Rajat Khare, Director, Appin Knowledge Solutions

Appin provides world class training programmes based on emerging technologies to the students as well as the corporates. In an interview, Rajat Khare, Director, Appin Knowledge Solutions shares the success story of his company. 

Ramanjit Kaur (RK): Could you please brief us about Appin Knowledge Solutions?

Rajat Khare (RK): Appin Knowledge Solutions is an affiliate of Appin Technologies known worldwide for its information security products, services, education and training. The company is promoted by IIT Delhi and has an educational arm named Appin Knowledge Solutions under it. Appin Knowledge Solutions has specialisation in hi-technology vocational training and vocational certificate programmes, educational consulting, courseware, online classroom, corporate training, industrial training in information security and ethical hacking, embedded systems, robotics, application programming, nanotechnology, networking and communication and other emerging technologies. We have extensively prepared and consulted our partners in e-learning course content and Computer Based Training Software (CBTS). All our training programmes are being powered using Information and Communication Technologies. We design the framework to study the actual impact of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in education. 

RK: What inspired Appin Knowledge Solutions to take the franchise route to expand the brand in India?

Khare: The founders of Appin Technologies are professors and alumni from IIT, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Stanford, and University of Texas. They realised the technological gap between India and US, so they started the model of franchising to expand the business. We believe in creating a pool of entrepreneurs and a win-win model that would benefit the society, the entrepreneurs and the company. Franchising is the most acceptable model in order to expand and manage the business operations successfully. We as a company have strengths like extensive courses, delivery methodology, marketing expertise, IT driven processes and placement channels whereas, a local partner/franchise has the state of art training facility and maintain quality at the training centres.  

RK: What practices and initiatives have you introduced in Appin Knowledge Solutions?

Khare: We believe that its only through ‘Kaizen (change for the better)’, we can be the front runner. Hence, we have started innovating and improving our system through:

• Franchise feedback
• Student feedback
• Zonal franchise meets

RK: What kind of background is necessary to secure the franchise of your company?

Khare: An entrepreneur with strong business acumen, sound financial background is eligible for taking-up the franchise. All an aspiring entrepreneur needs to do is to fill an application form and then our franchise approval board awards him/her the franchise.  

RK: How many franchised outlets do you presently have?

Khare: We presently have a network of more than 75 franchised centres across the globe. We have reached out to almost 83, 000 customers and over 83 countries via training programmes and products.

RK: Have you faced any challenges while establishing your business? If yes, what were they and how did you overcome those challenges?

Khare: We faced a lot of challenges during the early years of development. These challenges are common to everyone who starts a new business. For instance, cash flow issues, retention of people, quality maintenance while scaling, and following of business model and so on. But through our unique and innovative strategy and core educationist management team, we overcame all the hurdles. The key to our success are never give-up attitude, hard work, customer feedbacks, capable business team and constant innovation.  

RK: Any advice for the young entrepreneurs?

Khare: Have a dream; go for it, never give-up, and work hard to make it happen. It will not only reap benefits for an entrepreneur but also benefit the entire society.  

RK: What are the future plans of the company in terms of expansion through franchising?

Khare: We intend to expand to over 200+ training centres in India. Our plan is to penetrate in the tier II and III cities to expand more aggressively. Apart from this, we are also launching our own high tech product like content filtering, CDR (Call Detail Records) analysis, anti virus and many more.