Inspiration
Welcome over-the-air coaching classes
Roshni Mukherjee runs one of the largest “coaching classes” online. Her YouTube channel “ExamFear” streams educational video lessons physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics and this year, has crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark.
There is a new breed of people – the webpreneurs who have modelled complete businesses around the internet. Think shopping, ticketing, ordering food any transaction that you are doing over the internet and you know there is a webpreneur behind it. But then there is another breed of people, the different kind who are latched on to the internet but out of a selfless feeling to reach out and help others.
Let’s call these people the web-samaritans and besides other avenues, you will find them congregating on YouTube. Meet Roshni Mukherjee one such web-samaritan. She runs one of the largest “coaching classes” online absolutely free. Her YouTube channel “ExamFear” streams educational video lessons physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics and this year, has crossed the 100,000 subscriber mark. The channel currently boasts of a repertoire of close to 4200 videos.
The idea for “ExamFever” was triggered one day when her maid complained about the poor quality of teachers in her son’s school, half of them even didn’t bother to attend school. Her latent desire to teach coupled with the situation made her take to the web to teach students who couldn’t afford quality education. The name itself was because Mukherjee wanted to keep her students (or subscribers) free of fear.
She started making videos for YouTube in 2011 with the help of PowerPoint and a voiceover to assist the students. She was taken aback by the flood of positive comments and feedback by students and parents urging her to make more. “I took it up more seriously and made videos for 3 years along with my IT job. I was working on weekends and late nights but as the subscribers increased I felt I was ready to commit to it full-time,” she says.
Despite being a one-person team, Mukherjee has also managed to include illustrations and animation in her videos. Teaching, illustrating, managing the YouTube channel and the website is all done single handedly by Mukherjee. “But my husband, who has been a pillar of support, has helped me set the base of the project,” she says.
With a burgeoning subscriber base, her channel has started generating some income from YouTube’s adsense and also has a “contribute” option on the website for those who want to support Roshni’s initiative. Mukherjee was nominated by the ministry of women and child development in the ‘Top 100 women’ list for her efforts. However, her biggest high came when she reads appreciation messages, like the one from Shreya Mehta which reads: “Hi ma’am, I have studied physics in class 12th only on your channel and I got 96 per cent in my Boards. It’s all just because of your selfless and commendable hard work. I give the entire credit for my getting into a prestigious college to you. Hope many others would get benefit from this. You have a wonderful way of teaching.”