GradLimited, a one-stop platform for students, employers and course providers was launched recently in Mumbai, India.
Founded by Abhishek Mehta and Avinash Rogye, GradLimited was launched with a mission to augment the way freshers and industries interact with one another. The platform is meant to help students explore relevant career and education avenues on the basis of their scientifically assessed profiles.
About the Founders
Avinash is a first generation entrepreneur with experience in Human Resources, Talent Development and Financial Services. Masters in Marketing by qualification. He has worked with the world’s largest youth-run organisation recognised by the United Nations across multiple domains.
Abhishek is a serial entrepreneur having experience in domains like Education, Assessments and Human Resources. As an entrepreneur he has successfully established companies working with the Coir Board of India and various large scale retail brands across the country. Abhishek is also a Masters in Marketing and Lawyer by qualification.
To understand more about GradLimited and mentorship platforms in general, we interviewed the founders of the Startup.
In the world of Startups, it is often said that a Startup without a vision is a failed Startup even if it is a Unicorn. What was your vision behind launching GradLimited?
Gradlimited was launched with a vision to make the lives of students and young graduates easier. Having worked across multiple sectors we realized that there is a massive opportunity information gap, owing to which students end up making irrational career decisions.
Gradlimited is a one of its kind mentorship platform that helps students and young graduates explore personality relevant career and educational avenues. Once a student logs in to gradlimited they are put through a battery of assessments which then uses a sophisticated matchmaking algorithm to fetch for most relevant (personality and skill based) avenues for the candidate.
So what were the challenges that you faced as an entrepreneur?
Most developed countries are very well versed with the concept for personality assessment for job search. Personality fitment is a major criterion in the selection process; however, the major challenge we believe in our markets is the lack of education and awareness towards the concept. India as a country has the largest workforce in the world, yet the importance of personality fitment for career exploration is not emphasized upon in the schooling system. This, we believe is changing and major Indian MNC’s are seen investing highly in this proposition as early adopters to this change. We strongly believe the rest of the market will soon follow suit.
Recently, several mentorship platforms have been launched. How do you differentiate yourself from them?
We are the only company in the country that uses a candidate’s digital footprint to generate a personality report and assess career avenues based on it. For companies looking at recruiting from the platform, the major differentiator is that we provide a one stop solution where they can not only source candidates but also get reports to the preliminary round of assessments that can help them plan the interview process better. We also believe the conventional range of services like standard matchmaking which job search engines have been charging companies for over 10 years form the “hygiene” element of the platform which will be made available without a cost. Employers will be charged only for the incremental value of a more refined search of candidates filtered on their personality information.
How do students and fresher’s assess their career options?
Upon taking the assessments, downloadable reports are generated for students. These reports are both psychometric as well as behavioral in nature. We are the only company in India that is able to assess a candidate’s personality on the basis of their social media activity. We believe that a digital footprint report is the best form of validation to a candidate’s psychometric information as it is based on their actual behavior over a prolonged period of time. These reports help us identify a candidate’s “Occupational Interest” and also their academic inclination. Our matchmaking engine uses this data to recommend most suitable jobs, courses, internships and scholarships on the basis of this information.
GradLimited is still in its infancy. What has been the experience so far?
We have been live for over two months now and the general response has been good. We have over 2000 registered users on the platform and we have simultaneously tied up with multiple colleges to expose their students to a host of personality-based career and education avenues. We have received interest from major colleges across the country for events and festivals to collaborate with them as their “Assessment and Recruitment Partner”.
GradLimited recently participated in the Indian Education Congress 2017 and was nominated for an award under the category of best online education platform. The Startup has also raised funds from Young Ideas Ventures where over 500 business plans were screened.
