The 'Team'ie

" The Biggest Risk is Not Taking Any Risk..." - Mark Zuckerberg

Well, this is exactly what Shivanu believed in when he cofounded Teamie, the cloud-based collaborative learning platform that fits into any ecosystem. Teamie is a Singapore-based company.

With more than 10 years’ experience in sales and consulting in the ICT space, Shivanu has worked with various organisations and helped them with their ICT strategy and go-to- market plans. He is also a keynote speaker and widely quoted in the media for his knowledge and vast experience as an ICT Analyst and Consultant.

Meet the ever-humble, modest and well-spoken gentleman, Shivanu Shukla, in this short and sweet conversation with me...

1. Your Introduction...

I manage the business affairs of Teamie, and is responsible for the product strategy and development, go-to-market strategy and sales. I work with educational institutes as well as enterprises, and help them move their learning-teaching experience to an online and collaborative learning platform that leverages on the power of social, mobile and cloud.

Prior to Teamie, I served as Associate Director at Frost & Sullivan, where I led a business unit across Asia-Pacific including sales, research & consulting teams.

He holds a Bachelor in Engineering with Honors with a Minor in Technopreneurship, National University of Singapore, and is a recipient of the prestigious SIA-NOL Scholarship.

2.          How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

I was working at Frost & Sullivan before starting Teamie, and was actively tracking Enterprise communication & collaboration space, including the impact that enterprise social networks may have.

Learning systems, at the time, were (and, in many instances today, still are) very transactional, and were built with the idea of only delivering content.

At the same time, Social had become a de-facto mode of communication & collaboration, Mobile proliferation was on the rise, and Cloud was fast becoming a reliable & scalable way to deliver IT applications.

It felt like a perfect storm to disrupt the learning platform space to make learning engaging and bring a 21st century learning experience to the classroom and beyond.

3.          What was your mission at the outset?

Learning platforms were built in the late 1990s and early 2000s with the primary objective of delivering learning content, and that has made these systems to be very transactional in nature, where students come to download resources or upload their assignments and check grades.

However, with social platforms becoming a de-facto mode of communication and collaboration, and mobile proliferation and cloud computing on the rise, I seized the opportunity to disrupt the learning platform space to make learning engaging, as well as bring a 21^st century learning experience to the classroom and beyond.

Teamie addresses the challenge of engaging students in learning in an information-rich social media-driven hyper-connected mobile-centric world. eLearning has been around for many years, but the lack of engagement has reduced its effectiveness. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are transforming the way education is being delivered and pushing institutions to provide a more flexible learning approach. 

Teamie helps institutions and organizations in making learning more engaging & fun, accessible anytime anywhere; make learners part of a community, and help teachers with analytics to drive better performance.

4.          When did you "charter" the business?

We started operations in May 2011 in Singapore.

5.          How many employees?

30

6.          What service(s) or product(s) do you offer?

Cloud-based Collaborative Learning Platform.

7.          How do you advertise your business?

We spend very little on Marketing. We sponsor some industry events as a way to connect with potential customers and educate the market about our offerings.

8.          How do you advertise your product/service?

Same as above.

9.          To what do you attribute your success?

Wouldn’t call it a success yet, so not sure how to answer this. What we have achieved in 5 years is good (there’s a lot more to do), and having a good team is a critical ingredient for success. :-)

10.    What do you look for in an employee?

Apart from the usual traits of being smart & capable, one of the important traits I’d look for is the ability to take ownership and responsibility for one’s work. If you can take ownership of the work assigned to you, you will ensure that you are satisfied with the effort you put in and the results you can get. Instead of just getting the job done, you focus on getting it done the right way. This results in good quality work, and the satisfaction of such work for the employee ensures they are happy, despite the stresses and challenges that they will inevitably face.

11.    What made you choose your current location?

I came to Singapore in 2001 to study at the National University of Singapore, and have since spent 15 years here. Apart from the fact that I was already here, Singapore provides a fairly painless process of starting up. This coupled with good infrastructure, being a hub for the ASEAN region, and a developing investor & start-up ecosystem, makes Singapore a great choice.

12.    What are your company’s goals?

We want to be the dominant learning platform provider in Asia Pacific in the next 2-3 years.

13.    Do you work locally or globally?

Regionally J We have offices in Singapore and Delhi, India. We have customers in 8 countries, mostly in Asia Pacific. Being a cloud-based solution, we have the flexibility to handle customers anywhere in the world.

14.    What is unique about your business/ product?

Founded in 2011, Teamie is the first social learning platform in Singapore that creates a private learning network for the school, college or enterprise to engage users at a level similar to Facebook and LinkedIn, by bringing the power of social networking to education.

We believe that we learn better when we learn together. We feel that we learn better when there is an opportunity to discuss, ask questions, share ideas about the learning topic instead of just consuming a video or a document alone. The discussion around the learning content helps improve the understanding of the individual as well as the group as whole.

Teamie’s objective is to make learning collaborative and drive engagement through peer-to-peer or student-to-teacher discussions about the learning topics to improve learning outcomes and performance.

Teamie also provides mobile access through the Android and iOS apps for anytime, anywhere access and in a way extend the physical boundary of the classroom. Its virtual progress analytics enables educators, students, parents, employers and employees to stay updated with progress on individual and group activity and performance.

15.    What are your responsibilities as the business owner?

In short, everything; from product strategy to sales, from customer support to training, from mundane tasks to the exciting endeavours. The overall responsibility of success and failure lies on the shoulders of the founders.

16.    Have you ever turned down a client?

Yes, sometimes we’ve had to walk away from opportunities where they  ask for certain customisations that take us too far from our product vision.

17.    If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Be ready for the ride, and try to enjoy the ride as it’ll be harder than you think, it’ll take longer than you can imagine, it’ll cost more than you budgeted and it will test you on all fronts – social, economic, physical and mental.

It is a marathon, not a sprint!

Well said, Shivanu, and all the very best in future...

You may check https://theteamie.com for any other information.