Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Edusys, Test preparation and Certification company has raised $7.5M from Sequoia Capital. Edusys started in 2004 by Tridibesh Tripathy, an IIT-IIM and Wharton School graduate saw a massive opportunity in test preparation and certification space. Global market size of test preparation and certification is pegged to be be around $50B.

Edusys intends to use the funds to expand its business through new product introductions and to strengthen its core team and technology platform, it plans to double its workforce in a year.

Edusys has developed learning platform which is highly scalable and imparts virtual learning with great ease. The courses are designed to provide maximum flexibility to students with innovative training styles and easy accessibility

PMStudy is Edusys poster boy portal and is quite popular among the mid level managers across various sector. Edusys also caters to Six Sigma, ITIL, Prince2 learning and certification.

Lets look at the monthly traction of PMStudy:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	43K
Page views	1.1M
Total visits	46K
Avg time on site	16:40

Another company which is directly competing with Edusys is Simplilearn which also target global audience through its learning management platform.

Test certification space is really heating up and VCs are readily backing the interesting companies in this space.

-Hitesh, vcBytes

JustBooks is a bangalore based library chain and has around 25k books in their inventory. Their library is quite a lean set up in terms of workforce, its almost unmanned thanks to RFID tagging. Library Management Software (LMS) and the tag reader acts as a one stop shop for all requirements of the reader, from searching right book to returning the book after reading.

The first branch of JustBooks was set up in Whitefield, in June 2008. A thousand members in the first couple of months and a host of business opportunity related queries in many ways triggered the thought process that is now JUSTBOOKS clc – the community library chain with eight branches, two apartment libraries, a tech park extension counter and an On-Demand internet platform.

Proven practices from the retail industry, like warehouse backed operations with centralized inventory and some new generation technology usage like cloud hosted infrastructure with RFID enabled touch points combine to meet the ultimate goal of every library – Get every book a reader and get every reader his/her book .

Started by a team of Retail and Technology professionals, incubated and nurtured at NSRCEL – IIM Bangalore, JUSTBOOKSclc aspires to be the country’s first networked pan Indian community library chain catering to Indian reading requirements. Getting incubated as a startup enterprise at NSRCEL was an important point of inflection for JUSTBOOKSCLC.

The data of one year of operations of JUSTBOOKSCLCseems to indicate that reading as a habit is truly alive and kicking. Once a reader is hooked, word-of-mouth references kick in to get other fence sitters hooked. Bucking the popular opinion, TV & Internet do not seem to have captured the brain cells completely – and thank God for that, while they have been reasonably successful in capturing the eye balls.

JUSTBOOKSCLC is now in the process of scaling its operation outside of Bangalore, they plan to deepen presence within Bangalore. Expansion model will continue to be franchisee driven where books & associated technology will be provided by the franchisor and the franchisee will have the pleasure of getting communities to sign up for reading.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Simplilearn is Bangalore based startup targeting global audience who aspire for PMP certification. Simplilearn is a SaaS based online learning platform, integrated with essential Web 2.0 tools, which provides professional organizations and training solutions providers with a fast and flexible way to configure and deploy their learning contents.

Simplilearn is a certification preparation Portal. Simplilearn provide working professionals the option of attending Live virtual classes from the convenience of their home or office. It provides a balanced mix of e-learning, classroom learning and live virtual classes to address the unique learning needs of working needs of working professionals.

Simplilearn is founded by Krishna kumar a serial entrepreneur, earlier he cofounded TechUnified, which got acquired by a public listed company in Feb 2007. By the time of acquisition, TechUnified had world class products in the areas of Mobile Banking, Voice Banking and Telecom Self Care.

SimpliLMS the LMS from Simplilearn, helps them create, manage and deliver various standard as well as customized courses that are of global values and provides them all the features of a good blended learning. Simplilearn also addresses those organizations that have a good course curricula and a strong base of learners but are looking out for economical LMS to go online. SImplilearn develops fully customized learning portals that yields higher ROI.

Simplilearn has trained more than 3000 PMP aspirants from across 100+ countries. Simplilearn provides customizable solutions to meet unique training requirements of organizations. Simplilearn plans to introduce other certification training programs like ITIL Training, CAPM Training, CISA, and Six Sigma training in the near future.

Simplilearn competes with global players like PMCC, CELTEM, PMSTUDY.

Simplilearn USP -

• Live Virtual Classes from India to global audience.
• Pioneers of blended learning approach for certification preparation.
• Intuitive and excellent user interface.
• Product bundling done quite smartly, user can buy the complete package or individual item like online courses, mock tests.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com