The journey to founding his startup started in the second year of his insti life, when he began tutoring students as a part of the Acad Buddy program. Taran Singh, an alumnus of the 2019 batch of the dual degree program of the Aerospace Department, tells us his story on founding Melvano.
Besides Acad Buddy, Taran had begun to home tutor students nearby, who were preparing for JEE, and realized his passion for teaching. He understood the core problems faced by students who were preparing for competitive exams by distance learning programs or even those who went to coaching centers. These learning programs have a very structured approach, which isn’t tweaked for the requirements of their students. If they needed more attention than these programs provided, they would have to pay for a personal tutor. “There was a lack of personalization, a lack of continuous feedback to assess loopholes, no hand-holding, and no mapping out of the learning journey. There’s only so much time students can spend researching on resources and understanding their weak areas on their own and so, the idea of Melvano was born”, Taran says.
He wasn’t very entrepreneurial in his initial insti years, “ I was quite popular in my first and second year. I experimented with almost all the extracurriculars that IITM had to offer. Melvano was an idea I developed with a group of my friends in my third year. By my fourth year, a lot of them left because they weren’t into the idea of entrepreneurship or risks. It was this year that I met my tech co-partner and started working on the product that came to be Melvano.”
Melvano comes from Tamil word Malivana, which means affordable since it aligned with our vision. Essentially, Melvano is a learning assistant that takes a diagnostic test, which is able to assess the weak areas of the aspirant and creates modules to help them fill these holes in their preparation. After completing the modules, the final matrix, which is handled by AI at its core, is shared with the aspirant. “ Being from an IIT, content creation for Melvano wasn’t a big problem. We had over 200 tutors from IITs assisting us with the content for JEE prep.” There were days of planning and iteration, and sometimes they would have to scrap everything and start from scratch. “ We wanted to develop a solution to the problems with the current preparation system. The client wouldn’t pay if he sees the IITian tag; they would pay for the solution. It’s this solution that becomes a brand.”, says Taran. The first win for Melvano was in 2018, when it got funding at a networking event in the idea stage itself, ensuring cashflows. After this, it went on to win HedNxt 2018 as the most innovative startup. By January 2019, Melvano had crossed one lakh users.
“The worst thing that can happen is a failure, so why wait to start on your idea or your passion? Starting from scratch is not a bad thing. All it needs is sincere effort and some dedication from our side and we are bound to arrive at some conclusion. There has always been a path to walk on, but I believe the future lies in creating it.”
