Being a college student myself, I understand the whole dynamics when students run to get class notes photocopied as soon as exams approach. I had always felt a need for a better solution to the notes dilemma than the physical dilly-dallying.
If I can buy an e-book online, why can’t I buy class notes? Notehall India is trying to fill that gap by building an online marketplace for students to buy and sell their class notes. Mr. Sunny Mahajan, the Notehall India CEO, in a talk with us said:
You can call it the Ebay for notes without the auction feature. I saw the Notehall owners on a TV show called Shark Tank and approached them to allow me to bring the idea to India. I brought Notehall India here in late 2010.
So, Notehall India is run by an Indian team and is independently owned. The Notehall US team, who originally had the idea are a part of the team as well. The whole concept is very simple yet innovative – if you’re a student willing to sell your class notes you can do so by registering on their website.
If the class notes uploaded by you sell, you’ll earn some money. People who are not so good at making notes (me included) can always have the option of buying the already uploaded notes. In this case, you’ll have to pay a small amount. Currently Notehall notes are available for 8 universities – Amity University, Delhi University, IP University, JMS, Manipal University, Pune University, RTU, Symbiosis International University and UPTU.
The whole concept albeit a simple one will still require effective marketing on the Notehall India team’s part. I say so because students these days do not have the patience to upload notes. More people will have to be made aware of the whole initiative. Sunny has a 40+ team deployed to collect notes from different colleges. I assume that a majority of them would be students who’d also act as campus ambassadors or as interns and procure notes from their classmates.
Notehall India does not have any investor and has been boot-strapped by Sunny till now. They’ve had around 100 student transactions, which is good as they have started out in the month of August.
Notehall India has two other initiatives under its belt at this time:
- DU Scholarships – Notehall India gave out over 50 scholarships to the best students in DU on the basis for their academic performance.
- DU Blog – A blog about the city Delhi from the point of view of a college student, looking at culture, things to do, place to go to and life in Delhi.
The future plans involve extending Notehall to every major University and provide Notehall services to students all over India. Ads and document sales are the means of how Notehall India will generate revenue.
Our Take
Such innovative ideas should be implemented more by budding entrepreneurs. After all, entrepreneurship is solving the problems around you despite the problems around. Earning out of it is a challenge and the whole journey teaches us a lot.
Although the idea isn’t very profitable at a first glance to me, the whole initiative if undertaken in the right manner will be a boon for students across colleges in India. The note-sharing process might make the students a little bit more lenient while writing notes down, but if you’ve been a recent college grad you’d know that students these days are increasingly using their computers to study. Notehall India seems to use the same concept and integrate their classrooms with a pinch of e-commerce.
P.S. If you liked this post or the whole Notehall concept, do take a glance at our Startups page. It might be of some interest to you.
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