Siddharth (left) and Vishad

As the name suggests, Gyaanexchange.com is the first product of Noesis369 a start up educational technology venture. Its mission is to empower anyone to create, share and monetize knowledge. In addition to gyaanexchange, Noesis369 is also involved in the academic education space developing products and services for schools and colleges.

Noesis369 was started in December 2010 by Siddharth Bhansali who is a business graduate, a serial entrepreneur who finds poetry in code, and is the brain behind the technology powering Gyaanexchage. In addition to being knee deep in the technology Siddharth is constantly trying to find people to help join this learning revolution and take it to cities beyond Mumbai and countries beyond India.

Vishad Shanghvi, Director at Noesis369, has several years of experience in business and process consulting, graduated with a Bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering who handles the marketing, teacher outreach, community engagement and administrative sides of Gyaanexchange.

The team also consists of 2 community leaders who assist in teacher outreach and marketing and a few technology developers.

The Sip of Life team caught up with Siddharth and Vishad to know what Gyaanexchange is all about.

SOL: What brought you together for an initiative like Gyaanexchange.com?

GE: An educational degree isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life – Anonymous

Education does not end at school and college; there is more to knowledge than just bookish learning. Attempting to encourage learning in India, Noesis369, a start-up educational technology venture, has initiated Gyaanexchange, an online community that brings together motivated learners and talented teachers. It invites anybody with a skill, knowledge or idea to teach and anyone with a desire to learn about anything.

We want to see what the world would look like if we gave everybody the ability to share and monetize knowledge. The main idea is to provide an open platform that allows anybody to create and share knowledge. We want to convert cities into classrooms and invite everybody to teach.

In today’s society acquiring an educational degree is the end of learning. So then where is there a place for our aspirations, passion and hobbies? We all have something that we are good at and passionate about, so what’s the point of letting it remain dormant when we can do something with it?

Our motive was to help people realize their inner potential and spread it to the world.

SOL: How do you ensure quality of teachers for the said programme?

GE: Every time a teacher creates a class, we review it first and then publish it. We need to ensure that the information given by the teacher matches with our terms and conditions. If required we may also contact the teacher for more information. Since Gyaanexchange.com is an open platform, we do not wish to curb the creativity of any teacher.

SOL: How do students get enrolled for the class – through you or directly the teacher?

GE: It is a very simple process. The student has to sign up, that is create their profile and then register for the class of their preference. Even before signing up for the class the student can interact with the teacher any clarify any queries. Once the student registers for the class, the teacher is notified and a reminder email is sent prior to the class.

SOL: Does the teacher charge for his/her services from the students?

GE: The teacher does charge for their service. On registering for the class the student will have to make an online payment by using either credit, debit or net banking facilities in order to confirm the seat. Some of the classes are free as well.

SOL: Which are the places where one can avail Gyaanexchange.com services?

GE: At the moment the service is available only locally that is Mumbai but we are looking at branching out to many other cities like Delhi, Bangalore, and Pune. We are working towards building a content sourcing team in Delhi and aim to launch it by April/May.

SOL: How do teachers and students interact once the classes start?

GE: The student and teacher interact on a personal level. Since the class environment is very friendly the students can add their inputs and even pose question to the teacher making it an interactive learning session.

SOL: What makes Gyaanexchange.com a unique online platform and different from normal coaching?

GE: It is just the intellectualization of something that is anyways ubiquitous. At Gyaanexchange.com we want to encourage the talented individuals, independent teachers and focus on non-academic and non-professional knowledge. It encourages conversation between the teachers and learners before the sign ups take place and also the students can rate their class on the basis of their previous experience giving an advantage to the others making it different from any other coaching class.

SOL: Are there any other such initiatives anywhere in the world?

GE: There is a similar initiative in the United States of America called Skillshare who aim to transform education by empowering teaching and democratizing learning.

SOL: So far how many students have been benefited under this initiative?

GE: So far over 100 students have taken classes on Gyaanexchnage. Gyaanexchange.com has also enabled many more students to discover various learning opportunities, things that they would not have thought of wanting to learn before. .

SOL: How do you plan to make this programme more advanced in terms of technology?

GE: We will be starting the facility of video classes very soon enabling curious learners to learn at any place around the globe. A teacher can upload multiple videos as part of a class and arrange them into separate chapter and. Each chapter has its own set of attachments (worksheets, documents, image etc.)

Over the past few months we have learnt that we need to find a better balance between what one could call “luxuries” in learning and “necessities” in learning. Luxuries in learning are classes that people will only do if they have time to, as important as it is to follow one’s passion, we also want people to find classes that solve the real world problems of unemployability. We are now working hard on sourcing classes in the soft skills training and post graduate skill building areas.

This week we talk to the team behind an ambitious project called Akshar (Word), which has been launched by Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE). It is an international non-profit organization that works with leaders in business and higher education to mobilize university students to make a difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders.

The Sip of Life moderator, Amit Roy caught up with the team to know more about the initiative that has made a difference in many lives.

SOL: We are interested in knowing what SIFE is all about. Tell us what it is and how it took off?

SIFE: SIFE was founded and established in 1975 in the United States by Robert T. Davis, a lawyer from Texas. In the early 1980s Alvin Rohrs, a SIFE alumnus took over as the President and CEO of SIFE and continues to serve this title. Over the last 15 years SIFE grew from being a national program of the United States to a global international organisation with a network of 39 countries and more than 58,000 students.

SIFE brings together a diverse network of university students, academic professionals and industry leaders around the shared mission of creating a better, more sustainable world through the positive power of business.

An annual series of regional and national competitions provides a forum for teams to present the results of their projects, and to be evaluated by business leaders serving as judges. National champion teams advance to the prestigious SIFE World Cup. In addition to the community focus of the program, SIFE’s leadership and career initiatives create meaningful opportunities for learning and exchange among the participants as well as the placement of students and alumni with companies in search of emerging talent.

SOL: Your first project aimed at ensuring the use of hygienic sanitary napkins by women in slums across Delhi. What was it all about?

SIFE: Sanitation Solutions is an attempt by SIFE SSCBS to improve the sanitary conditions of slum dwelling women. Started in January 2009, it has been operational for almost three years now. The basic idea of our project is to provide healthy sanitary conditions to the women living in the slums while providing them with an opportunity to earn a livelihood for themselves.

It involves women entrepreneurs, in various slums across Delhi, selling subsidized, but high-quality sanitary pads, to earn a margin of profit for themselves, and also bring about a culture of using health-conscious sanitary napkins, for the women in need in these areas.

To raise awareness about the benefits of using sanitary napkins, regular awareness camps and presentations are conducted in the slums by the students, where women are encouraged to talk freely about menstruation, associated stigmas, and diseases that may be caused by lack of hygiene during the time. For our sellers, who are themselves slum women, training camps are held, where financial skills relating to book keeping, saving and investing and essential skills such as selling and marketing of their products are imparted. From one slum in 2009, to five in 2010, SIFE SSCBS expanded to 15 in 2011 with 25 sellers and a direct target audience of 82,300.

SOL: What is your latest project Akshar and what difference has it made so far?

SIFE: Project Akshar has a three-fold aim: to reuse one side used sheets, to create entrepreneurial opportunities for a community of hearing impaired women, to provide affordable educational aids to economically backward students. The project helps create extremely affordable, eco-friendly notebooks for children in need, by reusing one side used sheets that are discarded as waste by corporates, organizations and institutions. These notebooks are created by a financially backward group of deaf women in Delhi, in collaboration with the Delhi Foundation of Deaf Women, who have been imparted book binding skills by us, to ensure a sustainable source of income for them. There is a system for collection of paper from shops, offices, schools, colleges on a regular basis along with setting up avenues for sale of notebooks in rural areas, as well as for the public and NGO’s. This involves the students developing marketing and promotion strategies for the sale of notebooks.

SOL: We have been told that under this project notebooks are made of waste paper that is often thrown out. How do you make it work?

SIFE: Following the policy of reusing waste, we place our drop boxes at all the colleges, schools and corporate offices where regular collection of paper takes place. The school and college projects are a major source of one sided used paper. After 3 weeks of collection, the paper is delivered to Delhi Foundation of Deaf Women either by the SIFE members or the college leaders, where the production of notebooks is carried out.

SOL: How is this project empowering hearing impaired women?

SIFE: The total increase in income for each hearing-impaired woman at DFDW has been from Rs. 300 to 3000, who otherwise witness unemployment as high as 50%. It has given them a chance to maintain a consistent source of income and doing work benefitting them, and the society, with the help of this social and entrepreneurial model.

SOL: Are you involving other students from colleges across the NCR? If so then how are you doing it?

SIFE: 30 colleges are involved in the College Leaders Program with over 150 students in and around Delhi participating as effective leaders and team members. A significant amount of notebooks have been sold to the rural children and various NGOs, for people in need due to the hard work put in by these students.

SOL: How do you sensitize schools, colleges, corporate organizations and the general public towards reducing their carbon footprint by the reuse of paper, and ultimately plug back this completely used paper into the recycling cycle?

SIFE: Organizations such as IMS, Vialle Alternative Fuel Systems, Praja, SMR Solutions, Dhanpat Rai Publications are among our partner organizations, who work with us to sensitize their members to segregate their waste paper, which is then plugged into the reuse cycle. These notebooks will then be supplied to the rural sector through NGOs, and to urban markets through premium stores and retailers. According to a survey conducted by SIFE SSCBS, 96% retailers across 9 student markets in Delhi were willing to carry our product, while high end stores like Tatsat, People Tree and Mother Earth have agreed to stock our notebooks. All of these steps ultimately lead to sensitization about the important role that such a process of recycling paper will play in the near future, and of this project raising awareness about reducing carbon footprints of big companies, as well as, common citizens, supplying waste one side-used paper and buying notebooks

SOL: How do you plan to go ahead with SIFE and which is the next project on cards?

SIFE: At this stage, we are looking for various routes towards expansion of the scope and magnitude of both projects throughout the year. One of them will be the School Leaders Program, which will be an overall extension of the concept of the College Leaders Program, which will be implemented with the target of 20 schools in the year, with the overall principle and general duties, remaining the same. Along with this, our ever-present aims of getting even more slums into the area of outreach of the Sanitation Solutions project, and discovering new avenues for collecting paper, increasing notebook sales, with the greater objectives of nurturing more women entrepreneurs, and improving their production costs, the team of SIFE SSCBS, with the help of all team members, new and experienced, with their collective skills and roles, will look to scale new heights, both in terms of real numbers, as well as the qualitative aspects of development and progress of the people in need, that those numbers will represent.

Menwhopause: The Band

There are here not just to play music but to make it sure that it’s not only for ears but for hearts too. Menwhopause is a popular Delhi-based band who was recently seen performing in Tihar jail, leaving its inmates touched and inspired.
On a makeshift stage at Tihar, this band won applause of over a thousand prisoners who danced to their songs, during a unique initiative of 20-day workshop for inmates in December.
The band spent a few hours every day with prisoners of the largest prison in Asia. The inmates put together a ten-piece band, which they decided to call The Flying Souls.
The group talked to The Sip of Life moderator, Amit Roy on how the band’s performance with a cause has left everyone spellbound.

SOL: Tell us what is Menwhopause all about? Who are the people behind?
MENWHOPAUSE: Menwhopause is about uninhibited expression, creative collaboration and a whole lot of nothingness. IP, Randeep, Anup, Sarab and Paul form the core. Ritnika manages the core.

SOL: How did you think of naming it so?
MENWHOPAUSE: It was the name of Anup’s Quiz team in College. We didn’t think enough while finding a name for the band, so.

SOL: We would like to know about your recent initiative with Tihar jail inmates. How was the experience?
MENWHOPAUSE: Unbelievable. Profound even. Let’s just say our work with The Flying Souls (The Tihar band) has just begun.

SOL: What was your performance with Flying Souls?
MENWHOPAUSE: Incredible. With about a thousand inmates dancing with not a worry for that while, and it couldn’t have been better.

SOL: How do you think music can make a positive impact in someone’s life, as for instance you performed with convicts?
MENWHOPAUSE: Music is expression and escape. Both of which are significant for a self-expressed life.

SOL: Who was the most memorable inmate and why?
MENWHOPAUSE: Quite a few. Jha for his abiding love for ‘his’ childhood sweetheart, Saxena for playing big brother to everyone and Amit for his notepad with which he would plan our schedules meticulously, while John for his enthusiasm.

SOL: Has your band earlier taken up such initiatives? If yes, which are the ones?
MENWHOPAUSE: We work with children often. This week we are composing a song for an initiative called “Pagdandi”

SOL: Have you been there for the inmates of a hospital? We feel you can bring a smile on someone’s face who is recovering from an ailment. How do you think you have brought music in such lives, if you have?
MENWHOPAUSE: We haven’t played in a hospital yet. But that’s definitely worth a thought.

SOL: What makes Menwhopause different from other bands?
MENWHOPAUSE: Us we guess.

SOL: It has been seen world over that music bands often split in a few years. Do you think Menwhopause will be able to sustain for long?
MENWHOPAUSE: We have been together for 10 years. Don’t see any of us moving on any time soon.

About the Band
Menwhopause is a five-member rock band based in New Delhi, India. The band was formed in 2001 by guitarist Anup Kutty with an original line-up of singer/songwriter Sarabjit Chadha and acoustic guitarist Inder Pal Singh (IP). The trio became a full-fledged band after recruiting bassist Randeep Singh and drummer Rahul Chatterjee. In a country where popular music is dominated with commercial Bollywood music and the live rock music scene is generally full of cover bands, Menwhopause stuck to playing original compositions and were one of the first bands in India to distribute their music for free over the internet.