"Notesgen Intends To Become The LinkedIn For Student Notes"

Finding notes for exam preparation can be a tricky task for students. Notesgen, an online marketplace for the exchange of study notes is one such company trying to solve the major hurdle of finding correct and quality notes for students.

Manak Gulati, Founder and CEO, Notesgen talks about the marketplace for online notes, difficulty in finding notes while also helping students financially.

How has learning changed over time?

The practice of sharing notes is quite old. Every campus has its own stories and nostalgia of paper notes. However, as technology is meant to make lives convenient, how good would it be if we all had the option of accessing and sourcing these notes on our mobile? Think of the synergy it creates, if the money spent towards photocopy and wasting paper goes into the pockets of the students, who actually paid attention in those endless classes and worked hard to make these notes. Now think, what if sharing notes is not limited to the campus of your college alone? What if we can gain knowledge from students in IIT, IIMs, MIT, Stanford and Harvard?

Learning has become a global phenomenon and students today prefer to learn at their own pace and from the content that they can understand or resonate to.
 
How big is the online notes marketplace, and what areas do you target?

The need for a student community driven peer-to-peer learning platform is global in nature. Notesgen intends to become the LinkedIn/ SlideShare for student notes with the global marketplace and peer-to-peer services. Online Education in India in 2016 valued at $ 0.25 billion is anticipated to grow at 52 percent CAGR to $1.96 billion by 2021. The Global Online Education valued at $3.3 trillion in 2016 is expecting a growth of 3.5 percent CAGR for the period of 2016-2025. We are aiming for the entire online education market. Our business model entails capturing the user-generated content, thereby disrupting the online tutor market and online educational material market. Our foray into Audio Video capability will be standing against the likes of Khan Academy and Byju’s.

Getting notes for exam preparation has always remained one of the key concerns of students. The digital space has made access to notes for different exams convenient for students. Notesgen has not only explored this idea but already has over 1.5 million users worldwide and has a notes bank of 1 million plus notes from 1,50,000 authors from 207 countries.  

Students can upload their notes in 14 popular categories ranging from Engineering, Commerce, Arts, Science, Medical, Management, and eight competitive exams, GRE, GMAT, TOEFL, Banking, UPSC, MBA, JEE, NEET, Law, &  GATE and content available on the platform is in 10 languages.

So Notesgen is going to cover the above areas starting Primary (school) and go to Advanced studies (beyond PhD). 

How easy are the notes accessible to the students for the competitive exams? Where is the user base present of the online notes portal?

The Internet has been an important tool in smart learning for students across different levels and fields. Now there are dedicated platforms and apps for education available directly on smartphones. 

Students can find online courses, learning videos, notes, and interact in real-time with teachers through multiple platforms. Below are the portals on which students do online learning: Google Grasshopper, Coursera, Udemy, Notesgen, Byju’s and Unacademy.

But for notes for competitive exams are accessible on Unacademy for videos, and Notesgen only.

How much are the students paid for the notes? What is your business model?

In this type of marketplace, the uploader is an organization that has partnered with Notesgen. When the transaction is executed, the uploader gets 75-80 percent commission on every transaction and Notesgen gets 25-20 percent.

In every transaction, there are 3 players: Buyer, Uploader and Notesgen. We recently introduced our patentable International Pricing Model – where every user gets to see content in their local currency and based on the economic condition of that country on that particular day. This brings confidence on the international user community as they get to purchase content based on their pocket size. This is the core reason we are offering a premium commission on this. 

Quite a lot of online learning websites haven’t included NET exam notes, neither have you? Do you plan to expand notes for other competitive exams as well?

Yes, we do plan to include the most popular competitive exams in India which includes CAT, NET, Bank Services, GMAT, GATE, etc. 

Rajguru Tandon

BW Reporters The author is a correspondent with BW Businessworld with keen interest in HR and employee welfare.