Harshadha Chaganti: An Entrepreneurial Inspiration
Harshadha Chaganti. She is the founder of Learnology, the Save it Foundation, and the Association of Entrepreneurial Youth. Her experiences so far, are an inspiration to young entrepreneurs, paving a path for education.
Chaganti, a 15-year-old originally from India, currently living in Austin, Texas attends Westwood High School. Her STEM startup Learnology was initially founded as a non-profit organisation (NPO) and served the purpose of spreading knowledge on various science subjects digitally to students. The startup eventually expanded and moved onto other platforms such as Instagram and Discord in order to create more avenues for students to connect. Now she aims to turn her idea into the form of an app that is currently under work.
Through the app, users can find opportunities to join student and non-profit organisations whilst of course indulging in scientific knowledge. Chaganti is also collaborating with an organisation that promotes education and literacy that goes out to different schools in 5 different countries for over a million students. This partnership also allows her access to 4–5 million students in hopes of increasing Learnology’s reach. The goal of the partnership is simple; to create a community of writers, and authors within Learnology. Additionally, she hopes to partner with other organisations to maximise the number of available opportunities to users.
“There is no set place for students to connect through STEM, which is what I’m aiming for Learnology to grow into,” Chaganti mentioned.
Currently, the startup is valued at a whopping $17 million and gained $200K in pre-seed funding. Chaganti was able to get the necessary investments through Xartup, an organisation that selects entrepreneurs with foreseeable success and aids them in finding investors, and co-founders, and, building their startups. The organisation is also affiliated with IBM and Amazon.
The entire process to earn the funding took a month wherein intense hard work was put in. The process included in-person interviews, webinars, and conversations with established individuals in the business world. Throughout, Chaganti was the sole entrepreneur of Learnology. In order for her startup to be chosen, she had to choose a good investment plan which primarily included different membership levels on the app which allow them to have access to certain webinars and pay-per-view ads. The focus was on developing the main idea of the startup, strengthening its structure, and ensuring that it was sustainable to gain profit from, otherwise, companies choose not to invest.
Learnology is targeted at students or individuals who are interested in contributing to or learning more about STEM.
“If you sign up to Learnology, the student does not necessarily have to contribute but if they did that’s our target audience as they’d help to grow the app and help get more users into the apps and therefore, increase its value,” says Chaganti on her target audience.
In 10 years, there are two ways that Chaganti visualises her startup to end up. That being Learnology becomes valued as a unicorn company or it is sold before it reaches that milestone. In fact, there are a lot of big companies that aim to acquire smaller companies that would benefit them.
“As a tech startup it is hard to push and it is not easy to succeed in the tech company,” she mentions.
As a young entrepreneur, Chaganti agrees that there will always be challenges faced. She said that the tech industry is very competitive and there are a lot of companies who are waiting to steal your idea. With patents for apps not being available, it is easy for others to steal the idea and succeed of that. Otherwise, Chaganti mentions that she could always take inspiration from other companies that have failed and succeeded and use that to her advantage. In addition to being a young woman in the industry, she stated that having the right mentors and trustworthy people has been encouraging her journey.
Other than Learnology, Chaganti has also ventured into other opportunities such as the Save It Foundation and the Association of Entrepreneurial Youth. The Save It Foundation heavily focuses on the theme of sustainability through the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or UN SDGs in short. The foundation offers a 4-week program in which students can work on their projects which promote sustainability. Chaganti finds the SDGs vital to society as they promote overall sustainability in different aspects. In fact, there are 17 goals ranging from ending poverty to promoting peace which member nations are committed to fulfilling hopefully by 2030.
Next, the Association of Entrepreneurial Youth was inspired by the lack of support for entrepreneurial students. Chaganti mentioned a spectrum of entrepreneurs ranging from those who are interested in the business parts of it to those who are not interested in leadership positions of a startup. Currently, the Association is looking to form its board of directors and executives. One of the potential board of directors works closely with the UN and also has an organisation called Break the Ice that discusses taboo topics. Chaganti hopes that this new potential addition will help globalise the association.
Harshadha Chaganti continues to serve as an inspiration to entrepreneurs of our generation. With that, it can be said that she is the embodiment of perseverance and ingenuity.
