Suruchi Wagh is chief executive and founder of the Pune-based Next Leap Career Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a company mentoring students aspiring for postgraduate qualifications in engineering from US colleges and universities. Her portal www.yournextleap. com hosts information on institutes offering postgrad engineering programmes, scholarships available, mock visa interviews, link-ups with students already enrolled with American universities and so on.
Direct talk. Next Leap is perhaps the only one-window information website providing comprehensive information about American postgraduate engineering programmes. Perhaps more important, it details almost all scholarships on offer. “Most students know about just one or two scholarships. But more than 50 scholarships valued at nearly Rs.10 crore per year are up for grabs,” says Wagh, who gave up a lucrative job in the US to return to India in 2010 and start this venture to counsel Indian students and help them sign up with the most cost-effective colleges in the US — the mecca of engineering and technology education.
History. A computer engineering graduate of Pune’s showpiece College of Engineering, Pune (COEP), Wagh pressed on to obtain her Masters in the subject from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Subsequently she worked in the US as a research analyst at Risk Management Solutions Inc, helping Stanford University’s Prof. Haresh Shah develop catastrophe micro-insurance products for emerging markets.
On her mind, however, was the nagging memory of how difficult her passage to America had been. “It was very frustrating to chase banks and comply with their various requirements. All this was because information about scholarships and the series of procedures required to apply for admission was hard to come by. Writing GRE was the least of our problems,” she recalls.
These memories prompted her to promote Next Leap Career Solutions on her return to India in 2010. “My experience with developing insurance products helped me create a search engine for the student community. I then got a team of like-minded entrepreneurial youngsters to join with me to get the company started,” says Wagh, who while declining to disclose numbers (“it’s too early in the day to draw up a balance sheet”) adds that the portal is a “big hit” with engineering and class XII students countrywide.
Future plans. Suruchi’s immediate plan is to add another search engine that will help class XII students identify the engineering stream most suited to their aptitude. She is also weighing the pros and cons of including medicine and other professional study programmes. “For now, though, we have to be content with the niche pay-model portal we have created. I have no doubt it will become financially viable in the medium term,” says Wagh.
Huned Contractor (Pune)