Education is the passport to a better future, says Springboard.

Quality education prepares the world for tomorrow, but, unfortunately, not all people have an opportunity to get the education they have dreamt of. Seeing that higher education is inaccessible for many brilliant people, Gautam Tambay, with the help of Parul Gupta, created a company that can fill that gap.

Springboard is a great online learning platform that educates and prepares students for modern careers via mentor guidance and a cutting-edge curriculum.

Founded in 2013, Springboard offers a personalized education, at a competitive price, to meet its mission and build a world where everyone will have a chance to access top-quality education. The number of users of this e-learning platform is increasing every day, and the platform is becoming super popular.

The story about what brought Gautam to this career path is pretty interesting, so don’t go away and learn how he came to co-found the Springboard platform!

Blood Is Thicker Than Water

Gautam Tambay comes from a family of teachers, so he has always understood how significant and influential teacher-student relationships might be. Gautam and his sister were excellent students. He faced the expensive education for the first time when his sister, who was interested in studying UX design, applied for the programs. Even though she was accepted, she ended up dismissing those programs because the loan she was supposed to take on was immense, and simply not affordable.

This situation made a big scar in Gautam's memory as he was horrified, knowing that tons of brilliant people are often forced to choose between their finances and training for the careers they love.

Unlike his sister, Gautam's career journey pushed him toward entrepreneurship. He studied mechanical engineering and holds an MBA from the Wharton School. However, he realized that although he enjoyed learning an engineering course, that wasn’t his professional calling. As soon as he graduated, he worked in finance and consulting. Gautam had a chance to be part of a team that launched Bain & Company in India, and using that experience, he recognized his real interests. Taking notice of his true calling brought Gautam to Silicon Valley and into the sphere of startups and learning to make things happen.

Creative People = Strong Product

Soon, Gautam met Parul Gupta. Parul holds a bachelor's in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles.

She was a techie and worked on spanning algorithms for modern wireless communication systems, big data analytics, and cloud computing. Parul and Gautam had some similar beliefs about how unreachable higher education was for most people, and they had both recognized the same gap that urgently needed to be filled.

Gautam and Parul founded Springboard in the San Francisco Bay Area, West Coast, US, in 2013. They were thrilled to be a step closer to their dream to offer an equal chance for higher education for all people. But, soon they faced a crisis that was significant for Springboard and made Gautam a leader. Even though Gautam and Parul had created a strong product, they hadn’t planned distribution.

Their revenue had been decreasing for a few months, and that worried Gautam. He was afraid that Springboard wouldn't be in a position to raise more funds from investors. If Gautam and Parul didn’t turn things around, they would be out of business pretty soon. For Parul and Gautam, that was incredibly traumatic, since it was everything they stood for! It was what they had put their heart and soul into.

Moreover, they were going to let everybody down, including their team, their investors, and their customers. But Gautam and Parul didn’t feel comfortable talking about it to anyone, especially to their team.

Everything Is Easy When All Employees Are Busy

Then, a miracle happened! 3 members of the Springboard team took Gautam and Parul out for dinner and told them that they had seen the numbers and that they realized that the Springboard situation wasn’t good. They also advised them, instead of suffering alone, to involve the entire team in finding a decision about the problem.

Those words touched Gautam Tambay and Parul Gupta. The team they built was so strong that instead of saving themselves when the boat was sinking, they decided to stay and be part of the Springboard story. The next few years weren’t easy, and all members of Springboard were doing their best to grow the revenue, which will lead to profitability.

That was one of the vital leadership lessons of Gautam's professional career. He used to think that his job as a CEO was to protect everyone from unpleasant news. Today, Gautam always follows up the bad news to the team as fast as possible, to engage more team members to work on dealing with that certain problem.

Back on the Track

The team behind Springboard is constantly tracking and analyzing the work to determine if the platform needs to implement new programs as well as to make sure that the existing programs they provide include the most up-to-date curriculum and groundbreaking skills development options on the market.

In the next few years, thanks to Gautam and Parul, Springboard grew into a brand and became a partner with lots of universities to make its fast and effective programs more accessible and visible.

Apart from universities, Gautam signed a partnership contract with another type of educational organization, as well. Women Who Code is one of their most prominent partners, and it offers scholarships for Springboard students who have learned machine programming languages, data science, and software engineering.

Gautam reached his goal, and in the period between March and June of 2021, Springboard student enrollment has increased by 54%. That is 352% higher when compared to 2019 and 2020. Those numbers have the potential to attract even more investors and users.

Springing to Financial Highs

Springboard, a prominent India-U.S. company, has raised $1.7 million in the seed round to speed up its idea of learning via engagement with others. The company has adopted different mentors that offer a weekly catch-up session with the customers while partnering with other educational institutions for course content.

On its path of becoming an appreciated learning platform, Springboard had to deal with competition coming from companies like Y Combinator, SkillSoft, and Thinkful, among others.

Springboard funding comes from eminent names, such as LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue, InMobi founder Naveen Tewari, Princeton Review founder John Katzman, and Wharton School professor Kartik Hosanagar. So far, the platform has raised a not-so shabby sum of $53,2 million in total from financing rounds to expand to more places, geographically.

Gautam doesn’t reveal its plans for the Springboard IPO for 2022. The company hasn’t completed a form for IPO this year, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t happen soon.

Springboard Plans

Springboard is a prosperous online learning platform that serves customers in over 80 countries. The good news is that the company plans to launch in more areas beyond India and the U.S. Gautam also has plans to inject fresh capital to multiply Springboard educational course proposal. The company will also deepen its partnership with employers and universities.

With 14 employees, 244 contracts, and over 5,000 graduates, Springboard is a giant in the online education market, headquartered in San Francisco, California. The success this company has reached in the last 8 years motivated Gautam to think about enriching the benefits for students using the Springboard platform.

The future will bring great opportunities for the students, striving to ensure a highly paid job for each of them. Gautam guarantees that those who are willing to invest in their success can get their dream job faster and cheaper with the Springboard platform!