Vivek Kumar, of Uttar Pradesh, has fought many battles to build his edtech brand. Exampur now clocks a turnover of Rs 24 crore.
Vivek Kumar, 29, of a tiny hamlet in Uttar Pradesh, nearly lost the business he had diligently created a few years ago when a company he had collaborated with stole the rights to his You Tube channel and demanded Rs 2.5 crore to give it back to him.
His journey from a town in UP to the national capital, where he leads a team of 600 employees, including 200 teachers, is as inspiring as how he gathered the money, reclaimed his channel, and rebuilt his firm into a Rs 24 crore revenue company.
Vivek is the founder of Exampur, which now trains thousands of young people for government profession.
Exampur began as a You Tube channel in June 2018 from his hamlet, where he was preparing for the physical test after passing the written exam for the post of sub-inspector of police in Uttar Pradesh.
He had no idea at the time that he would later refuse the appointment letter for the Sub Inspector’s position and instead focus on growing Exampur into a large corporation employing many other tutors. Vivek says, “it was my father’s goal for me to become a government officer.”
Vivek was born in Kondu, a tiny village in the Bulandshahr area of Uttar Pradesh. He is the eldest of four children. His father is a Sipahi in the Indian Navy, while his mother is a farmer.
He used to run away from school as a child, but his grandfather made certain that he had outstanding literacy and maths skills. In Class Nine, Vivek’s interest in studies switched as his family transferred him to an English medium school in Bulandshahr town.
Despite the fact that it was an English language school, the teachers taught in Hindi, and I was able to keep up. He then completed his B.Tech in computer science from IIMT, Greater Noida (2010-14). Around this time, his family was experiencing financial difficulties, so Vivek began tutoring other pupils in order to supplement his income. Following his M.Tech, he concentrated on fulfilling his father’s desire of obtaining a good government job.
Vivek describes his experience as a teacher and subsequently a YouTube coach, saying, “I moved to Delhi to join a coaching hub.” I began to enjoy teaching and saw it as a wonderful way to give back to society.
With internet penetration in India predicted to rise in the future years, more Indians are likely to enrol in online coaching sessions. Meanwhile, the results of the sub inspector test were released in December 2017, and Vivek passed it.
He decided to return to his village to prepare for the physical exam because it offered plenty of open area for him to practise.
Vivek says, “In June 2018, I began making You Tube videos of crucial themes for the sub-inspector exam, and they were an instant hit with the kids because I taught in the vernacular language.” I had 2.5 lakh subscribers and was making Rs 30-40,000 per month within a few months.I opted to relocate to Delhi in October 2018 after suffering connectivity troubles in my area.”
They rented an apartment in Mukherjee Nagar’s Indra Vikas Colony on the outskirts of Delhi. The channel had one million subscribers by January 2019. That’s when he learned he’d been chosen for the sub-inspector position. He turned down that position and instead concentrated on his business.
Vivek decided to part ways with the collaborating company after running into certain problems.
Because the corporation now owned the channel’s You Tube rights, it asked Rs 2.5 crore to return them to him.
Vivek approached Vardaan Gandhi, who would later become his co-founder, and the two decided to create an app that would educate students about the new courses they intended to launch.
They informed the kids that the fees they would pay would be used to repurchase their You Tube channel.
Vivek says this was the most difficult phase of his entrepreneurial journey. Vardaan also contributed some funds, and we bought back our channel within a month, and we became the channel’s owner in July 2019. They relocated to a huge 9000 sq ft (rented) facility in Burari and began to offer coaching for aspirants of highly competitive exams such as the IAS and IPS.
While Exampur currently offers 25 channels and 9.5 million subscribers across all channels, their app has been downloaded by more than 2.5 million unique users. Their revenue increased from Rs 4.5 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 24 crore when the epidemic struck in 2020-21.
Vardaan, who now manages Exampur’s marketing, stated, “In the next years, the internet will enter the villages of India, and we can expect vernacular learning to be the need of the hour. In the next three years, 55 crore individuals will connect to the internet, and we hope to reach 5 crore of them as potential pupils”
