Teaching has always been considered a noble profession, but the landscape is rapidly changing. An increasing number of students aspiring for admission to prestigious colleges has fueled the growth of coaching centres. Parents and students anxious to crack the difficult competitive entrance examinations are willing to generously spend both money and time on coaching.
This is where Surya Pratap Singh, a former employee of Career Launcher and Times, comes into the picture. Singh chose to become a teacher for his love of education. Around two months back, Singh started a low fee coaching centre for students. Within two months of opening, more than 500 students have enrolled at the centre, averaging 6-7 enrollments every day.
Here are the excerpts of the Knocksense’s interview with FundaMaker’s founder Surya Pratap Singh!
Parul, Knocksense: What is FundaMakers?
Surya: FundaMakers is a kind of educational society or rather a movement through which we are trying to provide the best of education at the lowest possible cost. Currently, 500 students are enrolled at FundaMakers. Approximately 150-160 of these students study free of cost.
We have a thumb rule, that any student who comes here and deposits the certificate of BPL by the Government of India, we don’t charge him/her a single penny. The cost of the education of those students is covered by the students who pay, which is also very nominal. FundaMakers is a movement in education and not just an institute.
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Parul: How is FundaMakers separate from other coaching institutes?
Surya: We aren’t in a profitable business.
Parul: When was it formed? What has been your idea behind the coaching?
Surya: I started this two months back on May 1, 2017. The idea is very simple, a student in class 12 can secure admission to a graduate or post graduate course on his own. However, if he wants to get through a good grad college, he will need the help of a coaching institute. And to get into a good college, he has to crack the entrance test. This test preparation is very costly. For eg, A college which comes under CLAT, let’s say, Ram Manohar Lohia, the fees here is somewhere around 1lakh. But a very famous coaching institute charges more than Rs 1 lakh for test preparations. The preparation is imperative for a student to get through a good college. With no other option, and in hope of cracking the entrances, they pay the unjustified sum of money. Now this, is a loot. And I started this movement because I wanted to challenge this corporatization.
And I started this movement because I wanted to challenge this corporatization.
Parul: What do you charge as your fees and how do you manage your funds?
Surya: Our maximum fees is Rs. 25,000 for any preparation. Others charge Rs. 80,000 for CAT prep, we charge Rs. 15000. That is the difference. We do not turn down a student if he/she wants to study but isn’t able to pay the fees. There is a place for everyone who really aims at cracking the examinations.
Parul: How does it feel to enroll 500 students in just 2 months?
Surya: It is unexpected but I am happy and fearful at the same time. Happy because I never expected this and fearful, because there is a pressure of maintaining the same flow in the coming days as well.
Parul: We haven’t come across any prints ads or any other advertisements of FundaMakers. How do you manage to promote it?
Surya: I don’t believe in ads. I haven’t even taken any steps in that direction. Frankly, I just rely on my students, who are on my facebook. I post videos on Facebook, and that’s the only way I promote myself.
Parul: Has social media helped you in growing?
Surya: Social media is a platform where you can disperse your ideas. This generation, this era is an era of idea diffusion. For example, 100 years back, the only source of dispersion of idea was newspapers. 50 years back, TV came and 5 years back, social media. But now, things are transforming and it is not just one platform. There are blogs, there is Twitter, there is Facebook. All these media help in reaching your target audiences directly.
Parul: How has your journey been from CL to Times and now FundaMakers?
Surya: I love teaching. So it has always been good. I started teaching not because I worked at CL, I worked at CL because I loved teaching. I worked in the training department as a child protection officer for UNICEF in Singapore. That’s when I realised, training is where my heart is. I was also into dramatics, from there I came into social work and then into education. That is when I realized that the best form of social work is education. I also run a couple of schools in Balia district.
Parul: Since teaching has always been a noble profession, how justified do you think is the hefty amount of money, coaching institutes charge these days?
Surya: They are not educators, they are businessmen. The problem is that people have masked themselves as educators. These businessmen have hired teachers and are only minting money by doing so. They market and sell their products. All this is only going to lead to a complete chaos. Coaching centres and private colleges which are rampant these days are making money out of this! But I want to make education affordable and teaching noble.
Parul: What is the message that you want to give to your students?
