GRANT’S DESI ACHIEVER
APP GETS TOP MARKS
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
Anyone who has been in Canada for a few years knows someone who wants more information about moving to the country.
We’ve all answered those anxious questions. Ganesh Neelanjanmath went a whole lot further – he created an app that would address what he describes as his problems and pain points from when he was an international student.
Neelanjanmath came to Canada in 2010 for a post-grad Project Management course at Sheridan College in Ontario. He had received an e-mail from the international office at the college, detailing what to do, what to pack, questions he might be asked at port-of-entry, etc.; his agent in India also provided some information, but still, on his first day on campus, Neelanjanmath found himself floundering.
He’d gone looking for a job at the college cafeteria.
They said he needed a SIN card. Until then, he hadn’t heard of one.
He found his way to a Service Canada centre where he learnt he needed a job offer first.
Neelanjanmath went back and forth three times before someone told him that they could issue a SIN card with a provisional job offer.
“I paid $3.25, if I recall right, for each trip and the ticket was valid for only three hours, so there was the pressure to sort things out quickly or I’d have to buy another ticket. It may seem silly now, but it was a lot of money for a student on his first day.”
Then there were other things like getting a visa to visit his sister in the US. Or how to apply to extend his eight-month visa to cover the one-year study program.
“I was told it’s a simple process, and it is, if you know how to go about it.”
Neelanjanmath thought there must be other students in a similar predicament.
He opened an Excel file to keep track of all information he collected.
On how cold it can get. “I’d only seen snow in the movies! You know it will be cold, but it’s hard to imagine just how cold.”
On crossing the road. “In India, you hold up a hand and zig-zag your way across a road – doesn’t work quite like that here.”
On how to segregate garbage.
On what double-double meant. “I made quite a few mistakes in my early days at the cafeteria. I didn’t know people used cream in coffee.”
On asking questions in class. “Here professors engage and involve students, they encourage you to ask questions. I was used to a more theoretical approach in which I would ask to see a professor after class if I needed a clarification. Here, you need an appointment to see a professor after class.”
As he settled in, he began answering questions from students his agent in India was connecting him with. He shared his experience with them, mentored them unofficially, but after 69 direct one-on-one exchanges, decided it was time to build a platform to address FAQ.
He approached the international office to tap interest.
“I had nothing ready at the time – just the idea!.”
They said they’d call him back later. They did, two years later, in 2013.
He came up with iCent – named after the International Centre that he frequented in his early days – a tool for students to connect with the international office and for the office to connect with students. In the two years it took to launch the app, he constantly updated and enhanced it with inputs from the international centre. They signed the contract in April 2015 and it was launched in July of that year.
“It was downloaded by 1100 students in the very first week,” exults Neelanjanmath, founder and Chief Technology Officer of Neel-Tech, a mobile application development and technology consulting company. “Until then we didn’t know if it would actually work!”
He brings over 15 years of experience working in India, Europe, Canada and the US in software programming, business analysis, entrepreneurship, management, business planning, operations, and decision analysis to crafting expert solutions in a number of industries.
The information on the app is broken down into segments. It includes things like what to pack in carry-on and checked-in baggage – many students pack their documents in check-in bags, not realizing that they won’t have access to these bags until after the immigration check for which the documents are required – and questions about housing, where to find halal meat or the best winter coat. How to make tuition payments, how to access emails on email id that the institution sets up for you.
Recognizing that there are general questions and then there are questions specific to a field of study, employment, or even life in Canada, iCent provides institutions access for content management.
“For instance, Kingston College or Cambrian will have different info on how to get there from what Sheridan College will have,” says Neelanjanmath. “Winter is a little longer there than at a Centennial College campus. So over and above the general info, they can add info specific to their college or students’ needs. Every institution can customize the access point to make onboarding smoother.”
Memories of his arrival in Canada were fresh in Neelanjanmath’s mind when he began working on the next phase of his plan.
“I’d landed at Terminal 1 in Pearson, and had looked for someone, anyone, to talk to, connect with, to perhaps share a ride to the Oakville campus with. When I walked out, there were all these people waiting to greet visitors and I still remember how lonely I felt. Some students are first-time travellers and a large airport can be overwhelming. You’re supposed to take Bus A, but you take Bus B. To help avoid such confusion, volunteers help fellow students, but then volunteers don’t always show up.”
In 2016, Neelanjanmath went to the airport to welcome students on behalf of Sheridan. Other institutions also wanted the same personalized welcome and he again provided a technical platform to facilitate that.
“Students connect with us through the app to know exactly where we are at the airport,” he says. “Centennial College had big ideas about welcoming students and began using the app two years ago.”
The app that was just an idea in an international student’s mind now has 50 institutions with 300 campuses from coast to coast to coast on board.
“We began as a “boot-strapped” enterprise, but are now doing okay!” he says. “We invest the revenue we generate back into resources, better infrastructure... and travel. I have to travel a lot to help get the word out. There are lots of possibilities in student recruitment. There are many different ways to help students and increase revenue. Nobody is doing what we are doing, specially in Canada. Anyone can build an app, but catching up with all the groundwork we’ve done on campus will be hard.”
Neelanjanmath now has 28 team members in offices in Canada, US, India and New Zealand and plans on working with settlement agencies to expand the platform to cover temporary foreign workers and newcomers. He wants to build an app that will help students connect with the larger student body, not stay restricted to their cultural group.
Asked if he envisaged his idea taking off in such a big way, he says entrepreneurship was always the goal.
After graduating in computer science from Bangalore, he wanted to work for a couple of years, do his MBA and set up his own business. That period extended to nearly five years as he grabbed opportunities to learn and grow in India and Spain.
“But I was losing time if I wanted to study, so I quit my job and came to Canada. It was a natural choice. It is a welcoming country and multicultural – I need Indian food!”
While still a student, he had the opportunity to build mobile apps and was happy making the money, until he realized that this is not where he wanted to be, he was more interested in recurring revenue, not in project-based revenue.
“I asked myself if this is what I wanted to be doing 20, 30 years from now. I wanted to do something globally. I liked working with students, I was interested in immigration issues and public infrastructure. After the recession, education and medicine were the two fields that were full of promise. I’m far from being in medicine, so I thought it best to stick to education!
“Steve Jobs, whom I find very inspirational, used to say that you connect the dots only when you look back. Looking back, that was a good decision, we are showing 3000 per cent growth, year after year.”
His parents, he says, had given up on him, with his frequent job switches and working in different cities and countries. “Don’t run so much, settle down,” they’d say.
“After I came to Canada, they feel this is where I wanted to be, this is where I’ll stay.”
He credits his father for instilling planning and strategizing in him as a young boy. When the family planned holidays, his father would ask him to help plan the details, and showed him how to achieve his goals.
Neelanjanmath married Kavita in 2018 and at the time of the interview was waiting for her to join him in Canada. She’s an MBA in marketing and HR and already helping with his business.
Asked for his tips for would-be entrepreneurs, he says he looks at how other successful people built a name for themselves.
“It’s all about talking to people who have been on similar journeys, it helps find the best answers. But I have also believed, if I fail, I’ll fail on my own, if I succeed, I’ll succeed on my own. That helped me invest my own money in my idea, I took no help from anyone.
“And I tell my team members, I tell myself, to be clear about goals. What do you want to be known for?
iCent has served over a hundred thousand International Students across Canada.
• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).