"Act on It as If There Is No Tomorrow"

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1. Tell us about yourself and your journey.

I started my career with Sapient right after my engineering, moved on to Deloitte as a strategy consultant, post-MBA. I was part of the leadership team at Teach for India and was a Sales force evangelist before taking the entrepreneurial plunge in 2016 to transform Dare2Compete into a full-fledged business with a dedicated team.

2. How and why did you come up with the idea of D2C?

I was interested in participating in competitions during my MBA, but somehow the information wasn't reaching me in time; hence, I thought to start a blog to get all the info from organizers real-time. Slowly, when I realized that there is a new category/ecosystem that I can build around employer branding and a single platform for student needs, I jumped in. Nothing similar existed until that time. Dare2Compete created a new niche category and market.

3. What does your daily routine look like with respect to your organization?

In this period of lockdown, it is critical to establish constant touch with the team very often. Most of my day is on Video calls with teams for updates, discussions, and engagements. I try to plan the complete day in the calendar first thing in the morning so that I know what all needs to be covered. We block time for brainstorming as well to ensure we don't lose sight of new ideas.

4. Tell us more about your company and how it benefits the students across the country?

Dare2Compete is the largest student community across domains. It engages with the students of B-Schools, Engineering Colleges, and other colleges with 1 million+ active registrations from across 10,000+ colleges. It is a one-stop-shop to meet the needs of students during their academic journey. It provides the information about Competitions, Quizzes, Hackathons, Business Simulation Games, Internships, Scholarships, Cultural Festivals, Recruiter Diaries, and other content-rich videos and articles as part of D2C Diaries.

For Companies, D2C enables leading brands to engage with the students' community in the most interactive way to discover, measure, and hire the best talent and fulfil all their objectives like employer branding, hiring, and driving brand/product adoptions. D2C conceptualizes unique engagements to enhance the company's brand visibility, brand engagement, and brand equity across campuses in India by leveraging D2C's student network and executing enriching digital and on-ground campaigns.

5. How is your company different from other Edtechs?

We have created this segment - Employer Branding through gamified engagements in Campuses - in the last three years. There is no other single player in this segment that has all the array of services & products that we have along with the vast student network, our strongest Competitive advantage.

In every segment that we operate, we have competitors. Still, we have been able to establish ourselves as a thought leader/partner in this market. In the last year, we gave grown 2x to 3x on all fronts - revenue, clients, ticket-sizes, student registrations, etc. We are now called Facebook of Competitions/Campus Engagements.

6. Do you feel that e-learning is the future of education? How?

It's terrific to put it in one word. However, I still believe that e-learning cannot eliminate the need for face-to-face classroom discussions with your peers and faculty. E-Learning will thrive on two aspects; one, providing students with complimenting courses and learning opportunities that they don't find in their existing academic curriculum, and second, curating the course in such a manner that it provokes their thought process and not just videos that put across theoretical knowledge in online mode.

7. What is your favourite book, and why?

I don't read many books, especially fiction. I read research articles from Forbes, Economist, Mckinsey Research Insights, etc. These articles give me insights into what all is happening around me with detailed thoughts and analyses.

8. How would you motivate young minds who would like to be future entrepreneurs?

Just get on with it. Start the journey, don't wait for it. If you have an idea and want to do something for it, start ASAP even at an elementary and small level. It will give you a sense of how good, scalable, and feasible the idea is. Act on it as if there is no tomorrow.

- Ankit Aggarwal

Interview by - Sanya Harjai