Here, I do not intend to be philosophical or deeply personal on my reasons to quit Accenture, six months back and start the firm For A Good Start. I want to end up saying once again what I posted in Facebook and conclude that it was rather Good to quit my corporate career then, than later and to Start all over again.
Shalini and me founded the firm and it operates in a portion of the first floor of my parents’ house in Kottayam, Kerala. In the last six months, we developed websites for two NGOs, Swasthya Swaraj and Navakarma. These NGOs have given the annual maintenance of their sites to For A Good Start. We also launched a course for beginners in IT named Digital Me! and the first batch is going on. We also started working on an accounting product for Numak Technology LCC.
Varun Abraham Kurian an aspiring Chartered Accountant has joined as our partner. He helps us with Numak Accounting Software and Digital Me!. We can be pretty busy with Numak Accounting Software for next few months. However, we may need to deliver Digital Me! course once again as couple of people are waiting for the next batch. We need to fix a basic application in Salesforce to manage our balance sheet. We are also getting few good leads which may turn in to opportunities. Also, we plan to launch the course for students who passed 4th standard – All that a 4th Standard Pass needs to Know in first week of April 2016. I can confidently say that we have enough and more to do in next 3 months.
For a Good Start is a social entrepreneurship. We want our model to thrive as well as sustain and to keep our promise – deliver value to the society in IT and education. We manage quality of courses by preparing the students based on their individual need ; maintaining small class sizes and through interactive sessions. In software development, we follow agile methods which provide lot of interaction with customers to arrive at defect free products at the end of final iteration. There is a challenge in arriving at the best pricing, For A Good Start has to sustain as a firm and we as individuals need to meet our two ends. We understand that there will be birth pangs, but we have to over come and achieve break even in not so distant future.
In a nut shell, we have moved away from the likes of huge multinational banks, retailers, manufacturers, logistic and insurance providers to NGOs like Swasthya Swaraj and Navakarma and small time businesses like Numak. And, we are moving on…
– Salil Rawji
Note.
I plan to publish such kind of report every 3 months.
Great..Let your vision enable you to reach great heights and enrich the soceity at large….
Nice writing !
All the best Salil and Shalini for this good start.
Great initiative. Very happy to see that you both are using your skills/experience to make +ve contribution to the society. Shalini/Salil….wishing you both the very best!!
I recommend ForAGoodStart !
My nephew Roshan, class 10, needed help in certain topics in Mathematics and he had not been going for tuitions this year. His summative exams were nearing and I asked Shalini if she could teach him. Roshan attended sessions by Shalini and Salil. In addition to the topics that he had requested to explain, they checked his fundamentals by making him solve problems from previous school years. At the end of it, they provided a detailed report indicating topics that he needs to focus and pointed out his strengths and weaknesses.
In Roshan’s words “As soon as I commenced Salil uncle’s ingenious process of doing the first five questions of past school year’s math topics , I found out that doing these were actually beneficial for me, identifying topics I required extra comprehension in. As we started from deciphering the mysteries of triangles and ended in simplifying strange trigonometric ratios, Shalini aunty carefully explained all the theorems and postulates to be followed, prompting me to think for myself about what we were doing. I believe that my performance was greatly bettered for the summative examination and I am thankful to ForAGoodStart for being a source of confidence and inspiration in the area of mathematics. ”
And Roshan, who was reluctant at first, looks forward to these sessions ! Thank you Shalini and Salil. Both of you are indeed passionate about education and I wish you the best for this endeavor. Now, I have more reason to be happy that you are at Kottayam 🙂