘know english to know technology’. Our MasterClasses are conducted by professionals with vast industrial experience. And, GUVI continuously focuses on upgrading the quality in the upskilling process by offering industry accredited certifications. IIT-M certified Python Programming, & RPA Course by UiPath are few such examples.

6) How many candidates has the platform trained so far?

• We recently celebrated the moment of achievement for training 17 Lakh+ users online on our 8th Founding Anniversary. Way more to go in the coming years.

7) How is the response from users on vernacular learning ?

• Enormously encouraging, since most of the aspirants are from remote areas/villages they found tech-skills accessible & at the same time ‘understandable’. Their appreciation & participation made GUVI to create the Guinness World Record for the 'Most number of users to take a programming lesson in 24 Hours,' by beating the previous record by 50 times.

8) Guvi is India's first vernacular Edu tech Platform to partner with Google for Education? How is this partnership helping your business?

• Google for Education played the role of a ‘huge catalyst’ in delivering our Edtech Services. Our partnership enables consultation and counseling services to students, early professionals, business owners, etc, via Google Cloud services. Further, offers Google for Education training & certification programs. This collaboration dynamically solidified our presence in the global market by widening our outreach in other countries like the USA, Canada, etc.

9) Future plans?

• We strive to position ourself as a one stop place to nurture and identify top tech talent in our country. Widening our hiring partnership and growing our Mentor community of Hands-on Tech professionals will create a huge impact for our learners. Expanding our vernacular content to International languages is going at full throttle.

10) What are the new products and courses you have planned to launch this year?

• Our Zen-class career programs are comprehensive upskilling & job placement solutions for aspiring job seekers. While Zen class offers admissions for upskilling in trending career domains like Full-stack Web Development, Data Science, Data Engineering, Automation Testing, Cybersecurity & Ethical Hacking. Alongside, we have recently launched our new bootcamps for aspirants who wish to specialize in ‘Business Analytics & Digital Marketing’, ‘DevOps’, & UI/UX Design & Development Courses.

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