The challenges, and the way forward
At the outset, AM faced the serious challenge of validating a concept that had not been tried anywhere in the world. Says Aggarwal, "There was resistance from companies, campuses and students. No one believed such a model could work. While AM proved its model on a small scale, the next challenge was operational scalability." Ensuring the robustness of the AMCAT platform was a must.

But the real challenges were technical and came from the environment in which the tests were deployed and conducted, shares Aggarwal. "These were typically virus ridden computer labs of the different educational campuses, with uncertain hardware and flaky networks. Our assessment delivery technology had to be adapted to meet and overcome these challenges," he adds.

The content of the tests is sourced through a panel of experts from academia, such as Dr Vidya Kulkarni and Dr Shashi Khurana from the University of Delhi, Dr Maneesha Gupta from NSIT, etc. "An internal quality assurance team reviews the content based on inputs received from the industry survey about the skills that various verticals are looking for, and also for stylistic and grammatical correctness," says Aggarwal.

Revenue model
As regards the price point at which the service is made available to candidates and corporations, Aggarwal says: "Candidates can take the test at a nominal price of Rs 300 and there are no other hidden costs. With companies, we work on a per-offer basis, where they pay us every time they select a candidate."

"We charge a substantially lower fee than consultants do to enable a large set of companies to hire candidates, comfortably. This is a great proposition for start-ups and SMEs in particular, since with little effort they can access the best of students, interview them at their premises and make offers," he adds.

Going forward
So far, the AMCAT has been taken up by more than 35,000 students across 12 states in India, says Aggarwal. "AMCAT is the largest test for employability in the country. We have been very successful in building a rapport with the industry with the HR gurus in companies like HCL Technologies, Mphasis, EDS, ICICI, Godrej, Microsoft Research India, SKS Microfinance, etc," he adds.

On the campus side, AM has built relations with many educational institutions, including Delhi College of Engineering, Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, Banasthali Vidyapeeth, NIT Allahabad, Kurukshetra University, and over 250 other campuses, shares Aggarwal.

Aggarwal believes that it's not just the technological superiority of a product that plays a role in the success of a start-up but also the strategy that it adopts to reach its target segment. He shares: "The team believes in first making people understand its core value proposition and gets endorsements from thought leaders to then create mass appeal through activities, such as sponsoring HR seminars, events, organising placement seminars, etc." AM also uses the Internet extensively for brand promotion, he adds.

AM is investing continuously in research to come up with innovations. The dedicated R&D team is continuously working on new product ideas to serve AM's broad vision-which is to create credible assessment products for multiple business verticals including IT, ITeS, BFSI, pharma, infrastructure, manufacturing, etc, says Aggarwal. "A matrix of assessment, delivery and process tools will ensure the relevance of our products across verticals, rapidly," he adds.

Now, even though AM has only been in business for a little over two years, it comes across as a firm led by an articulate and confident team that knows the relevance of adding new dimensions to its products portfolio as well as business model.

The AM team is equally meticulous when it comes to expense management, and identifying and retaining the 'right' talent to sustain its growth. Here's how the firm achieves this...