Problems are a kind of opportunities in the industry, as per Vikas Divyakirti, founder of Drishti IAS, who has guided thousands of civil services aspirants in the country. Recalling the year 2000 when the syllabus for the civil services examination changed all of a sudden and books and other reference material were not immediately available for the exams. Taking this as an opportunity Divyakirti and worked very hard with his students sometimes extending till 15 hours to endlessly to prepare his students for the exam.
“Despite the new syllabus many of our students got very good ranks in the civil service exams. It is very important to have positive word of mouth for a business to be successful,” remarked Divyakirti during a session at Proficorn 2024, an event of the MSME business owners that is being organised in Bengaluru. The event was organised by Quantum Leap.
He said that he had a firm believe in traditionally run businesses and did not believe in a start-up kind of a business that involved heavy borrowing from the Venture Capitalists and involved heavy cash burning, eventually leading to an IPO to garner money from the masses. He said that one needs to have a great product to sustain in the market. He claimed that the attrition rates at his coaching venture was very low because of the goodwill they had created among his employees.
“Employees stay in an organisation if they get money, respect and best facilities and we have been doing that from the beginning. I had even sold one property to pay our employees on time as we were facing a cash crunch at one point of time,” remarked Divyakirti.
He further added that now it was the age of AI and social media started much before. He recalled having made an explainer video on the GST when it was introduced and gradually it had lakhs of views. He recalled that he found acting in the popular Bollywood movie ‘12th fail’ a very smooth affair and at once accepted the offer when the film maker Vidhu Vinod Chopra offered him the role. Apparently, the movie was based on Manoj Sharma one of the former students of Divyakirti who cracked the civil service exam and became an Indian Police Service Officer.
Divyakirti had cracked the civil service exam at a very young age of 22 but resigned from it because he had teaching as his passion. “It took almost 19th months for the government to accept my resignation. When I left my government appointment it was not the fear of losing a secure job but my passion for teaching. I had already got a job in Delhi University as a university job gives one social respect. Though I wanted to continue with my coaching as well, coaching doesn't really give one that kind of social reputation,” said Divyakirti.
He recalled that had set up a separate studio to create videos in 2015-16 and had hired many senior professionals to run it. Eventually his team created online coaching class videos which became immensely popular. In November 2022, Divyakirti also started his YouTube channel, which currently has over 3.75 million subscribers.
“Today it is the age of Artificial Intelligene (AI) and five years back it was social media. The benefits of AI will be clearly visible in the next two to three years,” remarked Divyakirti.
