How This Start-up Disrupts the Traditional Corporate Learning and Management Industry

Vneda is an intra-connected social platform for employees. It empowers them to securely and safely collect, communicate, share and store knowledge. In addition, Vneda offers a wide range of curated content at one disposal. Vneda was launched on 18th March 2018 through its cofounders Aman Sharma and Ritesh Kumar.

About the founders

• Aman Sharma – Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Computer Science graduate with 7+ years of experience in developing B2B and B2C products. Aman oversees smooth functioning of the startup, and primarily focuses on product marketing and sales.
• Ritesh Kumar – Chief Technical Officer, IT graduate with 3+ years of experience in similar roles. Ritesh is a technology expert (Full Stack Developer) who works on both the front end as well the back-end of our product’s website and application.

Aman and Ritesh have known each other since 2016. Previously, they both worked in the same company. We are publishing an interview with Aman:

Q.: What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Ans: There is no single platform which caters to all the needs of an organization. Organizations have to manage and opt for different platforms for digital learning and development, knowledge sharing, knowledge management, corporate library, knowledge repositories to name a few. Having multiple platforms leads to increased costing for the organization, it becomes problematic for employees to manage and use so many platforms. On the contrary, we developed Venda; A single corporate learning solution which provides corporate learning and development, knowledge sharing, knowledge management and much more.

Q.: Can you share with us any insights that led you to believe that this is a big enough problem?
Ans: While researching and validating the problem, I came across published studies which indicated the magnitude of the problem.

According to a study published by the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market intelligence and advisory firm, Fortune 500 companies lose roughly $31.5 billion (!) a year by failing to share knowledge.

That’s a lot of money that could otherwise be spent on employee development, bonuses, and countless other business needs. Despite these facts and enormity of the problem, it was pretty clear during my research that this problem was more or less unexplored in India.

Q.: Tell us about the Product / Solution. Explain how you went about the Product-Market Fit Process.
Ans: Vneda is corporate learning solution which targets learning and development, knowledge management and knowledge sharing among organizations and its employees. Our white-label platform empowers employees to create, learn and share knowledge in a secure intranet with the help of our created and curated content along with smart knowledge sharing tools.

Our product-market fit approach was guided by interviews and surveys of HR and Learning and Development professionals. Our approach was also corroborated with published studies, reports and researches available online. A literature review of available resources on knowledge sharing and knowledge management was also done as a part of the process.

Q.: What is your USP?
Ans: Vneda is one of a kind corporate learning and knowledge management platform which gives corporates access to internal knowledge and as well as externally acquired knowledge. This access to knowledge resources empowers corporates and its employees to learn, develop and grow. Our platform is one of a kind primarily because it integrates digital learning and development, knowledge sharing, knowledge management and also gives users access to a physical library. Our competitive prices make our product affordable to all organizations be it a start-up or a big organization.

Q.: What were your assumptions when you entered the market, learning that you have?
Ans: When I ventured into the corporate learning market, from my interviews and surveys of HR and Learning and Development professionals and also from published researches it was evident that this market especially in India was relatively new and yet to be explored. There was not much focus on knowledge management and knowledge sharing. And because of this lack of focus they were losing big monies and resources. On the contrary, this market got its due importance and was flourishing in the developed nations. From this fact, I drew my assumption that knowledge sharing and knowledge management market would find its due recognition in India as well.

Our ideal and target audience would be organizations (corporate, NGO’s, startup) irrespective of their nature and size. Vneda has 13+ organizations as clients using it product and services. Axis Bank, Honda 2 Wheelers, Volkswagen, Orient Electric are to name a few.

Q.: What has been your biggest failure as an entrepreneur and what did you learn from it??
Ans: Previously, I had ventured into a startup where I had launched the product with limited market research and intelligence. My Go to Marketing (GtM) was not well informed and the product market fit was a mismatch. This was my one of the biggest failures that I had which I translated into a lesson learnt.

Basis this experience, I was careful to not make the same mistake and I took the extra effort to be well informed about the landscape I was about to venture. The market and our product Vneda is well informed and well researched. This was ensured by our product-market fit approach, interviews and surveys of HR and Learning and Development professionals, published studies, reports and researches available online. This also included a literature review of available resources on knowledge sharing and knowledge management.

Q.: How are you pricing the Product? Explain your thought process.
Ans: We are into 2 pricing models; one is free where a user does not pay a single penny for using our knowledge sharing and management platform. The other is where an organization is charged a subscription fee. Under this, the organization gets subscription to our knowledge repositories, created and curated content, which include third part premium content and physical books delivery.

The rationale behind having these two models is: firstly to inculcate a culture of knowledge sharing and management in organizations by keeping the base product free so that any organization can afford and manage their knowledge. Secondly to provide a one stop corporate learning solution to engage employees by providing them third party premium content and physical books.

Q.: How did you get your first customer?
Ans: Our outreach efforts on digital platforms like LinkedIn and Google Adwords helped us generate leads which were eventually converted into our clients.

Q.: Please tell us about the investors (if any)
Ans: Currently, we don’t have any investors yet. I have invested the seed amount and have been bootstrapping since then.

Q.: Is there any interesting success story? If yes, please write about it. ?
Ans: We are not a big organization and don’t know whether it’ll count as a success story or not, but I remember the way I closed one of our main client which is a very big multinational automobile company. It took me 6 months to convenience them first and then three months to figure out the way they wanted us to cater. I myself travel from Noida to Pune to find out the best suitable solution and it took me 18 days to make all the arrangements but overall It was a great experience and learning and now our 30% revenue comes from this one corporate only.

Q.: What is the big picture of your startup? Is this Product/service leading to something bigger? If so, how?
Ans: Yes, why in only corporate? We have a larger goal to create the knowledge management & sharing culture in all communities and we are working towards it.

Q.: Since inception, give us a sense of the value of business done by your venture? Please explain in details:
Ans: Currently, we are catering to 25,000+ users across 13 corporate and are generating over 2 lakh+ revenue. We so far have made 54 lakh+ in revenue from all our streams.

Q.: What is the insight that you have about this market, which no one else has? Uniqueness about your Startup.
Ans: Companies are losing millions of dollars annually because of no or very less culture of Knowledge Management. We are living in an era of technologies where technologies, methodologies & culture are changing very rapidly, and it is becoming very hard to cop up with.

Organization’s here in India are not realizing this now but there in developed countries, organizations have become very particular about this culture of Knowledge management and have started using solutions to manage their internal knowledge. We as a company provide Knowledge Management solution which not only helps organizations manage their internal knowledge but give them an access to externally created and curated knowledge. 

Q.: List all the names of the core Team Members, along with their Designated Roles.
Ans: Sure. Apart from the founders, following are other core team members:

• Pranshu Choubey: Backend Lead (Software Developer, Skilled in PHP, JavaScript, Restful API, GraphQL, PWA, Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Discrete Mathematics.)
• Renu Gupta: Operations Head (MBA, with 7+ years experience in Operations and CRM)

Q.: Who do you perceive as Your Competition? How do you differentiate yourself with them?
Ans: We do not see one or two companies as our competition because what we are doing is a combination of two domains, Corporate Learning & Corporate Knowledge Management and there are plenty of companies working in corporate learning domain but all with a traditional approach. We on the other hand, making knowledge accessible by providing them smart tools to create, share and acquire knowledge.

Q.: What would be your goal to accomplish in the next six months?
Ans: Our next 6 months goal is to get next 100 corporate on board in terms of growth and to create a strong tech product which can be integrated with any other existing system to make the knowledge access experience easy and interesting.

Q.: What message do you want to convey to fellow entrepreneurs?
Ans: I am not a big entrepreneur to give “gyaan” to my fellow entrepreneurs as they all are doing great in their domain but what I would really like convey and which I learnt from my past experience is: Make or break fast just don’t stop we all are in a pool of endless opportunities with limited time.

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Thanks Aman. Best wishes!