How these UPSC aspirants set up a platform to help their successors crack the exams with surmised study plans  

Examarly has monthly plans starting from a month, to three, six and then 12 and students can opt for any or even take up a combination of plans. We find out how it helps 
Founders Nishant, Sushant and Ishan | Pics: Examarly
Founders Nishant, Sushant and Ishan | Pics: Examarly

While preparing for his UPSC exams, Nishant Shukla realised that he had no one to guide him properly on what to do when. He was also struggling to identify weak areas in the huge syllabus, which he later realised was an issue across the board. To help out aspirants like him, Nishant got together with his brother Sushant Shukla, two other friends Ishan Malviya, and Thribhuvan HL, he set up the Examarly platform to help students navigate their UPSC preparations. Launched around February 2020, Examarly generates a study plan for each aspirant when they sign up for them to carry on the process of learning smoothly without wastage of time and resources already available online and elsewhere.

Speaking on what led to setting up such a platform, Nishant tells us, "Coming from a Tier III city like Allahabad when I was preparing for JEE and subsequently for UPSC, I didn't have access to good teachers or coaching centres. However, there was content on the internet, the first wave of EdTech really solved the problem of accessibility, when I was preparing for UPSC I had access to that. However, guidance about what to do, when to do, for this I joined a coaching centre but it didn't help me much, I wasted a lot of money. My brother had also been preparing, he dropped out of college and was learning crypto and stocks. In 2019, when I was preparing for my third attempt in UPSC civil services exam, my brother helped me analyse the problems I had in the previous years. Sushant created a framework for me by segregating the huge syllabus into tiny topics - hundreds of them instead of broad headings - and then tracking progress on an excel sheet and mapping them each day. It was extremely helpful and I thought why not create this as a larger framework to help every aspirant. Because we had already seen during some of our research, how aspirants start their preparation without any clue on how to plan the curriculum and track their progress and end up wasting a lot of precious time."


Examarly currently has more than 15,000 aspirants registered on their platform. "First, we had a trial run on Telegram, where we made customised plans for each and every person that reached out to us. People were interested, they were ready to prepare themselves as they had a plan now. We launched the product in February last year, kept it free for a couple of months to understand the people's reactions, then we made it subscription based by the end of March," explains Nishant.

So how does the platform work and help students? Once an aspirant signs up on the platform it will take a test to see which level they are at, what have they done, what is left, weaker sections. Once the platform assesses that instead of giving them a detailed report it generates a plan for them — what they should be reading, which book to refer to, which specific chapters to read and more. "Once the target is fulfilled, students come back and take a test on what they have learnt until now. If they qualify, the students will get the next target. The platform keeps taking them forward. There's no time barrier and they can go at their own pace," shares the 26-year-old entrepreneur.

Examarly has monthly plans starting from a month, to three, six and then 12 and students can opt for any or even take up a combination of plans. The plans start at the price of Rs 500 for a month. The team has received an overwhelming response in these few months and wish to hold their UPSC dreams on hold to help others for now. "We have plans to expand to other competitive exams as well, but not right now," concludes Nishant.

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