Need to learn coding? Wanna learn how to create animation games? Well, Pune based Programr is a online service that helps you code, compile and run your programs online (i.e. in the browser itself).
The startup has also launched krazykoder.com that enables students to create games/animations online (example: Anna Hazare Games, Talking Dinosaurs) in less than an hour’s time, and thereby sharpen their logical skills.
The business model for Programr is centered around certification and providing SAAS based service to institutes (as a replacement of their computer labs). A very neat idea (just like CodeAcademy), the team should just go ahead and execute on the plan without spending much time chasing VCs/investors (such ideas sound fancy from day one and doesn’t really fall under the investing framework) .
As far as marketing is concerned, the team is relying more on online/social media initiatives, but I would strongly recommend them to conduct Hackathons on the site itself (online hack events of course) – i.e. select a theme and get developers to build games/apps.
Here is a quick QnA with the Programr/KrazyKoder cofounder, Rajesh Moorjani:
Founding Team
The team is basically Rajesh Moorjani & Santosh Surve. We are friends from our previous company Cybage Software where we worked for about 7 years on different projects together.
I have been project lead for web projects from Microsoft, Doubleclick, EA and a few other clients , while Santosh has been project lead for systems projects from Symantec and Altiris.
Our team consists of me, Santosh and 4 great engineers.
Revenue model for Programr:
1. We sell online courses to students worldwide (we have some courses available now at www.programr.com/courses )
2. We will soon be offering certification to students worldwide (we will test their hands-on coding knowledge over 30 days. If satisfactory, we will issue a certificate)
3. We will offer our entire system as a SaaS to computer institutes so that they can get rid of their physical expensive computer labs. This will help them save costs on real estate, computers, maintenance and air conditioning. ) IT will also give their students a 24×7 lab which they can access even from their home. a true win-win.
4. We will offer our solution to tech book publishers such that they need not give a CD along with every book . They can now simply put a “Try it out now” link below every example in their book using which the book reader can try the example live right while reading the book.
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In a way, this could also be a great competition to InterviewStreet and the team should also look at online mock-up interview based business model as well, as the platform is capable of doing this and companies/customers are willing to pay for a service like this.
I am not really sure whether focusing on computer institutes etc model has a huge opportunity – essentially, the requirement scope will bloat the product to become almost a virtual desktop (the hypothesis is that students use computers only for coding, and that needs to be validated).
Do you think that institutes/colleges are open for a service like this? All I know is that if done well, Programr is onto a big opportunity – and should start building authority in the programming space, for them to issue certificates etc.
What’s your opinion?
