buytestseries.com

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SUMMER TRAINING REPORT

ON

“Market study & acceptability of an

E-commerce portal in an Education domain”

Submitted to

On

11th July, 2014

In

SIP report submitted in partial fulfillment of the

Requirements for the PGDM programme

By:

Abhishek Panwala

Roll no. : 2013190

Supervisors:

Company Guide: Mr. Pravin Gadge

Faculty Guide: Dr. Vinit Singh Chauhan

Institute Of Management Technology, Nagpur

2013-15

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Acknowledgement

I take this opportunity to express my profound gratitude and deep regards to my guide Dr. Vinit

Singh Chauhan for his exemplary guidance, monitoring and constant encouragement

throughout the course of this thesis. The blessing, help and guidance given by him time to time

shall carry me a long way in the journey of life on which I am about to embark.

I also take this opportunity to express a deep sense of gratitude to my company guide Mr.

Pravin Gadge, Sales Manager – Pune, BuyTestSeries.com for his cordial support, valuable

information and guidance, which helped me in completing this task through various stages.

I am obliged to staff members of Camplace Pvt. Ltd., for the valuable information provided by

them in their respective fields. I am grateful for their cooperation during the period of my

project.

Lastly, I thank almighty, my parents, brother, sisters and friends for their constant

encouragement without which this project would not be possible.

Abhishek Panwala

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Successful Completion Certificate

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Table of Contents

Contents Page No.

1. Acknowledgments 2

2. Successful Completion Certificate 3

3. Executive summary 5

4. Introduction 7

5. Objectives of the study 8

6. About the organization 9

7. Target Customers 11

8. BuyTestSeries services Description 12

9. Features of BTS 13

10. Benefits of BTS 17

11. Pricing 19

12. Promotion 20

13. Registration form 20

14. Data Tabulation & Findings 22

15. Interpretations and Conclusions 27

16. Issues & Challenges 28

17. Recommendations 29

18. Limitations of the study 29

19. Future scope of improvements 30

20. Appendices 31

21. Bibliography 37

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Executive Summary

India is currently a major country which has a plethora of exams pertaining to admissions in various

colleges, recruitments, scholarships etc. a total of around more than 1 crore to 2 crore students & people

who are currently working appear for various competitive exams in India. Different types of exams consist

of oral, offline & online exams.

It is evident from this that students require some special guidance to succeed in these competitive

examinations and thus various coaching centres which have specialized faculties that can guide and

students for these competitive examinations come into picture. The coaching centres prepare students

through not only teaching but also by taking regular mock tests so that students can adapt themselves to

the real time environment of test.

With the advent of technology the competitive exams sector is also not untouched and various competitive

exams have become completely online. Common Admission Test (CAT), Graduate Management

Admission Test (GMAT) are to name a few. Hence coaching centres which trains students for these

entrance examinations have also undergone a change in their test taking processes so as to aid students in

understanding the complexities of these online tests and also to make them adaptable to these new

technologies.

The main focus of this report is related to online entrance exams, which though slow but is growing

steadily as already we can observe that various competitive exams like Common Admission Test (CAT),

Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) already are fully conducted through online medium.

There are many coaching centres in India which still do not have the resources to upgrade their processes

to conduct online mock tests for their students as it requires a specific technical team which deals with

these systems of test taking, hence this demands huge investments. Also there are many entrance

examinations which are still pencil paper based and hence some coaching centres find it an added expense

to make their testing processes online.

To tap this opportunity which could cater to specific needs of the coaching centres pertaining to competitive

examinations with very low or even zero investments from their end buytestseries.com launched an e-

commerce portal which could provide these small coaching centres an opportunity to grow their revenues

not only them, this portal can also cater to the needs of big players in the coaching sector market. The e-

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commerce portal of buytestseries.com not only caters to test series solutions but also provides a cluster of

features to these coaching institutions.

This project gave me a great learning experience and at the same time it gave me enough scope to analyse

the market and apply various marketing concepts which I have learned. The analysis and advice presented

in this Project Report is based on needs and wants as well as the customer’s behaviour mainly based in

Mumbai, Pune & Surat and their requirements and expectations from the product which buytestseries.com

is offering i.e. which type of services they prefer, their queries related to services or what are their

requirements pertaining to e-commerce portal. This project report will also give some valuable insights on

how buytestseries.com can improve its services in order to increase its profits. The project as a whole is

divided into two parts.

The first part gives an insight about competitive exams coaching centres and their various aspects, the

Company Profile, Objectives of the study, Methodology used. Also it will give a brief idea to the reader as

how coaching class sector can use e-commerce portal as a powerful sales and marketing tool to increase

their revenue.

The second part of the report contains qualitative research as how the value addition was done by me in

companies’ current processes to improve its services, opportunities, future prospects recommendations for

coaching class & the issues and challenges faced by me while conducting project.

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Introduction

As already discussed the coaching class sector provides guidance to students in India as per the exams

they are appearing for. But not only this, the coaching classes are also involved in school levels where students

are being taught on the basis of syllabus as per various educational boards of India like Central Board Of

Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) etc. these coaching classes

also take mock test of students for competitive exams like JEE, NTSE – Olympiads etc. Other category of

coaching classes include language classes, corporate training classes, UPSC, MPSC, Personality Development

etc.

Students appearing for competitive exams generally join these coaching classes at three different stages of

their career.

1) Students preparing for entrance exams at graduation level: Students from 10th to 12th

standards come into this segment. Depending on the types of classes available and time which these

students think is suitable for them they join the coaching classes for competitive exams preparation.

For example – many JEE coaching classes provide 2 Year foundation course to students which require

students to join these coaching classes from 10th standard itself, or they also provide provision of 1-

year classroom coaching to students who have passed 12th standard and are planning to give entrance

exam after preparation of 1 year .

2) Students/professionals preparing for entrances at post-graduation level:

students/working professionals which are either currently pursuing graduation or completed

graduation and are now appearing for entrance exams or those who are currently holding a job and

want to go for higher education of various educational institutions which provide post-graduation

degree/diploma for various courses fall under this segment. For example – entrance examination like

CAT which is being conducted every year for entrance in India’s premium B-schools.

3) Students/working professionals preparing for recruitment exams: This category of

students/working professionals include those which want to appear for recruitment exams and want to

work for those firms or organizations which conduct those recruitment exams. For example Union

Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams are being conducted in India for jobs in civil and

administrative services of public sector. Similarly many private sectors also conduct recruitment

exams for recruiting candidates for their various posts.

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Objectives:

1) To acquire new prospects for buytestseries.com from Mumbai, Pune & Surat region.

2) To understand the customer’s expectations regarding e-commerce services and also providing ways

to help them increase their revenue by offering powerful and comprehensive online sales & marketing

services.

3) To revise the schemes offered by buytestseries.com after analysis on data and findings, keeping in

view to increase organization’s profitability and improved customer satisfaction level.

4) To recommend the organization business strategies and plans that could help in acquisition of new

customers.

Methodology Used

To achieve the above objectives several concepts of sales and marketing were used. The following

methods were practised to obtain these objectives:

1) Rigorous brainstorming sessions were conducted on the business processes of buytestseries.com

in order to deeply understand the features offered by buytestseries.com

2) In order to understand the customer behaviour towards adoption of online marketing and e-

commerce portal several qualitative research techniques like structured questionnaire and open

ended unstructured questionnaire was conducted amongst the registered customers.

3) Weekly updates were shared with the company guide to share the queries generated during sales

calls and also to discuss how to work on those queries.

4) With the focus on value addition for the organization, various qualitative data collected through

questionnaire were analyzed and brainstorming was done in order to substantiate the analysis

which could increase the organization’s profitability.

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About organization

Camplace Pvt. Ltd. was a dream of a two very good friends just out of engineering colleges to do

something about the challenges students faced during Campus recruitment. Having been a part of the system

themselves, they set it upon themselves to do something to change the system through the use of technology.

That is how Camplace was born.

Established in 2012, Camplace Pvt Ltd has been at the forefront of Campus Recruitment and

Automation. Started by a team of 3 visionaries who dreamt of changing the recruitment landscape of campus

recruitment in India - Camplace has come a long way in a short span of time.

In the last 2 years, Camplace has been featured on Bloomberg TV as one of the most promising start-ups in

India. Camplace has also been the 1st runner up in the Microsoft BizSpark India Start-up Challenge held in

2013. As of today, Camplace has tie ups with more than 200 companies and 90+ colleges comprising 10,000+

students with an aim of increasing its reach all over the world.

Through perseverance and complete focus Camplace grew in size and reach. Today with close to 4000+

opportunities provided and more than 200+ companies associated Camplace is on its path to the dream it was

envisaged to be.

Directors :

• Shirish Bhatt

• Himanshu Jain

• Surendra Sancheti

Their Clients: Their clients are the most important stakeholders for them. Complete client satisfaction is the goal that

ever member of Camplace aims to achieve. The team always aims to 'Wow' its users with the experience of

using Camplace.

Management: Camplace is owned & managed by a team of highly reputed and focused individuals from different

walks of life. They aim to achieve utmost professionalism and the highest quality in all deliverables in

Camplace.

Community: Camplace is dedicated to giving back to the society as and when it can. As a part of ITI initiative,

Camplace offers free services to different ITIs across India to assist the weaker sections of the society to get

a placement opportunity.

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After achieved a huge success, Camplace felt a need to help students prepare for competitive examinations

through guidance of best coaching centres which are spread across the industry. Hence, BuyTestSeries.com

was born with the aim of helping them to choose among the best series providers and coaching classes across

all over India.

Overview - Competitive Exams:

An examination where candidates are ranked according to their marks or grades.

To get Merit List

To get Good Candidates / Students for a specific purpose

To get Admissions

To get Job

To get Scholarships

Recruitment Exams:

Flowchart 1: Types of exams

Entrance Exam

• To get admission

• JEE-Main(AIEEE),JEE Advanced, CAT, BITSAT,AIPMT, MH-CET, CMAT, GATE, NMAT, XAT,

Recruitment Exams

• To get admission( Private or Government)

• IBPS Bank Po, Bank Clerk, SCRA, MPSC, NDA

Other Exams

• To get Topper, Merit List, Scholar Ships

• NTSE, MTSE

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What is Test Series :

Test: A series of questions, problems, or physical responses designed to determine knowledge,

intelligence or ability.

Test Series: Set of Tests

i. For Classes – I to PG

ii. Competitive Exams

Target Customers:

Buytestseries.com identified its customer base so that to clearly target those customers which are

relevant to offerings it provides. Before starting any project it is a matter of prime importance to

identify the target segments which are suitable for product and services we are offering. Below are the

target markets which were identified by BuyTestSeries.com :

1.) Online TestSeries provider:

Test providers whose test series can be attempted by aspirants of various competitive examinations

through online mode. These test providers may/may not provide the formal coaching to students but

will always provide practice test series to students for preparations of their entrance examinations.

Ex. Aakash, MyOraangeSlate.com, Test Funda, Practice Guru.

2.) Coaching Class and Online TestSeries Provider:

Coaching class who provides the formal coaching to aspirants and also TestSeries (either their own or

they are using some other test providers online platform) for the competitive examinations.

Ex. IMS, Endeavor, Zignasa, CET-King, Global Careers, GEE-BEE, Futurism, Vidyamandir

3.) Coaching Class and Offline TestSeries Provider:

Those Coaching class who provides the formal coaching to aspirants and also “Off-line” TestSeries

(Pen-Paper based) for the competitive examinations.

Ex. Aspirations Infinite, Modulus, Focus Academy

4.) Only Coaching Classes:

Those Coaching class who provides the formal coaching to aspirants on the basic of syllabus of various

educational boards or universities.

Ex. Engineering Coaching, Commerce Coaching, Specific Subject Coaching (Maths, Chemistry,

Physics), Spoken English.

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Buytestseries.com Services Description:

BuyTestSeries.com a.k.a. BTS, is an ecommerce portal dedicated for the online sale and purchase of

test series for competitive exams. It also provides all information about coaching institutes / online test

providers in different cities across India to increase visibility and enrolments.

The portal connects different types of providers like coaching institutes, individuals, authors and

companies with students, working professionals or any individual appearing for competitive exams. Also the

providers can attract more individuals to enroll for their coaching facilities.

Figure 1: BuyTestSeries.com Homepage

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Features of BTS:

The portal provides features for Coaching Classes / Individuals / Test Preparation

companies who want to multiply their revenue by selling their test series practice material to the students

across India. It can be used by any type of providers small, medium or large, known as a big brand or

just an initial starter. The only thing you need to possess is good number of questions which can be

marketed to a larger audience.

Sell your Test/Test series:

Bring your business online and leverage the power of the internet and reach out to millions of

students across India through BuyTestSeries.com and our distribution partners. Upload and

configure your Test Series / Tests with easy to use tools to start selling immediately. If you

already have your own testing platform, then just list your products to start getting orders.

Figure 2: Types of exams

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Get Online Admission:

Class providers can upload information about their courses and batches which will be

visible to students of any region. Students will be able to search their preferred batch and can

book their admission by making the payments online. This way our platform helps students to

identify right batch based on their convenience.

Figure 3: Online Admission Support featured on buytestseries.com

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Distributor and Partners:

A large distribution chain offers BuyTestSeries.com coupons to students who can purchase products

online. The sales that take place using these discount coupons helps in earning additional revenue for the

distributor and builds visibility among students.

Generate Sales with Revenue:

Real time reviews for your Tests / Tests Series and Coaching Classes / Individuals / Test

preparation companies direct from customers; help further improve and refine your services.

Capture the ratings and feedback which generate additional sales of test series and ensures

more admissions for your institute.

Figure 4: Customer Feedback

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Promote Your Brand:

You will be able to promote yourself as a superstar with your detailed profile pages.

Highlight your unique features and showcase your Brand to a large number of customers. Your

online gallery allows you to showcase your infrastructure, demo lectures or any moments of joy

and happiness.

Figure 5: Mini website on BTS portal

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Benefits of Product:

The portal provides various benefits to provider which can increase the sales of the test series and also

increase the number of enrollments for the coaching facilities.

Benefits are as below.

Build Online Visibility:

Their online advertising tools promote your brand among students to get more sales. Build your presence before the right target audience in a highly competitive online space.

Increase your Admissions:

Fill your seats faster by displaying your proposed batches online. Book admissions of students

at a click of a button and save on your marketing expenses. With Buytestseries.com

we ensure you get end to end services with direct admissions.

Increase Product sales:

BuyTestSeries.com is a website with dedicated and strong focus on test series and coaching

facilities for effective marketing of your products. This results in better sales and enquiries as

our efforts are concentrated on your facilities.

Branding for your Profile:

Our smart profile pages make it easier for students to discover your brand and your

offerings which generate real time sales and enquiries.

Get reviews and ratings:

With real reviews directly from your customers you have the best marketing team on board.

Happy customers are your best brand ambassadors.

Large distribution network:

Join the distribution network by handing over the discount coupons to students. Purchases made with these coupons helps you earn sales commission.

Promote Among Students:

The more visitors you can get the more will be the growth of your business. Get advertising tools to promote your brand among students to get more sales.

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Process Simple Flow:

3. After Successful Payment:

Online Test Series

Benefits / Features:

Online Visibility Online Global Sale Reviews Online Marketing For Coaching Class – Discount

Coupons, Online Admission Platform.

2. Provides: Online Test Series Test Provider’s

Features Options to choose

best Online Payment

facility

Online Store for Sale & Purchase of Practice

Test Series for Various

Competitive Exams

Classes / Company Students

1. Registration on

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Plans- Options Available: PRICING:

Features / Plans FREE

BASIC

(Rs. 25,000)

/ Yr

PREMIUM

(Rs. 40,000) / Yr

Online Listing with Detailed

Profile Page

Online Reviews and Feedback

Online Admissions

Online Test Series

Discount Coupon for students 10% 15% 20%

Sales Commission on Disc.

Coupons 5% 7.5% 10%

Revenue Share of Provider 40% 50% 60%

Technology Platform

Control Panel with Login

Analytical Reports

5 Promotional Emails in a year

Table 1: buytestseries.com plans and various packages for coaching classes

The features are available to you at ZERO initial investment. All you need to do is set up your

profile on BuyTestSeries.com and list you products. Based on sale of your products, you have to pay

50% commission to BuyTestSeries.com.

For e.g.: If your product is listed for Rs. 1000/-, then for every sale you will earn Rs. 500/- and our

share will be Rs. 500/-.

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Online Seats Booking For Your Coaching Class / Classes :

This is also available to you at ZERO initial investment. All you need to do is to provide your

branches, courses, batches & fees details to us. Based on online booking of the seats, you have to pay

15% commission (Per Seat Basis) to BuyTestSeries.com. For e.g. If your Fees for Course “A” is of Rs.

5000/-, then for every online seats bookings, our share will be Rs. 750/-.

You do not need to do any marketing or allied activity at your end. The entire promotion and sale takes

place on our website. You are earning at absolutely ZERO investment and paying us only when we perform.

Promotion:

• We will be promoting our portal through social media like Facebook where we are

connected to multiple groups.

• We have our products like Camplace and Talentick. Camplace is a product for Campus

recruitment automation. Through this we get connected to students from Engineering,

Management, Diploma, Arts, Commerce, Science colleges. There are many students who want

to go to higher education and buytestseries.com will provide them assistance. We are already

connected to more than 20000 candidates and 100+ colleges.

• We have a tie up with Institute of Company Secretaries of India through which are

connected to more than 15000 candidates.

• We have a large distribution network for marketing your online products at different

colleges and student dominant areas.

Registration-cum- Questionnaire Form:

Everyone knows the importance of Questionnaire. It contains lot of data for the segment on which we

are doing market research. BTS has come up with a Registration-cum- Questionnaire Form which contains

all details about the coaching classes as well as Online TestSeries providers. It contains maximum information

of the customers for BTS. It includes their name, address, their branches names, what they are (Coaching

classes/Online TestSeries provider), what types of facilities they are providing, their payment modes, contact

person information and all things. It will help BTS to create their mini website on e-commerce portal.

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Data Tabulation and Findings:

After the plan was designed, sales calls were made in Pune, Mumbai and Surat locations where

various coaching classes dealing with different types of competitive examinations coaching were visited

and data was collected as per the companies’ prescribed format. It is to be noted that all these calls were

cold calls which implies that customer was unaware of the product and they require a demonstration of

the services which are being provided by buytestseries.com. The data of customers collected is tabulated

as below:

Figure 6: Sample Size

Out of the total calls, I succeeded in registering 45 customers at buytestseries.com to avail its various services

(see appendices). The data entries of registered customers were made in this separate format which was a

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prescribed format of buytestseries.com, this data keeps track of the various details of clients required by

buytestseries.com which are yet to be received from them, these details includes details such as faculty details,

test series in MS word format, online admissions batch details format etc. to keep status up to date and also

helps in rigorous follow-ups for collection of these details. Kindly check appendices for the detailed data of

registered customers.

Rows filled with Red colour in table in appendices section shows that all details of customers were received

as per the plan selection. The unfilled rows show that there are still some details to be collected from registered

customers. Various queries of customers were taken into account so that further work can be done to improve

the services of buytestseries.com.

The questionnaire from registration form which was close ended question, it is to be noted that only the

relevant questions which relates to the findings are being tabulated below and the corresponding data is

tabulated as below:

S. No. Question Yes No

1 Do you provide course

study material?

45 0

2 Do you Provide Video

Study Material?

20 25

3 Do you provide test

series?

45 0

4 Do you have online

payment facility?

2 43

Table 2: Questions from registration-cum-questionnaire form

Unstructured questionnaire included the below questions which were being asked from all the registered

customers during one to one interview to find their awareness level pertaining to e-commerce portal & online

technology platform for test series.

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S. No. Question Yes No

1 Do you know the

concept of online seat

booking?

5 40

2 Do you know the

concept of e-

commerce shopping?

35 10

3 Do you know how

online testing platform

works?

15 30

4 Do you provide free

demo lectures?

43 2

5 Are you interested in

converting your

offline test series to

online and selling it

across India through

our portal?

10 35

Table 3: Questions from unstructured questionnaire

Analysis:

During my sales-calls, I met different-different types of customers as well as students. I interacted

with them and have found different mind-set they are having about e-commerce portal. They just know

that e-commerce portal is only for online shopping. We have to make them understand about e-

commerce portal for education sector that BTS launched for Competitive exams.

The roles assigned to me were,

1. Identifying market leads for the sales of products and generate revenue.

2. Schedule demo with colleges / companies / classes for the various products of company

3. Follow up on the closure of the deals

4. Build online visibility about the products to generate inbound queries

Market research was conducted in Pune, Mumbai as well as Surat region about e-commerce portal in

education sector. It was observed that majority of customers were aware of the services offered by

“justdial.com”, “Snapdeal.com” which was free listing of various kinds of institutions, businesses etc.. Their

awareness level was restricted to that, it was important to make customers understand that an e-commerce

portal which pertains to education sector can be a powerful tool for sales, marketing and promotions for their

businesses.

As we open Filpkart.com, there is a list of segregation about what we want to shop. Whether we want to

shop for Men, Women or Children. Then there are subcategories for Men/Women/Children for their clothing,

footwear, watches, and fragrances. So using the concept of flipkart and relating it to the offerings of

buytestseries.com customers were being educated of how they can utilize the services of our company.

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Ex. If a student/aspirant wants to search for the coaching classes for CAT in Mumbai-Maharashtra, will

follow the below steps:

a) Open BuyTestSeries.com

b) click on “Coaching Class” tab on the top

c) one page will open which is a combination of “justdial.com and Flipcart.com”

d) Select state, then select city in that state from the location filter available on website

e) Click on competitive exam for which student/aspirant is interested in.

f) If facilities provided by coaching classes suits the student need, student can contact the coaching class

by using details from “contact us” tab displayed in the coaching class profile page.

When a student follows all the steps mentioned above, he/she will get a list of coaching classes of

his/her choice. Then after student needs to choose the best class amongst all of them. That can be chosen

by rating given to them or by the “Image” that particular class is having on students mind. When a student

select any of the classes, one mini website will open of particular class which is created on the basis of

Registration form as well as details given by particular classes. It would be very easier for students to get

their favourable classes through it.

Flipkart

Figure 7: Flipkart.com

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BuyTestSeries.com

Figure 7: BuyTestSeries.com

Findings

Enormous findings related to Level of awareness among e-commerce, their interests in their classes’

marketing, online admission which leads to increase their revenue etc. were captured through registration cum

questionnaire form and also through unstructured questionnaire during the sales call, the following

interpretation were derived from Questionnaire:

1. Level Of Awareness Among Prospects

The main interpretation was Customers were aware of only Justdial.com, i.e. free listing and they don’t want

to accept any facilities beyond it though BTS is providing these facilities on a free basis. After explaining

them all the facilities to them, they found this concept more beneficial than Just dial. The reasons were:

a) Buytestseries.com gives customers an opportunity to create their mini web-site on a free basis.

b) BTS is not only offering customer’s details on its portal like Justdial but only gives them a

chance to put their faculty details along with their photographs, photos of their classes, facilities

they are proving to students and many more things on a Zero base investment

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c) The major advantage of buytestseries.com as compared to services of justdial.com was that

buytestseries.com free listing services caters to exclusively coaching classes sector rather then

listing of every business on website as is the case with Justdial.com

2. Video lectures selling online

Customer’s observations was also captured through the videos study material under the “facilities provided”

section. The major finding or more precisely the suggestion given by customers was to start selling their video

lectures through online e-commerce services of buytestseries.com. This was a major finding as it gives both

the clients as well buytestseries.com a new business dimension.

3. Selling Of Study Materials Online

Through the question of “Do you provide study material” major finding captured was to start selling the study

material of coaching classes also through buytestseries.com. This could also be a new business prospect for

the clients as well as buytestseries.com

4. Online payment facility

All the customers weren’t having online payment facility for students where students can pay tuition fee

through online mode. This was also an important finding as buytestseries.com can exploit this concept in

future to attract more coaching classes, this is because these facilities are being provided by buytestseries.com

without any hassles and coaching classes just have to pay a minimal percentage of commission to

buytestseries.com on every seat registered for their institution.

5. Consumer Behaviour

Qualitative finding related to consumer behaviour towards a startup service was also

captured. Clients are not willing to invest on a start up as they believe it is a risky

business proposition. But at the same time they are willing to use the services when

provided free of cost. This gives a valuable marketing insight that Indians are value

seeking customers and they believe in getting higher returns on investment of minimal

amount.

Interpretations/Conclusions:

Interpretations were formulated on the basis of the study conducted and discussions & meetings were held

with management team on how to improve the existing services of buytestseries.com in order to provide high

value to customer. It is to be noted that not only value proposition for customers was important during the

discussions but increasing buytestseries.com profitability was also a major agenda of the meetings. Based on

the above inputs from my study the previously shown plan (Refer table 1) was revised and designed in such a

manner so that customer value as well as buytestseries.com profitability both aspects can be covered. Below

is the detailed pricings of revised offerings of buytestseries.com

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Table 4: Revised plans and package of buytestseries.com

Previous Plan and new plan comparison:

To increase cost effectiveness free conversion of test series service was terminated and conversion was

made paid.

Basic plan of 25000/- was changed to 5000 and questions limit was put on the test providers.

Relationship manager assigned to premium package clients to ensure responsiveness and customer

satisfaction.

For customer acquisition, sales commission to people who refers the test series of a particular institute

is adopted. This strategy will aid buytestseries.com to gain traffic on website, which in long term can

increase profitability.

Other than the offered service, buytestseries.com also started a service for advertising the coaching

class on their website which coaching classes can use as an online marketing tool to attract students.

Issues & Challenges:

There were many issues faced by me while conducting this study, these issues pertain to consumer

behavior towards the services, issues in searching for target customers etc. all these issues are listed below:

1) Unawareness about e-commerce platform: Customers’ inability to understand an e-commerce

platform functioning was a major hurdle. To make them understand the concept of e-commerce

platform catering to education domain examples of services offered by justdial.com, flipkart.com

and bookmyshow.com were given.

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2) Problem in acquiring appointments: As my major job was to find out a target customer through

online and then I have to make cold call. Many times it happens that during my visit of the classes,

they did not entertain me as they think I would be a salesman and they won’t let me meet a concern

person over there. This was a major issue that I have to meet a concern person/ decision maker to

discuss the offerings about BuyTestSeries.com and I won’t get any appointment.

3) Target customers data: As BuyTestSeries.com is a start-up, there was no specific database of

coaching classes with BuyTestSeries.com. This can be counted as another major issue as I have to

search for coaching classes in different area on a daily basis. I have to search about coaching class’s

location, address, contact person’s name on Justdial.com or Sulekha.com or Yellowpages.com.

4) Formats collection: Format collection was the most challenging task in the project. I have to

collect formats from the registered customers like their faculty details, their photographs, their

educational qualification, their designation, coaching class’s photos, their batch details along with

fees structure and that need to be uploaded on BuyTestSeries’s online portal.

Recommendations:

1. For online seat booking, BuyTestSeries.com charges 15% on total fees to coaching classes. Rather

than fix a percentage, they can decide a fix amount per student reason being high fees charged by

coaching classes.

2. They can have a tie-up with their registered customers to publish their adverts (i.e. Logo that

Facebook and Twitter has) in coaching classes’ brochure so that it will create awareness amongst

students.

3. As they are not into business of selling of online study material or video lectures, they should come

up with new offerings that will help coaching class and students “Mutually”.

4. After getting an adequate awareness in market about BTS, they should make free listing of a

coaching classes a paid service as Justdial do. Those who pays higher they will be on the top when

students search on BuyTestSeries’s portal.

Limitations of the study:

1) Geographical Limitations

2) Consumer Feedback

3) Unawareness of e-commerce portal

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Future scope of improvements

1) They should generate a system with target customer’s database which will help employee and save

human resources that can utilized for sales.

2) Hyderabad, Delhi, Rajasthan-Kota, are known as the hubs for the best coaching institutes who provides

the best coaching for competitive exams. So they should target these customers first to attract more

customers. .

3) They should approach Individual/authors because these individuals/authors generally are short of

investments and they always search for a publication house who sponsor their articles/stories. So

BuyTestSeries.com should come up with offerings that will be mutually beneficial in term of revenue

generation..

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Appendices

Registered customers details are tabulated below:

Figure 8: Registered customers details

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Bibliography

Books

1) Marketing management, Philip Kotler 14 edition

Websites

1) www.camplace.co.in

2) www.buytestseries.com

http://www.camplace.co.in/

http://www.buytestseries.com/