Exclusive Interview with Omkar Patil, CEO, Infigon Futures

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made a massive impact in the modern world. The use of AI at any level has proved to be fantastic. It automated a significant number of tasks, reducing human effort and has led everyone to believe that there is even more to come. Infigon Futures is a company that empowers the lives of individuals who are seeking educational and career goals to help them make decisions for a brighter future.

Speaking with Analytics Insight, Omkar Patil, CEO, Infigon Futures, provides insight into how the education and career planning platform is helping individuals ranging from 11 to 30 in age and what solutions the company offers to improve their lives significantly.

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that Infigon Futures offers.

Infigon Futures is one of the EdTech segment's fastest growing education and career planning platforms. Individuals ranging from 11 to 30 in age can plan for their educational and career goals using our industry-leading Artificial Intelligence platform. As the market's leading one-stop-shop, we guarantee that everyone who visits our platform will find something interesting and will leave satisfied. Disrupting the costly and time-consuming process of career development and ensuring that a lack of guidance or financial constraints does not become a barrier to pure talent and passion.

With what mission and objective, the company was set up? Tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

The mission is to make use of innovative, leading-edge technology and bring career mentorship for everyone at the tip of their fingers to help them make decisions for a brighter future. As the world's most trusted career-planning company, any individual irrespective of their financial, geographical or lingual bounds can find everything they need to build for themselves a successful future. In April 2019, Infigon Futures launched The Summit Alliance, a youth organization. They are the organization's President and Vice President, respectively. They gained insight into the education industry and interacted with over 10,000 students and parents, which gave them the motivation and idea to start a business in the field of career and education counselling.

Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

Founded in August 2020, Infigon Futures saw its inception amidst the uncertain times of the pandemic. For any business entity, the starting phase is crucial and is a period of growth and commitment. All our staff had to work remotely from home during the pandemic, which added constraints to our team management. Innumerable meetings, video and audio calls over multiple platforms like Zoom, Google Meets etc. were our only medium to navigate through the crucial stage of strategic growth planning.

Another issue that we faced was operations management. Our marketing campaign started from 15th February 2021 and it essentially comprised of collaborations with colleges, schools and other institutes; wherein these collaborations led us to our present target group – students from class 8 & above college students. Unexpectedly, by April 2021, we had associations with more than 60 colleges/institutions, which we had previously estimated at around 15-20. This remarkable growth was unanticipated, so we had to ramp up our operations and brace ourselves for this growth at very short notice.

Tell us how your company is contributing to the IoT/AI/Big Data Analytics/Robotics/Self-Driving Vehicles/Cloud Computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

We are leveraging AI, ML by giving it an entrepreneurial blend and planning to bridge the gap and make career counselling affordable and accessible for all. There are over thousands of career options available. Human interaction limits the number of students a counsellor can interact with, which leads to only 1 out of 10 Indian students receiving career guidance. We are trying to remove human intervention while making a career decision.

How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?

We have already started with career counselling. In the coming years, we would like to improve our tech algorithm to the point where a student can use our mobile application to answer any question they have about his/her career, education, or other topics. In addition, we will be expanding into the areas of international admissions, skill development, and job opportunities. We want to establish a sense of trust in the minds of school students and their parents in the initial couple of years by providing them with the highest quality services. And once we have that, we will be the one-stop-shop for all of their child's needs.

What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Since the career and education counselling markets are not dominated by a single large player, we have the opportunity to explore the market and gain that position. Furthermore, each player in the market only provides a limited set of services, namely self-assessment, and expert mentoring. We provide complete target selection, as well as education planning and skill development based on those targets. In terms of features, this gives us an advantage over our competitors. Furthermore, our features will be delivered via our mobile application. There are only a few competitors who offer this level of service through a mobile app.

What is your Leadership Mantra?

We do not have a leadership mantra at Infigon. Our organization is a start-up and it faced various constraints and uncertainties that come from being one. Our main ideology is not just to impose our targets, strategies and expected results on our employees, but look out for what our employees truly want. Each employee at our organization goes through extensive HR screening, wherein we analyze their personal requirements, expectations and growth objectives of joining Infigon. From our wide spectrum of work profile, each employee is consigned into teams catered to their CV and requirements. Employees are assigned into groups under each department, and projects are divided into manageable tasks. With a lesser workload, each employee can hence exert maximum productivity while gaining quality experience.

Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it.

Our career and education mentorship process is completely automated. All of our services, including self-assessment, career selection, educational planning, and expert mentor connections, will be provided through our mobile application, which employs Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. It will be a straightforward four-step process that will begin with self-assessment and progress through career selection, educational planning, and skill development.

Which industry verticals are you currently focusing on? And what is your go-to market strategy for the same?

Our focus remains on career guidance and mentorship. Our target consumer base consists of students in schools and colleges. Hence, our priority marketing strategy is to associate with various schools, colleges and private institutions. This gives us extensive access to reach out to students in need of effective guidance and counselling. Our integral goal is to guide young minds into deciphering their academic prospects and dream career.

What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

On February 15, 2021, we released our product. So far, we've partnered with 30+ colleges across Maharashtra, four schools, and four national non-governmental organizations. We have surpassed 1000 application downloads and are currently providing career guidance to 50 paid students. Our long-term goal is to form partnerships with 300 colleges and 150 schools by December 2021. By December 2021, we want to have 50K app downloads and 5000 paid clients, generating 5 Cr in revenue.