Testpitara is a one-stop shop on knowledge management. Designed to cater to corporates and education service providers, it is a virtual knowledge management hub on cloud, one of its kind in India. MYB gets one on one with the co-founder of testpitara.com - Sanjay Athavale, about his childhood, his modest upbringing and his upward rise in the entrepreneurial world.

I was born in Vadodra, Gujarat. My father was a government servant and given the transferable nature of his job, we frequently moved in and around Gujarat. The first seven years of my childhood, was spent living in a few small villages in India, where I was born and brought up. Subsequently, when my father got transferred to Vadodara, where I spent the rest of my childhood and completed my education.

I studied in a Gujarati-medium at Navjeevan High School. Thereafter, graduating from school, I got admission at the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University of Vadodara, where I also did my Masters. I studied commerce for my Masters. I also took a course in computer science from NIIT at the behest of my father.

While at Vadodara, I joined Gujarat Krida Mandal, an institute known for its sporting and cultural activities, the founder member of Gujarat Krida Manadal, whom I consider my mentor, honed my personality significantly. Since my boyhood days, I have always been fascinated with games and cultural activities, especially when I was a part of the Mandal. In fact, I represented my university at the national level in kho-kho! I was also an avid cricket player, having represented the Mandal at the local tournament.

When I entered the professional space, I began immersing myself into working on computer software and automating business models by writing some small programs. Mr Sanjay Bhatia observed this ability and started mentoring me. Together, we have worked on several major projects and have implemented the same in major industrial giants like GFSC, L&T, Indian Rayon and many more. He has played a very crucial role in my professional life. In fact, I am still in touch with him and seek his advice on all crucial decisions.

My venture www.testpitara.com has come to be recognised as India’s first education portal by most major media houses like Asian Age, Business India, Mobility India. The high point or my biggest achievement was when the portal made the cover page story in SME World.”

I specialise in developing different kinds of software for applications. At my first job as a computer engineer, I developed a very generalised scalable and user-friendly programme. I learnt a lot during this project, in particular, my ability to think and implement product strategy, skills that have really helped me considerably through my job life.

Following which, I joined Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. as an information executive in the Management Information Services (MIS) department, where I implemented my first application development work.

Deep down, I always wanted to head my own company. Besides my current company, there weren’t any other endeavours that I had tried and let go off. The reason being that I always strived to run my own company, and work for the Indian community by giving back to the society in the education sector.

At testpitara.com, we work as a team, an extended family of sorts, towards a common objective of disseminating education to the remotest areas of India. Our open work culture and  flat hierarchy allows everyone the space to voice their opinions, thereby helping us understand each other and keep things transparent in every decision.

From the beginning, the bigger picture was always to operate to deliver education pan India. We tied up with a leading mobile company to improve the talent of their service executive at their centres across India. During our discussion about the portal Tespitara.com, we decided to model it on the five pillars of education: Build, Share, Interact, Evaluate and Analyse.