[Open Conversation] What is the final solution?

hello@Neyawn 

Not active on this platform, but I have seen forumias grow from guidance ias to shop no 6 to 19, PUSA road. I have worked with vision ias in academic capacity, and unacademy in mergers and acquisitions and finance and now i am working with an investment advisory firm. I am no  longer in the exam cycle and decided to not pursue a corporate career.

You may or may not remember me, but I have been your student ( with Himanshu Gupta, AIR 27 ) in your ethics class. If you could recall, I and Himanshu came to see you after he got rank 27. I am also a CS engineer.

I have seen forum grow and there are parts that I have admired and parts where I think you may need some consultancy. Seeing things from vantage point of forum purely as a business.

Pls do not get me wrong. I have worked with several founders, and seen some of the scale massively and some of them fail. As your student i appreciated your enthusiasm and passion. ( I am from that era when minal karanwal, akshay , nikita , aditya from your cgp / foundation classes cleared the exam, and the academy was still very small )

Here is some inputs for you which may help you think with more clarity, and from where i can see ( i have worked in fund rasining , acquisitions of about a dozen start ups and more than half in edtech sector )

1. as far as i can remember , sometime around 2022-23, your average revenue per user was about 13,000/user/annum. This was abysmal considering that you are an offline player, and if you somehow do not increase this then sooner or later either you will be in trouble or you will need to raise funds (= trouble ? ) . You are now a full pledged coaching and your customers see you in the same way as vajiram. whose average revenue per user exceeds 1,35,000+ / per user / year. it is likley that big players will now squeeze you out...u will also have to find ways and means to reach the AMRPU to 5000 immediately and scale it to 10,000 if u want to do things offline.. or u will have to become an online player.. as u may not survive two winters..

2. I was in ORN just after this incident, and I was a bit cut off from preparation days, but I saw that around your vajiram , nest and "srishti" have taken away all of real estate. which means if you dont have your own building, you wont be able to expand.  I also came to know that some of these building dont have students but have been taken by some coachings to increase cost of doing business for you and other small players.

3. Your current revenue model is difficult to sustain as with less than 1500 / user /month earnings - which is your average figure, you will not be able to pay rents. I am sure than with basements sealed, landlords would have distributed rent across other floors. Corrent me if my information is incorrect, but your rental expensiture as a business is anywhere about 1,65,000 to 1,75,000 per day.  Which is why you are most riled about the recent regulations. 

4. I have always enjoyed your write ups , but here is the thing. Even during our time, when you had shifted to your center in pusa road, you were too enthusiastic about SFG - which often came at a cost to other programs. I remember even our classes would be cancelled but never sfg ( I sat in the park to write sfg ). I do not see you successfully scale even sfg program, and while, as far as i can remember the average fee / day was 60 rs/day, it is now around 100/day.  It is a matter of time that you will either have to increase the price or close it down. Your passion and obsession as a founder with some programs, which is common to every passionate founder, may be detrimetal to ur own organisation.

5. Do not take this in the wrong way, as I would love to see forum grown and expand, but what I feel is that forum has focussed on results and getting good students. I remember even in 2018-19 time you were very keen on ranks and results. But a coaching will not simply run because of rankholders. it will run because it solves the problem of masses with respect to ias preparation. Trying to play god by selecting few students and then getting selections ( such as natasha goyal , IPS last year ) is not what will help forumias in the long run. 

6. I often see your being critical of "srishti". what I think as an investor today that they have built a brilliant business model. They are stable and will not be affected by results / ranks shifting here and there. also they are doing above average job in terms of education. on social media they are no.1 and that counts. when i meet people no one knows forumias , but everyone knows drishti folks. i think that is a big front where forum has completely failed.

7. i see your frustration sir, with respect to quality of students. what you are missing is that markets have changed. it is no longer 2017-18-19 where less than 40,000 to 50,000 are preparing for civils. today people are preparing for civils in lakhs. and thats a market. And when they find affordable edtech courses such as unacademy, studyIQ etc, they take it - even if the quality is not of upsc standards. Your concenrs as a teacher are valid that Youtube, Unaca, StudyQ etc students are just wasting time, they have not got into rigorous preparation. but you see the student today has choice. I saw your comment that if sfg is expensive then there is no point doing it. Why such lack of business approach and lack of emotional intelligence? the students today are not coming from vajiram having paid 2 lakhs so they will find you cheap. they are coming from studyQ and have paid 20K for 2 year course and find you expensive. It is a business problem you have to solve.

8. Lastly, you have not been able to solve the reach problem of forum. I have watched your tete a tete with toppers and seen that u ask everyone how did u come to know about forumias, and they say - everyone knows about it, and somewhat your ego is satisfied.. but dont get me wrong.. people know forumias... after spedning 2-3 years and having paid 2-3 lakhs in coaching.. so when they come to u .. they have no money left to spend.. but as a businessowner that is your problem... not their..

9. you seeking opinion of students is also IMO a bit childish. during preparation, do u think anyone knows about business? i read somewhere that students are demanding that landlords take cash rent. and they are tagging FM to stop that. once govt will put its eye, now landlords will take rent in cheque + 18% GST which student will have to pay,, and probably they dont know about it yet.. 

10. Forum has done a brilliant job in terms if quality... not sure about all india,,, but in delhi you have beaten vision in mains test series... last year my junior from college got selected and she was praising your content like anything... but thats it!... u will have to take quick decisions and as@Pizzza has said,, focus on making education affordable and increase the scale.. ranks will keep coming and going..u hv enough ranks to satisfy ur ego or ambitions

i hv tried my best to be constructive,, and i hope that u take in the right spirit.. u may want to take some consultancy with respect to forum...u know how to reach me.. adios.

sir I am not sure if you took these in the right spirit...my apologies to u .. if i sounded bit straightforward..it is just that i want to see forum grow.. there are so many coachings which are doing no good job but are thriving because they followed good business practices.. i think forum needs to do a rethink on its business practices.. i am also putting to ur notice 2-3 new trends which i dont think u r aware of

1. from last 2 years itself nst ias has made all programs free for interview students .. and they hv reaped rich benefits this time claiming rank 1 as their classroom student and test series student without them having a single copy of him.. but most students in mrkt think that he had studied from nxt and will join their tst series and gs advanced program.. hw will u handle that.. it is true that cream students knw truth and will com to u but what about the masses who pay fees..they r all going to nst ias.. and they hv good money power,, hw ill u fight them..

2. when i came to ORN this time.. first time i saw that what used to happen in mukherji nagar is now hapenning in orn also. i saw that there were "student catchers" everywhere... when u get down from metro they said they they will get foundation done in 20,000. I was a little amused.. i played along..i said i was looking for vajiram.. they said they are looting students and now no faculty is there.... nw when i told them i hd come to join vision or forum.. he started saying that forum is closing its center and vision is not having stdent... feedback is bad..and join pw.onlyias .. later  i came to know that they are paid anywhere 3k to 5k for admissions.. i am not sure how this will impact forumias..but the way they were talking about other coachings including forum.. i am sure at least 10-15 students would get caught in their web everyday.. even if they cant get admission,, they would repel so many students who are new and dont have connections..

A month ago ORN deaths were major issue, today RG Kar rape murder is, some days later some mini protest will happen for another serious issue and nothing will ever change. We will keep on dying. The country shook after Nirbhaya case in 2012 but do you see any improvement in women safety? Everyone will forget these deaths and normalcy will return in ORN in Kolkata and everywhere (maybe already has)

No government has spine to implement creamy layer in reservation or scrap it altogether - because the government will fall. Caste census is a priority today for elites.

But real issues are not electoral issues, no one cares, no one talks about it in the manifesto. All these police reforms, pendency of cases in supreme court are limited to answer writing. People appreciate encounter justice a lot and why not, the courts are defunct, constitution is reduced to a mere booklet. We are just numbers, democracy is a numbers game.

We need Montesquieu, Voltaire, Bhagat Singh for the 21st century India but unfortunately we are busy scrolling reels.

How are things there in ORN these days?