PaperRocket

Discover and achieve your dream career. Get unbiased advice from professionals with first hand experience in the field. 

What is the problem that you are committed to solving?

The widening skills gap is a global problem and is especially detrimental to economic prosperity in developing countries. Our primary market research revealed that this gap (i.e., The Problem) could be driven by a host of factors (i.e., The Sub-Problems) including a mismatch in skills, and the career, lack of interest and passion for career, and lack of training. 

We cannot simply rely on teachers in schools and colleges to address these reasons. For example, no matter how great a teacher is at teaching in the classroom, she / he might not have mastery over the most relevant skills today given the rapidly evolving technological landscape. Furthermore, teachers themselves might not have all the knowledge to guide students in exploring and learning about careers as well as forging a successful path in a chosen career. 

What is the solution you are proposing?

Our solution is augmenting a student's learning through a unique kind of mentorship - honest, unbiased, and actionable. We believe that connecting students with mentors who are actually working in a career of interest (e.g., Marine Engineering) will help them:

• Receive first-hand perspective on the career and associated opportunities and challenges
• Build valuable connections in the career of interest for long-term success
• Understand potential pathways to not only break into the career of choice, but also succeed in it

Our initial testing and primary market research also helped us identify the following critical success factors for our solution:

• Rigorous screening and vetting of mentors combined with a unique on-boarding training to ensure high quality 
• Focus on the mentor-mentee fit using machine learning and artificial intelligence based on factors such as learning style, personality, level of education, language
• No prescription on choice of careers - only unbiased advice based on personal experience of the mentor in the career 

How will your solution change the world?

Imagine a world where each student has access to genuine mentorship about careers. He / she can make informed career choices, identify the career path to get there, and discover "hidden" tips for success all from someone who has achieved success in the said career and is invested in helping others succeed. Such training not only has the power to help students make the right career choices (sometimes, choices they were not even aware of) but also do well in those careers. It is no secret that more than 75% of jobs are "hidden" or not advertised. Even with the largely online and connected information age, most of the information remains hidden (or unavailable) to the vast majority of the population. This asymmetry in information access can sometimes be the determinant of career success and as a result, overall standard of living and happiness. In a world where 65% of jobs of tomorrow do not exist today (according to estimates from World Economic Forum), helping students learn about these new skills at the right age is imperative. 

PaperRocket's biggest strength lies in it's unique combination of effective mentorship and personalised experience in a space currently dominated by inexperienced (and expensive) local career counselors. Our solution is the first attempt in digitising effective mentorship in developing countries. 

We use data analytics to personalise the entire user journey right from the mentor-mentee fit through the mentorship sessions. Our simple user interface ensures ease of use regardless of user comfort with technology.

PaperRocket uses data to create an experience tailored towards individual learning styles, career goals, and cultural preferences. This data comprises of user-generated content (e.g., user action history), user-provided content (e.g., at registration), social graphs (e.g., other users, friends and broader network), and third party data. Over time, we would deploy artificial intelligence algorithms on this data to continuously improve the mentor-mentee fit and the user journey. 

After a few months of launch, we will use a combination of technologies (such as AR / VR, in-house audio-video capabilities, offline delivery) to enhance mentorship sessions and reach more remote population segments.  

Over the next 12 months, we aim to:

• Generate >30,000 registered users and 10,000 mentors on our platform
  • For the first 3 months, our focus will be getting verified mentors and training them. We have signed MOUs from 3 colleges in Mumbai (with 3 more in the process) and have meetings in place to secure more.
• Better understand the needs of our target users - mentors and mentees.
• Refine our data analytics capabilities based on generated data
• In months 6-9, develop in-house technology to conduct sessions 
• Hire a data scientist proficient in artificial intelligence algorithms 

We plan to reach more people by pursuing the following strategies:

• Creating versions of our solution in widely-spoken local Indian languages to reach people who are not comfortable with English
• Develop technological capabilities to service people with limited access to data or internet such as text-based communication 
• Continue partnering with schools and colleges 
• Partner with organisations (e.g., companies, hospitals) for mentors 

In addition, we will expand our services to include trainings focused on most demanded skills such as data science, biosciences, and digital marketing. 

PaperRocket is an offering under Grovenue, an ed-tech company which also offers test preparation help. Grovenue has partnerships with 10+ schools in Mumbai with more underway. PaperRocket will leverage Grovenue's reach to gain initial traction. The simple, data-lite website can be accessed anywhere, by anyone. Eventually, we will supplement it with offline sessions in targeted hubs across India. Once a user joins us, we will use personalised communications to nudge him / her further in the journey. For example, after a user connects with a mentor in marine engineering, we follow-up with advice on important colleges in the space. 

Grovenue currently has ~500 registered users who have access to PaperRocket, it's mentor platform. They have found personalised resources to prepare for entrance exams through Grovenue. We also conducted sessions at partner schools to educate students on careers based on their interests. These students would otherwise rely on word of mouth or societal norms to choose a career that is not only a sub-par fit for their interests, but might also be obsolete in the future. During these visits, we discovered a need for augmenting this journey by giving them more hands-on advice on careers of interest through effective mentorship. 

Over the next 12 months, our goal is to connect >30,000 users with >5,000 trained mentors who have first-hand experience in a career of interest. In 12 months, we hope to have in-house technology to provide the complete mentorship experience. In 3 years, we hope to help >200,000 users navigate the entire career journey starting from discovering a career, getting a mentor, preparing for relevant entrance exams, and trainings to master relevant skills for the career. 

In our small team of 5 people, we have a fairly good mix of people from different domains of specialisation. We have two people in our tech team - one backend and one frontend specialist for our product creation and upgrades. They are supported by a team of two people from business and Marketing background to ensure business objectives and user ease of use is not compromised on. We also have a team member specialising in the financial and operations domain. This connects us to a diverse network of professionals, who we work with on need basis. 

PaperRocket is sustainable because of a huge market size (~200 mn students aged 14-24 by Govt. of India estimates), clear revenue drivers, and profitable scalability. Internet penetration in India is expected to grow from 33% in 2017 to 59% in 2021. We plan to engage students beyond just India and hence, the potential market size for our product is even larger.

Revenue drivers include: 1) 10%  service fee for each successful mentor - mentee relationship paid by the student, parent, or school; this fee is excused for students with annual household income lower than INR 3 lakhs. 2) Organizations can sponsor mentors, education or career-related content (e.g., a webinar with Q&A on a technology), and place ads on our platform.

Additionally, our product is easily scalable since it is primarily technology-driven and does not follow a freemium model. We already have a robust technical architecture in place which has been tested for usage by 1000+ users simultaneously. We have limited overhead since we will not be paying mentors to be on our platform (i.e., they will get paid directly each time a student requests their service).

We hope to get feedback on our solution and plan from the diverse set of judges and other Solvers at Solve. Regardless of the final outcome of this opportunity, these connections will go a long way in helping us better our approach. We also hope to gain potential leads from organisations (e.g., other start-ups, NGOs, foundations) for partnerships during our pilot and beyond. We are especially looking for collaboration in designing mentor training, mentor outreach, and student outreach in rural areas. 

The following factors could potentially impact our solution's success:

• Customer disposable income: Although urban / suburban users would be willing to pay for a mentor, rural students might not have the income for the same. We might need to subsidise our service for them to maximise impact. Solve can help through advice on business model, connections with potential partners, and initial funds to support this subsidy. 
• Mentor quality and training: Solve can help by supporting outreach to the MIT and Solve community to join as dedicated, unbiased mentors.