It is needless to discuss the flaws that exist in the Indian education system, when we have Ed-tech startups making way into changing the picture.
FrontBench is a startup in the Ed-tech sector, which has challenged conventional wisdom and aims to empower the brilliant minds of Tier 2 & Tier 3 Institutions.
According to the founders of the startup, FrontBench is a movement of mass engagement to enable, empower and enlighten students of Tier 3 and Tier 2 colleges.
FrontBench – Vision
FrontBench startup Co-founders believes that every student in this country is unique and special. He or she can do whatever they want to in their career.
But various surveys point out that a whopping number of engineers in this country are unfit for hiring.
The primary reason is that students often fail to discover the purpose of their career stream in absence of proper guidance and mentorship.
Premier institutions have those alumni network and guidance. The simple reason why a student in an IIT or IIM bags a higher package against the same degree is that they are more aware.
Majority of the students of Tier 2/Tier 3 colleges haven’t heard about GSoC (Google Summer of Codes) or ACM ICPC. Even if they have, they lack the right guidance or mentorship.
The problem isn’t that there is a lack of motivation in students coming from Tier 3/Tier 2 colleges, but the information seems to be far away from them.
FrontBench is working to bridge that information asymmetry in Tier 3/Tier 2 colleges. They have envisioned making information easily available - just a click away.
FrontBench – Conceptualisation & Startup
It was the month of October when Deepak, a student at a private engineering college in Delhi NCR wanted to make a resource list of the various opportunities that exist for students.
He thought that many students of Tier 2/Tier 3 colleges shall miss out many opportunities - what they genuinely deserve - because they don’t have the right guidance.
So, he made an open source repository and asked people to contribute to it. The repository which he named as A to Z saw 500+ contributions from more than 40 countries.
Also, to his surprise, A to Z resources was among the top 3 trending repositories on Github for a month.
This gave him confidence, but the real faith in the concept was developed when students from all over the world approached him and thanked him for the initiative he had taken.
“What I thought as a regional problem, turned out to be universal!”. - Deepak (FrontBench Co-Founder)
Soon he was joined by Avinash and Venkatesh. The three together transformed the open source repository into a centralised portal named FrontBench. Since then, the three are sailing FrontBench together.
FrontBench – Founders
The three Co-founders of FrontBench - Avinash, Deepak and Venkatesh - have a different approach to founding members of FrontBench.
According to them, founders are insignificant for FrontBench. It is a community-driven initiative, and everyone who has contributed is a rockstar in every sense and a part of the founding team.
The three co-founders are in the final year of our Computer Science and Engineering degree. They are helped by their friends - Akhand, Gaurav, Prakhar, Divyansh, and Rahul - at every step.
FrontBench – Operations
FrontBench is growing as it is reaching to almost all colleges of Tier2/Tier3 cities. From Assam to Bikaner and from Himachal to Ernakulam - FrontBench has its “Campus Stars” present all across this country.
These brilliant guys represent FrontBench in their respective campuses and pass on the resources available at FrontBench repository to everyone else in their campus.
Besides the “Campus Stars”, FrontBench also has a pool of mentors. FrontBench has around half a dozen industry veterans and leaders as its mentors.
These mentors guide the students of Tier2/Tier3 cities in making an informed career decision. Till now, FrontBench has served more than 10,000 students by taking seminars, sessions, workshops and webinars.
FrontBench – Funding
FrontBench is a volunteering based startup as of now. They have volunteers from more than 70 institutions all across this country. Every contributor is their asset. However, if anyone wishes to help them financially, they can sit with them for a coffee.
FrontBench – Future Goals
FrontBench aims to create India’s biggest democratised and free platform, where all students can visit and know how to do, what they want to do. They look ahead to expand in many more colleges across India and make it accessible for every student.
They want to break the status quo where people don’t want to look beyond premier colleges. The discrimination among students, on the basis of the type of institution they come from, is something they don’t want to survive.
They are looking out to enable, empower and enlighten those students across the country, which don’t have access to right guidance and mentorship.
FrontBench aims is to empower 4 million students by the next year.
“If we can guide our students better, we can create a million quality professionals every year.” – Venkatesh, FrontBench Co-founder