January 2022
The Most
INNOVATIVE E-Learning Company to Watch in
Abhayjeet Singh Chief Academic Officer
2022
Nitesh Rohatgi Chief Operating Officer
Prof. Col. Shishir Kumar Director General
ImaginXP Imparting Quality Education by Upskilling Students and Professionals with Future Skills
Editor's Note THE PIONEERS OF E-LEARNING EXCELLENCE
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n today's age, technology has taken the centre stage, while opening doors for endless possibilities. Every business takes place in the online arena by surpassing physical boundaries. Moreover, many companies intend to train their employees and inculcate in them essential skills, which would help them to improve their performance and deliver better results. Additionally, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, schools and colleges are closed indefinitely, which necessitates the use of online learning. This will help people in carrying out seamless classroom sessions from the comfort their homes. With excellent elearning facilities, educational institutions can conduct exams, take practical sessions, and conduct group activities from any place and any time, with ease. Thanks to the innovative e-learning companies, things have become easier for companies and educational institutions. These companies provide their clients with numerous benefits. It saves a lot of time in creating, updating, managing, and delivering training programs. They provide automated and customized online courses as per the needs of an organization. These prominent players in the e-learning industry provide complete control to the users in terms of course creation, administration, and communication between the trainers and the learners. They provide the scope to easily access any course, take tests easily, and evaluate and deliver the results in no time. With just a few clicks of the mouse, users can access different courses, multimedia content, calendars, archives, evaluations, and much more.
The renowned e-learning companies provide their clients with the free hand to create and customdevelop their own content, with their own corporate image and brand. This, in turn, allows the clients to create their own brand identity through these elearning programs. One of the most fascinating features provided by these excellent e-learning companies is that they provide the option of mobile learning. Users can utilize mobile-first content efficiently, without any hassles from any time and any place. These leaders of the e-learning space are transforming the way learning and education is perceived. They are simplifying school and workplace learning, while providing the learners with the opportunity to complete the tasks in time. Hence, in this issue of CIO Look India, we bring forth ImaginXP, a leading virtual university platform, which offers a wide range of unique future skills degree courses in UX Design, Fintech, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Data Science, and much more. So, without any further ado, read now to know more about this company that is providing tremendous opportunities to its clients to learn and grow, while innovating and excelling in its endeavours. Happy reading!
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ImaginXP The Most
INNOVATIVE E-Learning Company to Watch in
2022
Sumita Sarkar Editor-in-Chief
EDITORIAL
September
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ImaginXP Imparting Quality Education by Skilling Students and Professionals with Future Skills
ImaginXP which is a leading organization for future skills programs in higher education has taken initiative to mitigate the challenges arising out of these gaps. It is working intending to enhance the digitalisation in the country. The company was established by Shashank Shwet - Founder and CEO, Shishir Kumar – Director General and Nitesh Rohatgi- Chief Operating Officer with a vision to reduce the un-employability rate in India. ImaginXP’s genesis took place in the year 2013. Before that the founders had a sister-concern company called Fortune Cookie UX Design that was working into digital consultancy and taking up digital transformation
projects. In 2008, when Fortune Cookie was started, UX Design or Customer Experience Design was at its nascent stage. The requirement for digital projects has increased tremendously in India since then.
The response received was excellent. And gradually, the course became so popular and came under Top Five UX programs in India being delivered across 16 physical centres across India.
The need to ensure that the workforce is trained skilfully led to the idea of conceptualising ImaginXP.
In 2017, when the honourable Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, gave a vision of digital India worth a five trillion-dollar economy, much digital transformation in India paved its path for the future growth.
How it All Began…. Many requirements for formal training were coming from working professionals. Initially, ImaginXP launched a course called as UX Jumpstarter in the physical classroom mode at its headquarters in Pune.
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Our aim is to become the unique organisation and the most sought-after organisation in higher education, future-skill degree and for-credit certification program
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veryone knows there is too much gap between resources pool and the employability of these resources in the current industrial scenario. Even with the resources present in the market currently, their placement is uneven, due to which the income gap also resonates indifferently. There is a massive demand for people with the right skillset or multiple skillsets for a particular job opportunity. To fulfil that, the gap between the industry and academia needs to be bridged immediately.
Bridging the Gaps The universities have been teaching the traditional curriculum, the gap between industry requirements and students’ skillset has not been getting bridged. ImaginXP curated the first-degree program in digital design space i.e. User Experience Design. ImaginXP team designed curriculum for Bachelor of Design in User Experience, Master of Design in User Experience, and a PG Diploma program in User Experience in consultation with industry and academia. They signed a MOU with four universities to kick start the initiative. ImaginXP became a complete academic/knowledge partner as part of the university collaboration.
“It can facilitate many placement opportunities and hiring opportunities for the students, and they may definitely tie up with ImaginXP,” conveys Shishir Kumar. In 2018, the company had four university partnerships. In 2019, it had 11 university partnerships, and in 2020, it had 21 partnerships. Currently, the company is having
partnerships with over 30 universities in India. In 2020, ImaginXP has launched its E-Learning Platform, which is named as My Coach. The platform was made live on 17th November 2020, and a pilot “Design Thinking & Innovation” program was executed successfully for five existing University partners. The new education policy by Indian Government, which came in last year’s pandemic, has opened many doors for the company. As per UGC, 60% of the program can be taught offline, and 40% can be conducted in an online mechanism. Till date, ImaginXP has trained 11,500 students, and this program was made as the compulsory program for two credits by the partnered universities. ImaginXP envisioned and wanted to make My Coach platform a one-stop solution for all university students
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We always wanted to become a bridge between the industry and academia. So, we have been doing that, and we have been successful
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ImaginXP’s advantage is Industry led curriculum, access to industry experts, experienced faculty, industry participated delivery, and differentiated experiential pedagogy. As a part of the program, ImaginXP provides complete academic delivery with expert INHOUSE faculty, 1250+ corporate Subject Matter Experts, live projects, paid-internship opportunities, and placement as well. This is the value proposition that ImaginXP brings to the universities and the owners, who are visionaries & looking forward to such programs in future skills..
whether they are going through their programs or some other programs. They have mapped the entire life cycle of the students. They have provided a coding platform within My Coach platform for B Tech CS students. Currently, ImaginXP has a pool of 1250 corporates’ subject matter experts. These experts come from different Design, Business, and Technology backgrounds, have empanelled with ImaginXP, and have also signed MOU with the company. Dynamics of Blended Learning At present, ImaginXP has 90% preplacement offers for the under-
graduate programs and 78% preplacement offers for the PG programs. All the features of liveproject, internship, placementassistance, and the entire student life cycle is mapped on My Coach platform. That is how the company is offering blended learning and completely online learning as well. This has also helped ImaginXP penetrate the untapped students at their university partners by providing them FOR CREDIT certification programs. Nitesh Rohatgi, the COO of ImaginXP expressed, how the company helped students to learn flexibly. He said, “The flexibility of our specialisation programs on My
Coach is that we integrate the specialisation programs with the curriculum structure. So, we set the subject, and if the university is okay, we will start it for 2nd or 3rd year with equal distribution of subjects respective to the semesters- So, the learning goes continuous, and the extra load does not come on the students. This enhances the employability of students. ” Everything is enabled on the My Coach platform. The flexibility of online learning has helped the company to bring corporate trainers from across the globe to teach these subjects. ImaginXP ensures that for the specialisation programs 100% of
the delivery happens through corporate coaches only in fully online mode. ImaginXP is a one-stop solution, whether a student wants to pursue an under-graduate degree program, post-graduate degree program, or want to go through some short-term certification programs in Design , Technology & Business streams Forging an Educational Pathway With the success that ImaginXP has shown in the last three years, many premium institutes have collaborated for conducting executive programs. The company has currently tied up with BIMTECH (Birla Institute of Management Technology), for two master certification programs, one is Strategic Management in Digitalised Ecosystem, and the other in Disruptive Entrepreneurship. With MIT (Shillong) for Executive MBA, & with IIT Roorkee for Advance Program in Supply Chain Management in Digitalised Economy. Currently, the company has almost 350+ corporate recruiters associated with it. Slowly and gradually, it has developed an ecosystem in last five years and now these recruiters are more than happy with their association with ImaginXP by getting skilled fresh & experienced talent pool who are readily deployable. The team of ImaginXP stated how the company had reached its benchmarks. “We always wanted to
become a bridge between the industry and academia. So, we have been doing that, and we have been successful. We want to keep ensuring that we keep the value, trust, and quality for the students, for the university stakeholders, and for our industry partners,” said Nitesh Rohatgi At core, it is an academic organisation in the higher education space, which aims to curate the new-age programs and deliver them. Re-Imagining the Future Education and the right skillset are the keys to success. “We firmly believe that we have the power to grow into introducing new programs and courses in the right future skills demanded by industry in the higher education segment,” states Abhayjeet Singh – Chief Academic Officer. The goal is to ensure that the team at ImaginXP can contribute to India’s trillion-dollar digital economy by producing skilled staffing, who pass out of colleges and universities, ensuring that their degrees are worth and that students are job-ready. Its plan includes connecting with corporates world-wide through corporate coaches and mentors from the industry who work first on curriculum, then provide master classes, special sessions and live projects and recruit the students. This ensures that student is ready for the rapid changes in the industry. ImaginXP has been approached by recruitment heads of various
reputed corporates to nurture and provide fresh talent pools coming out from Universities so that they become ready to deploy within minimum timeframe. One of the biggest costs that companies would want to avoid is that of hire-traindeploy. Today companies are looking for first-day-deployable resources. They don't want to spend on training and reduce the cost of campus hiring. To solve this, ImaginXP has recently launched “Turbo Placements Program” for final year students who will be evaluated and trained in mapped job skills which are required by these recruiters. The qualifying students’ will get direct access to grab these job opportunities with packages extending up to INR 12 lacs. When we asked the team of ImaginXP where they see the company in the future, they said, “We foresee ImaginXP in next five years to be partnered with over 50 universities having very well infrastructure across PAN India and running around 25-35 unique degree programs, which caters the ambition of digital India growth. Then make ROI for students as seamless as possible with such industry led degree programs.” “We aim to become the unique organisation and the most soughtafter organisation in higher education, future-skill degree and for-credit certification program. Ensuring the practice-based learning, economically affordable degree programs for the students, along with ROI of the student,” they concluded.
Col. Shishir Kumar I am Professor Colonel. I did my mechanical engineering in 1973 from RIT Jamshedpur, then my masters from IIT Delhi, and MBA from Delhi University. I joined Tata’s Group for two years; then, I joined the Indian army on the board of electronics and mechanical engineers. There I served for 30 years. During my tenure in the Board of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering, I was the Dean of MCME. I was the Dean of the Staff College in Wellington. I was the director of EME School, Vadodara. As the Chief Instructor, I have got many instructional placements in India and abroad. I have taken many courses there, and I am a respected soldier. I received the Chief of Army Staff recommendation card twice. I have given the battalion the command of a sting operation, which was declared first. After taking premature retirement while I was the Dean of MCME, Secunderabad (India), I joined DIT University Dehradun as a Director Academic administration and served there for 13 years. In 2013, my son Shashank Shwet, who was working in the USA, came to India, and we started Fortune Cookie UX Solutions. One fine day Shashank came to me and said, “I got a large number of
projects to the tune of 100 crores, but there are no user experience designers available in India who will be doing this project.” I suggested him to start with a short term course in Experience Design. We carried on with these courses and to our surprise in the first month, we got 300 registrations, even though the fee was Rs.70,000. That gave me a boost to expand further in this direction. Also, I had the idea of UGC and AICTE rules and regulations because I got many things done in previous assignments in my time. I accumulated the curricula with the help of the industrial people. We invited academic people, who were known to me, and together we curated industry-led curricula, which was effective and result-driven. In the first year itself, we signed the MOU with four universities. We taught Bachelor of Design UX, Master of Design UX, and BBA FinTech. Next year, we diversified in the area of future skills, now we have got over 30 universities partnered with us. We have got more than 2000 students studying in our full time on campus programs. We are successfully running - two years’ master courses, three years’ & four years’ undergraduate courses, We have specialised degree programs in Design (B Des in UX, Game Design), Business (BBA in Fintech, Blockchain, Digital Marketing), Management (MBA in Disruptive Entrepreneurship), and Technology (B Tecg CS in AIML, Data Science, RPA) etc. We found that these are the areas where people will be getting the job with relatively excellent salary packages. Word of Advice The future generation of entrepreneurs must believe in one thing - Exploring and Experimenting! We have also started like this. Because if you start digging, there is every chance that you may succeed. You may fail also. My word of advice to the ones who fail is what has been told by Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never give up.” Failure is the pillar of success. And the way I define success is—success is when you keep doing the same thing till you get the outcome or the output you have thought about. In between, you will be struggling. There will be a resource crunch everywhere. These are the problem with the start-ups. You have to learn the techniques to tackle these problems. And we have got an excellent organization. Seven to eight people are supporting us. They are looking after the entire operation. We have got over 75 faculty members from IIT, NIT, and we are again hiring 30 people as instructors.
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Design is not a teaching; it is a training. The difference between teaching and training is that training is all practice-based learning pedagogy
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Nitesh Rohatgi I am a recognized growth oriented & mission driven professional with solid strategic business acumen, practical execution abilities, & recently I have been awarded the Global Choice Award in 2021 organized by Xel Research as Chief Operating Officer Of The Year & Indian Achiever Award in 2020. I am working as Chief Operating Officer (COO) at ImaginXP, a Virtual University Platform for Future Skills. As a young visionary and progressive professional, with over 18 years of experience in Sales & Marketing, Product Development, Business Operations, Technology, Program Management to build ecosystems. I have led numerous initiatives, became a catalyst for ImaginXP in creating world-class digital products & Edtech services coupled with right kind of skill based education program. To “Make India Future Ready & create social impact” is my mission as COO of ImaginXP I believe and it’s my heartfelt endeavour to upskill Indian students from all demographics & socioeconomic background – by providing a legit platform and mentorship to learn. ImaginXP recently scaled up its digital platform MyCoach to offer for-credit courses with universities, directly helping students engage and learn. In the years ahead, I aim to establish ImaginXP as a leading Higher Ed-tech organization in India to offer a world-class curriculum, degree programs, including credit certification courses. Words of Inspiration I truly believe in the quote by Benjamin Franklin “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Today’s students needs to understand that there is stiff competition to secure entry level jobs and continuous learning to keep building up the professional career. It is very important to choose right career path to pursue the dreams. Never hesitate in up skilling & putting in time, effort to be always on a learning curve.
Abhayjeet Singh I am an educationist by heart and have been into academic enrichment, industry-academia connects, entrepreneurship development, student professional development, new-aged skills into education, management development program and placements for the past 18 years. Student development and introducing new-aged skills have been my core areas. I have been into motivating students and parents, guiding them in future skills and professions. The COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging situation at both personal and professional levels. But I must mention that being an EdTech company, quick decisions, and implementation of online learning with a stupendous tech team, academic support team, and future-ready faculty, we were able to take our programs online. Not only this, but technology has also helped us stay connected with all our employees and students, ensuring that people can manage work from home and are keeping fine in troubled times. Faculty counselled students at personal levels to keep their morale high. Our clients and universities got much support through ImaginXP’s robust online learning platform - My Coach.