At BrilliantRead Media, it is our constant endeavour to identify and share some of the unique and compelling stories from the startup ecosystem. As part of this, we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Paramjit Das for an interview with BrilliantRead Media. Paramjit is a Seasoned Entrepreneur, Leader, Educator, Teacher, Mentor and Change enabler. He is the Founder of GMAT30. Let’s learn more about his background, his inspiring journey so far and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Paramjit:
Could you please talk us through your background and your journey?
I became fascinated with teaching at the ripe young age of 15 when I was in class X and my parents hired a private tutor to improve my Math. I wasn’t entirely convinced with rote learning/memorization as a pedagogy nor did the “carrot and stick” theory (of rewarding correct answers and punishing mistakes) resonate with me.
I soon came to realise that many teachers are performing a task as critical and career-shaping as teaching solely as an additional income stream. Very rarely did I see true passion in my interactions or conversations with my high school teachers.
I saw a similar culture when I went on to Monash University to complete my Bachelor’s of Software Engineering (with Hons.). Many of the professors who took our classes simply did so because of their contractual obligations. In other words, research and academia was their main domain and they, in their own words, “had to teach”, and had they been given an option to do so, they’d rather spend this time on academic and research-related tasks.
In exploring this trend, I came to the conclusion that even in most reputable universities, the institutional notion was that “if someone is a high scorer/achiever, he/she must automatically be a great teacher”. In other words, a good player must be a good coach! The person’s been there, done that, so who better to teach that specific subject?
I didn’t concur with this theory. Sure, it was more probable that a subject matter expert would be a good teacher, but in my opinion, being a subject expert had to be a prerequisite to becoming a good teacher. One cannot become a good teacher without having played the game and having played better than 99% of the other players. But that alone cannot define a good teacher.
A good teacher has to be truly passionate about teaching. He/she should get a thrill from solving problems, from explaining queries to student doubts, and from seeing that ‘Aha!’ Eureka moment appear on their students’ faces. In addition, he/she should have the capacity to connect with the students, not just at an academic level but also at a personal level. Being available around the clock for my students (at GMAT30, we offer unlimited validity and 24×7 doubt solving for our students) is the cornerstone of my company and our courses. This is something I had also practised during my over 18 years of teaching.
Looking back, my teaching journey started at the age of 15, when I (informally) taught my classmates and headed study groups. I extended this role for the subject of Mathematics when I was in class XI and XII on the basis of my perfect score of 100 marks in Class X mathematics, and 99 and 100 in class XI and class XII Mathematics. I took on my first official, contractual role when I was in my second year of Monash University.”
I was thrilled with a paid, contractual teaching role, which paid pretty handsomely for part-time work and reinforced in me the confidence that I had the necessary subject matter skills to teach first-year undergraduate units. However, in my mind, while my technical nous wasn’t in doubt — I had secured a scholarship for my undergraduate degree on the basis of my class X and class XII grades and I had also won the Prof Cliff Bellamy Award for topping the entire first year Computer Science and Software Engineering Stream (2018), with HD scores in all my 8 units in the first year of university — teaching foreign students, including natives, was a different cup of tea from teaching classmates.
To prepare best for the upcoming challenge, I spent a significant amount of time (close to 2 months) to polish my communication skills. This, apart from technical expertise, would be necessary to establish a connect with local students whom I would be tutoring and whom I’d have to inspire.
I continued my role as a Teaching Associate through my undergraduate (Honours) degree, although I didn’t top my stream in any of the subsequent years :-). However, my passion for teaching was such that I would always substitute for filling in when a TA could not cover their scheduled class(es). A good teacher should, in my opinion, be judged by their expertise in the unit(s) they are supposed to teach, and their ability to understand and address student concerns as and when they arise”
I loved everything associated with teaching, including conducting demos, grading students’ assignments, entering scores on spreadsheets, marking the final exams, responding to student doubts on forums, and breaking down complex concepts mathematically for students. In other words, I loved explaining anything “technical” or “jargon-heavy” using simple logic and mathematics, which I felt were hallmarks crucial to a good teacher.
Post graduation, I embarked on my professional journey in the field of Software Engineering as a Data Analyst at a startup consultancy. This was also the time when I had to apply for my residency in Australia, and a full-time Teaching Associate role at any university required a PhD qualification. I wasn’t prepared to invest another 4-5 years for another degree as financial and residency concerns were more of a priority from an ROI perspective. After working full-time for 3 years, I decided to return to India for personal reasons. Here, I wanted to give another shot at teaching full time.”
Most college teaching jobs didn’t pay enough, so I looked at teaching international aptitude entrance exams, namely, GRE, GMAT, and IELTS. To prove my expertise in the field of GMAT, I decided to prepare for the exam. I worked with leading GMAT test prep companies such as Jamboree Education and IMS India; during this period I worked as Lead Verbal Faculty, and later as the Verbal Academic Head.
During this time, I spent countless hours working out the best, most mathematical way of explaining a particular question to a student — my goal was to ensure that the students would find the Verbal section as fun and challenging as they do the Quant section. Based on my engineering degree, I developed an almost mathematical way of teaching the Verbal section.
Verbal wasn’t the section that was to be feared anymore, but the section that would form the component of a high overall GMAT score. In the GMAT, unlike other entrance exams, the Verbal section drives the overall score. As an example, if a student were to score, on the older GMAT, a Q47 (59th percentile in Quant), and V44 (98th percentile in Verbal), he/she would secure a score of GMAT 730/740 (96th-97th percentile).”
If the percentiles were reversed, and say a student obtained a Q51 (the max score in Quant), and a V30 (~60th percentile in the Verbal section), he/she would fetch a composite score of 670-680 (around 80th-82nd percentile). The scoring scales on the GMAT Focus Edition, the newer current version of the GMAT, places a similar emphasis on Verbal skills. This innovative, simplified way of breaking complex concepts into simpler, practical, logical building blocks resulted in many high GMAT scores and many of my students securing admits in top B-schools.
I decided to start my own online GMAT Prep company post the second wave of the pandemic – I was a big believer in the efficiency of online teaching as opposed to offline classes.”
I had several reservations that constrained offline teaching, including increased student commute time, inferior doubt-solving processes, and lack of access of recordings, which would mean that a student would often entail a slightly redundant process with doubt-solving. Further, the limitation of a time limit on a doubt-solving class would also mean that not all doubts would get solved within the duration.
As a result, the student learning experience would be hampered and oftentimes, a student would have to wait for a doubt-solving session before they could ask their doubts. Similarly, because a student would have to physically commute to the centre to get their queries resolved, only the very top students would remain motivated to attend the doubt sessions regularly.
With online classes at GMAT30, we have ensured that doubts are resolved within an hour of getting posted. We have medium-sized batches catering to all working professionals and students alike, including an early morning weekday batch, a late evening weekday batch, and a weekend-only batch.
Our courses take roughly 7-8 weeks to complete, and are valid for a LIFETIME, ensuring that a student can attend any class in multiple batches and any number of times he/she desires. In this manner, the student can also complete their classes quicker should they decide to customise the course by attending classes in multiple batches (we of course make this decision based on factors such as the current level of the student, whether he/she has written the test previously, and so on). We also provide a holistic test series comprising 15 adaptive GMAT mocks as part of our offering and rigorous mock analysis sessions.”
All in all, we are there by YOUR side till you get your target score. It is this sort of expertise — all our faculty have scored in the 99th percentile on the GMAT — and dedication that has allowed us to become a leading go-to name for online GMAT Prep. It is this sort of commitment towards our students and going beyond our duty (all of my classes go on for nearly 2.5 hours even though the stated on-paper time is 2 hours) that has allowed us to get recognition on places such as GMATClub, Reddit, and LinkedIn. I have over 3.5k followers on LinkedIn alone, with 60 LinkedIn testimonials and over 130 Google Reviews, with an average 4.9* rating.
We truly believe in helping you excel at the GMAT, which is why our courses are priced very reasonably (we charge at least 25% less than the reputed players) with no compromise on quality. It is our ethos and our passion as teachers that have helped us gain credibility and reliance, along with becoming a household name amongst students looking to prepare for the GMAT online. Onwards and upwards!
‘GMAT30’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
The name ‘GMAT30’ originated as a play on ‘Super30’, but for GMAT. When we started out, my goal was to teach at least 30 students over a period of 6 months, helping them reach their target GMAT score.
Over time, I have come to associate the “30” in “GMAT30” with this motif: 30” originated as the end of a story written for a newspaper. It is said to stem from an earlier custom of typing “XXX” to denote the end of a news story. “XXX” as Roman numerals means “30”.
The word thus has come to mean “That is all.” in the context of GMAT Prep. And my courses truly imbibe this motto — we have taught many students who have been preparing for the GMAT for some time (almost 45% of our students comprise GMAT re-takers who have been preparing for the GMAT for some time), as well as first-time test takers. We have almost never heard of our students needing to purchase any additional resources for their GMAT prep.
For example, hear what our first-time GMAT prep student, who scored a GMAT 98th%ile and secured an ISB Admit, Tushaar Neb had to say about preparing for the GMAT with GMAT30:
Similarly, hear what USC Marshall Admit Anirbaan Das, a 5-time GMAT re-taker when he joined us, has to say about preparing for the GMAT with GMAT30 (Anirbaan scored a GMAT 740 on his final attempt with a Verbal 98th percentile)!
Despite the challenges, what keeps you going when things get tough?
There have been multiple time periods when potential students inquire with us and don’t get back or take long to revert. Similarly, there have been patches of time when we don’t get high student scores.
These times can get slightly demotivating as a Founder. During such periods, I am always reminded of the motivations I chose to become a teacher, the fact that I found clarifying concepts to students from a myriad of backgrounds satiating. Similarly, the words of one of my first mentors at Jamboree keep me grounded: “Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching”.
So we follow this motto. We keep delivering on our promises. We keep solving those doubts. We keep going beyond our on-paper class time. And sooner rather than later, such phases pass, and sooner rather than later, we get those student scores!
What are the three most important lessons you have learned in your life?
Be passionate about something to the point that you can invest at least 6-8 hours a day beyond your regular working hours without expecting any profit (at least for the first 12 months). You have to get good at multi-tasking if you want success, no two ways about it!
Remain perseverant during tough times — always remember that life is full of ups and downs. And your journey will always be more along the lines of a sine curve (with regular ups and downs) rather than a linear graph. During the times of ‘downs’, the work that you have put in the first point will help you navigate these currents.
The student/client is always right! Whether it be in the field of a service industry or an ed-tech startup, you have to put those who have trusted you at a pedestal. There are many a times when I have responded to student doubts at even 1 am at night; Reason? We have always remained humbled by those who had placed their trust in us through enrolling with us. Irrespective of our growth over the past 12 months, this attitude has never deserted us.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
The key to success is not very complicated. You can attend different management programs that might teach you to become successful, but in my opinion, it really comes down to three functions: dedication, multi-tasking, and passion.
Become an expert at something by investing a certain amount of time upfront, and offer your expertise at a scale greater than your competitors, yet keep the pricing lower than your competitors.”
Additionally, maintain humility and don’t be arrogant to think that you’re not answerable to your customers — if your customers can make you, they have the power to take you down too.
If you follow these mantras, you will create an amazingly positive WoM within your existing base and this will, eventually, lead to your becoming one of the most credible brands in your domain.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
Start now. Never is too late to start.
Introspect and think about what really tickles your fancy — it could even be your normal 9-to-5, as it was in my case.
I decided I liked teaching the GMAT so much that I wanted to carve out a name for myself in that space. So start now and identify that space!
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