Startup Mantra: Connecting students with job opportunities

Rakhi Pal wanted to get into IIT–Bombay, Delhi or Madras, but she got into Cummins College of Engineering in Pune. As a student, she took part in hackathons that companies organised for college kids, and it was after attending several such events that she discovered that huge gap, which led to the start of her own company, BeepHire, in 2020.

How it started

Says Pal, “I observed that there was a huge gap in what we were being taught in our engineering colleges; it was a syllabus that was outdated compared to the technology that was being used in companies. And besides this hard skill, there were issues with soft skills, too. Students had no idea about communication, team building, etc.”

And since this student was a doer, she got down to fixing the issue at hand. She set up a syllabus that she thought would help students come up to speed with technology as well as soft skills. Audacious, you may say. But Pal did just that. “I met a lot of people during corporate events and, with their help, set up programs that these mentors would help guide our student community. We had short programmes on web and app development, AI, Machine learning (ML), Python and so on.”

Were there any takers? “Oh yes,” says Rakhi, “Initially, I was offering these courses for free. But then a mentor told me that people do not value free things. So, I started charging from ₹99 per course to ₹3,000- ₹4,000 for an AI or ML course. I paid the ‘teachers’ ₹25,000 per month and had about eight different trainers. In the first month itself, I raised ₹27,000.”

BeepMentor (the company started initially for providing courses) was generating revenues, and by the time she passed out college in 2019, she had reached break-even.

Taking it a step further

After passing out, Rakhi had some job offers, but she was more interested in following her gut, of doing things and filling the gaps that she found as she went along. During college, she attended several events and once again noticed that often these events were either not well communicated or were all fragmented. She built a platform for events with her co-founder, Saurav Mingrelia. “Just as BookMyShow is for tickets to films and plays, EventBeep is for college events that are organised by students and colleges both. We charged ₹100 for registration, and ₹10 was our platform fee. We didn’t make much money out of this, but our goal was to build a product and get people out to events.”

In the year 2020, the world was hit with Covid-19 and much had come to a standstill. But Rakhi had by then built a huge database of around eight lakh students by then. She saw that several students lacked a peer-to-peer connection, “There was a lack of community for these students, even though they wanted to make new friends, get jobs, make money and so on.” That spurred Rakhi into action. She built a community-led app that gave students a platform to speak, to interact, and to get jobs. We wanted to offer them internships. So, we started boarding some companies that were looking for fresh graduates as interns. “We searched LinkedIn, made cold calls, gate-crashed into offices (Bajaj Alliance was one of them) and told them we have a platform you can access, and they need internships. They got interested because they saw that we were giving them qualified leads.”

And once again, Rakhi found that the students needed to have more than just their degrees. “They had to be job ready. Which meant that they had to learn a few skills that colleges failed to teach.” So, she offered her database a free two-hour crash course on communication and team building, along with an online test and gave them a certificate. Says she, “This helped a great deal because now the corporations who were using our platform to access interns had students who were employable. In fact, 78% of our students have been certified thus far.” All this took about a year when students migrated from the website eventbeep.com to her app.

Making of the app

When Rakhi and Saurav started, they invested ₹18 lakh of their own in 2020. “Initially, we had built a proof of concept (POC) and started onboarding companies and even had 168 companies using our platform to hire interns. In those early days, if they did not get good applicants or those that had relevant training, then we’d bend our backs and find them some offline. In this manner, we got about 8,000 students hired.”

But soon they realised that they needed more funds to develop the app. We had to integrate AI into our app and needed a bigger team, so we decided to approach Venture capitalists (VCs) to help us. It wasn’t easy at all. We met 18 VCs, and most of them felt we were too young and didn’t have confidence in us. But then in 2021, Succeed Ventures from Hyderabad saw that from January to September 2021, EventBeep had made ₹86 lakh and found value in us. They agreed to invest ₹1 crore in our company.”

Even when the second wave of Covid-19 hit and everything had come to a near standstill, Rakhi had students who utilised their time well and took courses on her platform. “We did not charge them for the courses then, but we had companies who used our platform for their brand building. This money we utilised to build our apps until we got funded by Succeed Ventures,” says Rakhi.

Equity for money

This is a question that boggles many startup founders – how much equity should I give for the funds I am getting? Says Rakhi, “While there are some standards set, we were very clear. If we had an investor who was in it just for the money, then we’d give about 1% to 2% of the equity. But if it as an investor who had some skin in the game, if he had some experience or knowledge about this business and could give us guidance, then obviously the equity we agreed is higher at 5% to 8%.”

So far, BeepHire has raised ₹7 crore from VCs and angel investors and has given an exit to 40% of these investors at four times their investment. The others, says Rakhi, are still with us. They have provided us with valuable insights that have helped us immensely. Like one told us that AI will soon do the job of 5-6 people, so while our database will keep increasing, we need to upskill these students. Some introduced us to employers from Dubai and Singapore so that we can provide those companies with interns who can work remotely from India.”

Revenue model

BeepHire earns from primarily two sources – subscriptions from companies that use their app to hire students and students who wish to upskill. Says Rakhi, “We charge anything from ₹198 to ₹60,000 for courses such as film making, AI/ UI/UX, etc.

Then they charge corporates a subscription fee for bulk hiring that ranges from ₹5,499 per month to ₹3 lakh per month. They could also generate revenue from advertising. “As of now, we are not focused on that. We want to onboard more students and upskill them to be ready for jobs,” she says.

Competition

While there are established players like Naukri and Indeed, Rakhi feels that their USP is the community-led database that they have, which makes it easy for companies to source staff. “We especially focus on startups, SMEs and educational institutes since they are generally cash-strapped and need to be more efficient in their hiring process.”

“Early on, we integrated AI into our app so it can source, screen, interview and generate reports on suitable candidates for companies. And since we have community-based data, it becomes infinitely easier for anyone to get in touch with, say our web design community, communities of engineers, HR, marketing and branding, AI, UI/UX and so on. We have 11 such communities on our platform. This helps a recruiter to complete their hiring process in just 48 hours! Unlike others who have yet to integrate AI, and even if they do, their database is larger but is scattered across all age groups, training etc. Besides this, we offer to upskill our members and certify them to be employable.”

Since BeepHire is focused on startups and educational institutions, they plan to partner with co-working spaces and startup incubators and collaborate with universities for student placements.

Future plans

They plan to raise $1 million, which will sharpen their AI features to include predictive analysis. They intend to expand to international markets that some VCs are already helping them with. Mindful of their precious database, says Rakhi, “We will also develop additional tools to assist employees on-boarding and retention.”

With her ear to the ground and eyes wide open, she looks like BeepHire has hit the sweet spot of success!