Mark Cuban once said “Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it’s not an obsession.”

This is what drives AlphaXearch to grow, the obsession of its founder Gaurav Rai to indulge in a sense of freedom; freedom to express, control, deliver and achieve.

AlphaXearch is a student-led, knowledge-based startup providing research, analytics and advisory services. It aids and orients students at high school and undergraduate level towards investigating pertinent questions and finding their answers.

Still in its infancy, the startup grew out of a need to have more research-oriented services/ tools to facilitate the students in their academics. The paucity of established research resources struck a chord with Gaurav, a second year SSCBS student pursuing BMS, while he was interning with a management consulting firm and was supposed to do a lot of Industry and market research, data analysis and visualization.

When asked about what motivated him to provide a market solution to this problem that often escapes the eye, he said “I love to read biographies of successful individuals and business icons like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larrie Ellison, Jeff Bezos and many others. One thing common among them is that they all started their own ventures at a very young age and braved the risks that were associated with their failure . Money is not the goal, freedom is, and being an entrepreneur, the sense of freedom and achievement that you achieve is tremendous. All of this motivated me to become an entrepreneur. Also, the type of environment that our college provides incubated the entrepreneurial feeling in my heart.”

While talking about his startup and the client it wishes to serve, he adds that the student-led research industry is a very nascent one with not many competitors. While choosing the target customers, he put in a lot of research considering the applicability and relevance of the business proposition to school and college students , academic participants like researchers, scholars etc. Planning and other taks weren’t that tough when compared to the difficulties faced while executing. The hurdle of explaining the idea to the naysayers and the ones who believed such things should be jumped into only after one’s education is complete was a major one. Further challenges were encountered during initial funding required in registering the startup, acquiring their own domain and beginning operations. However, with the support of his family, he has managed to overcome these.

However, promotion of the venture and roping in clients is still a great challenge and Gaurav along with his only other team member, Ritik Garg, another second-year student at SSCBS, are continuously working  hard to overcome this.

Probing further into the operations at AlphaXearch, Gaurav talks about the promise of delivering high end professional research and data analysis services using softwares like Python, R, Power BI, Tableau, Excel along with exhaustive datasets available from platforms like Crunchbase, Owler, Statista, Traxn, Dataworld, HubSpot and  others. He adds, “We understand that each customer’s need is different and our service is well tailored to meet the customer’s needs.”

AlphaXearch has successfully served both corporate clients and clients from the student community. The response has been good so far as they are seeing a lot of website traffic (almost 100 people per day), which is great for a startup that commenced its operations officially barely two months ago on 10^th August 2020.

Having worked in a startup is a more enriching and wholesome experience than working for an established conglomerate, due to the added pressure and responsibilities of handling new challenges on a daily basis. Testament to this fact, Gaurav shares, “I think the most surprising part of all  this is that I came to know a lot about myself. A lot of my dormant skills suddenly came into effect and I think, being an entrepreneur, I completely transformed into a newer and better version of myself. My business acumen and awareness has also skyrocketed and I manage stress better and multitasking feels like a piece of cake now.”

Going forward, Gaurav plans to diversify AlphaXearch to domains like EdTech and e-commerce. Currently, plans are in motion to start a newsletter for all the research enthusiasts. Also, he aims to discover new SEO strategies and is currently working on direct mail marketing and offline marketing strategies. AlphaXearch aims to be known as a corporate client-based platform than a student led research platform and is devising strategies to rope in more corporates and professionals as its clients.

Commenting on his commitment to his venture after graduation, he adds, “Absolutely! AlphaXearch is very close to my heart and seeing the response that we are getting; a full-time dedication and commitment is absolutely necessary.”