We often say that it is best to receive expert advice before starting on a new venture. Throughout our life, we will need some basic training to succeed in any field. With the large population of our country, there are more than enough experts to guide you through any domain. The trouble is finding the right professional help. That task is precisely what TapChief takes care of. It is a platform that simply connects the people who are seeking advice or professional support to the experts who will be able to do that. As the name suggests, TapChief is the crusade to find the right Commander-in-Chief for all users. You can make use of its services to get the proper guidance during any part of your career.
TapChief (1) was established by Shashank Murali in 2016 while he was still a student. The team believes that there is something to learn from every interaction. Experts from all over the country are connected to the clients using a phone call. These professionals are from more than 1500 organizations and cover a wide range of over 6000 expertise areas. They also get to earn money without working a full-time job. TapChief believes in making a long-term impact rather than a short term boom. They often set benchmarks and deadlines for themselves and embark on achieving them.
The birth of TapChief
Shashank Murali, the Co-founder, and CEO of TapChief was an engineering student at BITS Pilani when this innovative idea was born in his mind. He had observed the lack of appropriate guidance in various parts of professional life. Even if a student was bright and motivated in academics, the resources around them were not sufficient to support them further. It was a profound problem that he and many of his friends strived with. Shashank wondered why the improvements in technology could not bring a solution to it. So he started talking to his brother and cousins about it. Gathering a group of creative students who were experts in technology and coding, Shashank started building an antidote.
Shashank and his team encountered various obstacles along the way, but his desire to contribute something to the student community helped him to overcome them. He knew that personalized assistance would be life-changing for many students in the country. Shashank spent most of his earnings on finding clients and adequate support for his product. He visited many cities and various institutions trying to convince them of this idea.
However, even if these meetings did not directly help his startup, Shashank learned something new from every expert he met.
He was able to work on the faults and correct any flaws in the prototype. This led him to rebuild the entire product to form a more suitable platform. After selling the first product in 2015, Shashank went on to create an even better platform named TapChief in 2016. By sharing experiences from people in the same domain, he was able to learn more and put all that knowledge into it. TapChief was finally launched and catered to students all over the country. It would help the students to understand their strengths and weaknesses, thus giving the appropriate guidance to be prepared for the professional world. They would be able to work on their weak points and on improving their capacities.
Early challenges
During the first months of TapChief, Shashank had received massive support from friends and family. They all contacted him to wish him luck and offer all kinds of encouragement. However, the company was still on loss rather than profit. By now, Shashank had realized that it is indeed challenging to find investors for a startup. Even when they had not built the entire product, Shashank started making calls and attending meetings with potential investors.
He never gave up working on this idea, spent nights coding and building the brand across all social media platforms. Moreover, carrying out all these even while still in college was a more crucial conflict. Besides the founders, many other students had also joined in on the venture giving up many valuable internships. Even after constructing the product and getting great responses from students and teachers, the team had the urge to make it even more satisfactory to the users.
Small steps leading to a big success
Shashank had sold his initial product to an advisor who had raised the seed funding for it. Shashank and his team were the first students from BITS Pilani who launched a startup while they were still students. Over the years, the team behind TapChief has continuously worked on developing new social media marketing strategies and even made it to the front page of many national newspapers. They soon had a high rate of activity on the page, and many students were benefiting from their services. Shashank was over the moon to know that students had been making use of the product almost all round the clock.
Even though the team had started making a decent profit, it was still challenging to keep the business going as they were still students. Shashank traveled to and from Bangalore and Pilani every month. He never stopped putting in his best efforts on trying to improve TapChief. He wanted to make sure that maximum possibilities were offered to the students, thus being able to make a difference in society. Finally, TapChief became fully functional on February 18, 2016. Within two months, the startup was chosen as the champion of Mind Batteries Ideathon contest. They won the competition by defeating around 1200 other startups.
TapChief funding and investments
The major investors in TapChief are Blume Ventures, 500 Startups, SucSEED Venture Partners, NuVentures, etc. TapChief had raised a total of 1.5 million dollars in a pre-series A round led by Blume Ventures. The Managing Partner of Blume Ventures, Sanjay Nath also joined TapChief’s Board of Directors along with this funding. Later in April 2016, Angel Round of funding was conducted, which raised 150,000 dollars. This round saw participation from Paytm, Kunal Shah, Mekin Maheshwari, and 500 Startups along with existing investors. Over the years, many other seed rounds of funding were conducted, the last of which was led by Blume Ventures. The total funding amount of TapChief stands at 2.5 million dollars.
Link : https://timesnext.com/startup-story-tapchief-bringing-experts-at-your-doorstep/
Author :- Nidhia Sebastian
July 02, 2020 at 10:37AM
TimesNext