Jatin Solanki: Video Bot Experts Serve Up Job Skills

Hello! My name is Spiffy, I’m an interplanetary journalist and I’ve been speaking with innovators from around the world who are working on UN SDG 8: Decent Work & Economic Growth. One of those people is Jatin Solanki, co-founder of Expertrons. Let’s see how he’s doing it!

Spiffy: Hi Jatin, thanks for taking the time to meet me today! Can you start by talking about the challenges that you’re addressing through your work with Expertrons? 

Jatin: I’d love to, Spiffy! Expertrons is catering to a very large target audience of 1.85 billion professionals globally that are facing different challenges across all stages of their career trajectory. These challenges include a lack of guidance, knowledge, soft skills, domain skills, referral network, or access to desired jobs on a single platform. We have built the world's first and largest library of career experiences in the form of pre-recorded video bots of experts. Our career acceleration programs, Expertrons Plus and Expertrons Pro, nurture and groom the soft and domain skills of aspiring professionals and enable them to be ready for their dream organizations and business schools. 

Spiffy: It sounds like you’re filling in a lot of gaps. What motivated you to find a way to prepare students and professionals for the modern job market?

Jatin: There is a paradox in the Indian and global job market. The problem with the global higher education sector is that it is simply not considering how markets and the needs of employers are changing. Employability is no longer dependent on formal education from local schools and universities—which typically refuse to adapt—but is more dependent on online providers like Expertrons who can adapt quickly and offer products and pragmatic learning on an as-needed basis worldwide. 

Spiffy: Can you talk a bit about how you’re working to make the world a more equitable place? 

Jatin: The technology and platform that we have built have a global appeal and will offer an opportunity to restructure and transform the lives of millions of higher education students and professionals. Expertrons compliments the existing curriculum with skill-building—both soft and domain skills—under the right guidance from the elite community of experts on our platform. So students and working professionals become more capable of meeting the requirements of employers in the global markets, which will enable them to grow in their career trajectory. 

Spiffy: What kind of milestones are you aiming to achieve?

Jatin: Since our inception, we have inspired the lives of over 300,000 aspiring professionals on our platform. Our vision is to become a de facto career guidance platform for 1.85 billion working professionals globally.

Spiffy: I’m curious if you’ve ever had an experience when you faced failure and didn't give up. What did you learn from failure? 

Jatin: While building Expertrons, we reached out to a lot of marquee investors to raise funds. A lot of investors rejected us on the grounds of product-market fit, low traction, and lack of conviction around the business model. However, we didn’t give up. We believed in our vision and were not demotivated by rejection. We continued to work on our roadmap and got our first funding of $700,000 in March 2020. In April 2021, we raised a pre-series A round of $2.3 million.  By August 2021, we crossed an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $ 1.3 million and onboarded more than 5,000 experts from over 250 domains. We have more than 3,500 hiring partners on our platform and have inspired the lives of over 300,000 aspiring professionals. In September 2021, Mr. Kunal Shah, who had rejected us in the past, invested in Expertrons.

Spiffy: Way to turn it all around, Jatin! It’s been an honor talking to you today and learning about your passion and mission to hone people’s job skills. Over and out!

Jatin Solanki is the co-founder of Expertrons and is based in Mumbai, India. Prior to Expertron, Jatin co-founded Eduisfun–STEPapp, India's largest gamified learning platform that served two million K -12 students, backed by Mr. Amitabh Bachchan as an investor and brand ambassador. Jatin is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. (Nominated by Pathway Ventures. First published on the Ladderworks website on October 26, 2021.)