S. Vishnu Sharma
Widhya which is Mahindra University’s e-hub incubated startup has become a part of great T-Hub which is fastest growing startup and innovation ecosystem in India.
It is interesting to note that Widhya is an e-learning platform for students to get industrial experience without having to work at a company.
Widhya partners with various organisations, takes projects from them and puts it out for its learners to solve.
What is interesting is that, this isn’t traditional video-based approach that has been adopted by a large number of the e-learning players.
Widhya is India’s first real gamified platform for e-learning.
Mahindra University vice chancellor Dr. Yajulu Medury speaking about Widhya said it was happy to note that a startup incubated by the university is winning accolades.
Widhya is now a part of great T-Hub
It is also happy to note that Widhya is now being mentored and fast-tracked by T-Hub.
‘We at Mahindra E-hub help students bring out proof of concept, mentor the students and showcase their strengths and opportunities to industry experts, mentors and investors.’
We work closely with startups to bring them to a critical mass at the beta phase with testing and trials, so that they can take off with ease once they get to the stage of formal launch, said Dr. Yajulu.
‘We are glad that in a short time, we’ve been able to help many startups and each success story motivates us to go far.’
Widhya is a startup founded by two students of Mahindra University who graduated in 2018 from the B.Tech programme offered at the educational institution.
Widhya was born out of the need to undertake industrial training of choice irrespective of the area of the background or specialisation.
Rahul Arulkumaran and Rishabh Singh hit upon the idea of starting Widhya and conducted offline trials to validate the product.
They found that this product, Widhya was indeed the need of the hour.
Both the founders of Widhya had plans of doing their masters.
However, when COVID struck, both of them knew that now was the time for developing the product, Widhya, and they decided to postpone their plans to go for masters.
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Rahul one of the founder of Widhya is a student of Computer Science and Engineering and Rishabh Singh, the co-founder of Widhya is a student of Electrical and Electronics Engineering.
The founders of Widhya got their online Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out in March 2020 and were in private beta testing until October 1.
Till October they had just 679 users but since then have more than 7000 users, out of which more than 40% are active each month.
The highlight is Widhya has already got recognised as one of top 10 fastest growing e-learning startups in 2021.
Students from IITs, IIMs, NITs, IIITs and BITS actively use Widhya on one hand, on the other hand
working professionals at Amazon, Google, Adobe, E-Kart are also active here.
Widhya platform is already being referred to by many training institutes to help them gain real-time industrial exposure and over 1,00,000 project hours have been recorded on it.
Widhya has users from India, USA, UK, Singapore, Vietnam, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Australia.
And over 10,000 students have used its core platform for learning programs, live webinars and internships.
Rahul Arulkumaran, CEO and Co-Founder of Widhya said over 500 students have already received internship experiences through Widhya and other partner startups and we are now launching a new program in January, called the ‘Winternship Program’ which will be India’s largest tech internship program in 2021 as over 5000 learners are expected to participate.
One of the main reasons for the popularity of the company is that it is India’s first real-time gamified E-learning latform, he said.
The startup is also a part of the Y-Combinator’s Startup School (Y-Combinator in one of the world’s most renowned investment and startup mentorship organisations – Top companies like Airbnb, Razorpay, etc. are YC startups).
Widhya is a completely bootstrapped company with no external investments – It generates revenue on a monthly basis to keep going and is profitable too.
The startup was also a part of the ‘Google Cloud For Startups Program’ earlier, through which they received some support from Google Cloud Platform.
About MEC
Mahindra University’s Ecole Centrale School of Engineering (MEC) was established through a high-level synergy between Industry and Academia.
MEC’s course curriculum has been designed to ensure that the students are multi-faceted, equipped with excellent engineering education and graduate as industry-ready engineers.
MEC provides world-class infrastructure to support a strong research program for its students and faculty.
MEC’s vision is to train engineers, both men and women, to be entrepreneurial and innovative with good leadership qualities, so that they are capable of meeting the most demanding engineering challenges of the 21st Century.
MEC has academic partnerships with global institutions like USA’s Babson College, France’s Centrale Supelec and Groupe des Ecoles Centrale, University of Florida USA, and several others for internships and semester exchange.
In addition, the contemporary curricula are being curated to incorporate emerging technologies and enable holistic development of its students.
About Mahindra University
Mahindra EcoleCentrale College of Engineering, operating since 2014 has been subsumed into the Mahindra University (w.e.f. Academic Year 2020-21), legislated under the Telangana State Private Universities (Establishment and Regulation) Act, 2018 for educating future citizens for a better world.
Mahindra University, headquartered in Hyderabad (India) is sponsored by Mahindra Educational Institutions (MEI).
MEI is a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra Ltd., the flagship IT company of Mahindra Group, a US $ 19.4 billion group employing 2,56,000 employees across 100 countries and operating in key industries, driven by one purpose – to rise.