Team ScooNews speaks to Naveen Goyal, CEO & Co-Founder, NoPaperForms

ScooNews spoke to Naveen Goyal, CEO & Co-Founder, NoPaperForms on the use of technology in education sector. Here are the excerpts:

1.  Most institutions are moving towards automation and digitization of admission processes through ERP systems. While many aren’t. What is it that continues to be an obstacle in taking up digitization?

Answer: 

• Typically the digitization of Admission process was happening through traditional ERP systems, which are costlier as well as complex to implement and maintain for the institutions. Also, the administrative staff is comfortable working on the traditional legacy systems, heavily relying on the offline medium, so it becomes difficult to convince such institutions. The way Admission and Marketing departments evolved in last few years, a need was felt for a different style of system which the existing ERP was unable to cater to, the space that NoPaperForms is dealing in, is the new age plug-and-play SaaS model, where the strength lies in its simplicity and cost-effectiveness.
• With UGC mandate for digital payment and transparency in admission process we see a shift, in last 6 months NoPaperForms itself on boarded 50+ institutes and then there is an emerging breed of institutions where we were able to close the deal through a demo over skype, we didn’t have to send our street sales team on foot to them. So, the landscape is changing and NoPaperForms is determined to act as a catalyst to this transition.

2.  How are the NoPaperForms different from that of its competitions?

Answer

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• NoPaperForms is a SaaS based enrolment management platform which handles complete admission cycle from enquiry to enrolment, from generating your forms, payment collection to measuring ROI; everything is automated and can be done on the fly. So compared to the old setup, where institutes spent a lot of time on setting up complex IT systems, we are now shifting their focus on engaging students, measuring ROI and improving conversion, because technology is no more a burden for them. We customize our modules to ensure both offline and online processes can co-exist, and then slowly educate our traditional customers and bring a shift in their mind-set.

1. Our pricing is based on subscription model, on per user basis. Institutes don’t have to pay hefty amount or any other maintenance cost, this is helping us to move them online easily

2. Our solution is based on Modular approach, institute can pick and choose modules from a varied pool of modules, a small-scale institute can choose to just go for basic Application collection while a large scale institute can opt for advanced modules to manage advertisement ROI etc.

3. We connect all departments end to end from Admission, Marketing, and Examination seamlessly.

4. Report generation and in-depth analysis of data can be done on the fly.

5. Hassle-free integration with existing systems.

3. What kind of challenges do you face in implementing such a system in government colleges or universities to that of private?

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• Government institutes follow the tender process to assign projects, which in itself is an age-old method for purchasing commodities, but Software as a Service, must never be treated as a commodity, and that’s where the biggest challenge lies. In some cases the tender criteria are so stringent, that new start-ups are not even able to qualify to submit the quotation. Even though SaaS based model are more cost effective but lost because of tender process requirements.
• For many government projects, NIC caters to their software needs, and sometimes it makes the entry difficult for private firms like us.
• In spite of all this, we are pushing hard and meeting people to explain the concept of SaaS based model, which is not only easy to use but can save lot of money for the institutes.  When opportunities knocked our doors, we again validated that our product is easy-to-use and cost effective, and this is how we won our first "Government Funded Deemed University” “Jamia Hamdard ” & “Indian Law Institute”, our first “Autonomous Body”. We won the agreement against 5 & 12 bidders respectively in these two cases. 

4. What are the levels and continuum of academic institutions that NoPaperForms cut across?

This is another USP of ours that sets us apart from the competition. Currently with a clientele of 100+ institutions in the country, we have a Pan-India presence. From managing students’ enrolment, teachers’ recruitment form to scholarship we are expanding aggressively.

• If you go by major application volume which we processed last year belongs to leading Universities, Engineering and MBA institutes, Schools, Medical, Finance, Hospitality, Media institutes, as well as in non-academic program space of scholarships, alumni organizations, teacher recruitment etc.
• We are working with leading brand name in education domain, several premier institutes like:-
  • SRM University, Chennai
  • St Xavier's, Mumbai
  • ITM Group Mumbai
  • Indian Law Institute [Supreme Court, Delhi]
  • Jamia Hamdard University, Delhi
  • YMCA University Faridabad
  • DPS Schools
  • Manav Rachna International University
  • Hindustan University Chennai
  • Kanchi University,Chennai

5. Expanse and spread with respect to the geography

We have processed more than 5 lac applications on our platform for 100 + institutes, collected more than Rs 20+ cr application revenue for colleges till date. As far as geography is concerned our clientele consists of secondary and higher secondary schools in MP, UP, Maharashtra and Bihar to private and government engineering colleges, MBA institutes and multidisciplinary universities in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Himachal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and MP, to traditional degree and vocational colleges in AP, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi.

This establishes our Pan-India presence. As we write this post, our first client in North-East region is getting activated in Arunachal Pradesh.

6. What is NoPaperForms Now & What is future Vision ? 

NoPaperForms, currently is an cloud based advanced enrolment management platform that specializes in educational institutions and job recruitments space in managing the entire enrolment process online. Currently, NoPaperForms is managing more than 5 lac applications for 100+ clients that include schools, B-schools, universities & arts science colleges etc. We at NoPaperForms act as admissions-cum-technology partner by providing an end to end one-stop solution from enquiry to enrolment.

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Vision

• With our market reach coupled with investments in technology and product, we hope to deploy the platform in 500-plus colleges within the next 2-3 years, at the same time consolidate our position beyond academic course enrolments to new markets like teacher recruitments, bank recruitments, government department recruitments like railway, secretariat etc. We will also focus on scholarships and alumni networks as well.

• We plan t­o build common application platform which will cater to 1 million applications & more than 10 k+ institutes in coming 3-5 years.

About Naveen Goyal:

Naveen is a combination of big ideas and minute execution skills. A thinker and doer rolled in equal measure. Stung by the entrepreneurial bug, he gave up the cushy corporate job to have a go at the rough and tumble of entrepreneurship. He began Edukriti learning in 2009, he aborted it when it became unviable. But the fire to excel was and is unabated. When opportunity knocked in terms of leading the digital journey of Careers360, he jumped at it in 2012. In four years, he crafted and executed a forward looking digital strategy for the company and Careers360 today is the largest education hub for students serving over 6- 8 million students.
 
Now, Naveen is embarking on a new journey – NoPaperForms. Naveen seeks to revolutionize the way institutions seek and admit students. He dreams of automating every paper led interface; be it a bank exam registration or UPSC job application. A paperless process is his dream and NoPaperForms is the vehicle. His immediate goal is to gain 10 million applications online within 3 years.