We are publishing the interview of Vineet Patawari, Co-founder and CEO of Elearnmarkets.
Elearnmarkets.com (ELM) is an online financial education portal, which has steadfastly embarked on a mission for spreading financial literacy in India. It is providing an incredible opportunity to everyone to gain essential knowledge about finance through the online courses that it offers. It offers an integrated learning platform which consists of learning videos, interactive learning tools, games, data analytic tools, market community and blogs for market intelligence.
Elearnmarkets was launched in January 2015, and has already helped 25,000+ Registered Users to learn from the 80+ courses that it offers in English, Hindi and other vernacular languages. It provides the learners with the option to choose from multiple learning formats like Live-Interactive Program and Instructor-Led Recorded Programs which are constantly being enhanced through, regular webinars and various online financial tools including learning games.
The jewel in the crown is an online Joint Certification Program on capital Markets that it offers along with National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE). Apart from this, it has recently signed an MoU with MCX for introducing courses on the commodity markets in the near future.
Abhijit Paul –B.Sc Economics, MBA Finance – Is the Knowledge Head and he is a professional financial trainer and analyst. A financial analyst on popular business television channels like CNBC, Zee Business and Bloomberg. Abhijit spearheads the knowledge team at Kredent Academy and elearnmarkets.com and taking these educational initiatives to newer heights.
Vivek Bajaj, a Chartered Accountant, Company Secretary and an IIM Indore graduate who is the Director at Kredent Enterprises & Investor in Elearnmarkets.com says, “Financial illiteracy permeates across all levels of society and economic strata. The nature of illiteracy and its manifestations may vary, but it gets reflected in the lack of knowledge about financial products and services and their risk-return framework.”
Vineet Patawari, a Chartered Accountant and an IIM Indore graduate who is co-founder and CEO of Elearnmarkets, is very optimistic about the vision of the company to act as a catalyst for spreading financial literacy in India. He says “the tendency in today’s youth to spend heavily has significantly reduced their propensity to save.
Going forward, this will lead to many critical issues not only for them, but to our nation as well. Making them financially aware will help them to take control of their finances. Financial literacy is a movement that is catching on across the globe, and we are proud to be its front runner in India”.
Vinay Pagaria is a FINTECH expert with extensive experience in the domains of both Finance and Technology. He is focused on implementation of technology through innovation in areas like gamification, visualization and data analytics.
Mission:
Over the recent years financial literacy has become a major area of concern in India. The people at large lack basic knowledge about financial matters concerned with day-to-day management and saving for long term
First Obstacle:
It was never easy to start an educational business as there were a lot of obstacles which we had to face. The first obstacle we faced is when we chose the wrong technology partners and when we didn’t have the right team. But after we released the challenges we migrated from the wrong to the customed platform.
Embarkation:
Long before launching Elearnmarkets.com, in 2008, Vivek had launched an offline educational venture named Kredent Academy, which conducts classroom courses on financial markets. This academy gradually became very popular in Eastern India, and even today, many students from across India travel to Kolkata to attend its courses.
However, the geographical limitations that a classroom course provider is bound to prompted him to find new ways to reach out to new audience beyond Eastern India. To continue the success story, he partnered with Vineet Patawari, a young and enthusiastic MBA from IIM Indore to co-found Elearnmarkets.com.
One striking characteristic that both Vivek and Vineet share is the desire to change people’s lives by making them financially literate and responsible. Together, they have embarked on a mission to make the next generation of Indians understand the importance of managing money, and grow it too!
Breakthrough :
The icing on the cake for the journey of Elearnmarkets so far has been the widespread recognition that they have received from the stalwarts of the financial industry in India. Behemoths like National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) and Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) have recognized many of the courses of Elearnmarkets on investments and commodity derivatives respectively, and the list is growing steadily. Students can pursue these courses to earn a certification by NSE or MCXthat is recognized by employers across the world.
Needless to say, this is a giant leap forward not only for Elearnmarkets, but for financial education industry as a whole. For the founders these partnerships are a matter of high pride. After all, what can be a better way of changing people’s lives than shaping their careers and building their employability?
Business Results:
Initially when we were running the offline classes and we were recording the courses for the students for their future reference, and its then we realized that the recorded courses can be a great standalone product where anyone and everyone can have the access to the courses according to their convenient time as it will be available 24×7. Hence we came up with the idea of launching the online platform Elearnmarkets.com and it proved to be an amazing concept as we could reach out to a huge number of people from all over the world who were seeking for some financial related courses.
Market Results :
Today, Elearnmarkets.com has over 30,000 registered users and over 100 courses to choose from. The brand recognition that Kredent Academy had garnered helped in getting the recognition for the company in the initial days. Apart from that, there were many road shows, campus interaction programs and webinars that were conducted to showcase the brand. These efforts were backed by marketing efforts in online media as well.
Choice of the right marketing strategies and some very strong word of mouth recommendation from existing students and several industry stalwarts have always worked in favor of the company. Vineet says “Being an online financial education platform, we have always focused on spreading our reach through emerging online platforms like social media. Currently our channel on YouTube has over 300 videos, and is one of the largest financial education channels in India. We have something in store for anyone who visits us, be it on our website, or on our social media channels”.
Every year we give back to the society in the form of some great students who are not only financially literate but who are also the future of the country. We feel happy by shaping their career and helping them find a job.
Corporate vision
Our vision is to make engagement of more and more people in financial markets simple and profitable. With that aim we’ve developed Elearnmarkets.com to spread financial literacy and finance education. StockEdge, which is a market tracking, data visualization and analytics tool (mobile app) also fits in the same vision.
Brand promise
Elearnmarkets promises to ease out your finance L.I.F.E. – LEARN, IMPLEMENT, FOCUS & ENGAGE
Unique selling proposition
Practical learning from practitioners across the global and certification from the industry leaders or regulators.
