A lot of times, in our careers, we find ourselves looking for direction.How do I prepare for an interview for my dream job ? Should I take up that job ? Will that profile help me reach where I want to be in 10 years ? Will my product work in the market ? How should I prepare for getting funded? etc are some of the questions that most of us face on a regular basis. A few lucky ones find the right mentors whom they can go to for an advice. However, many who don’t find such mentors feel seem a little lost in this world and wonder if we can find someone who can guide us correctly!
Zuriy.com, a company providing on demand expert advice now solves this huge problem that all of us face.
[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” ]Zuriy is video chat based marketplace that easily connects users with best elite experts. The company works with the mission of turning privileged knowledge about employers, industries and career paths into common knowledge. In the process, they help job-seekers land their dream jobs, help employers hire the most qualified and motivated candidates and help entrepreneurs scale their business to next level.[/box]
“Even after 15 years of Google, there is still so much privileged knowledge, just sitting in experts heads; missing from digital world and is not easily accessible. Our mission is to democratize the access to experts knowledge. We aim to positively impact one billion Indians, by 2020.”
says Chintan Thakkar, coFounder at Zuriy.com. Once you subscribe to Zuriy, you get access to a number of blogs and webinars on common topics that might be helpful to a large number of audiences. Zuriy also allows you the book video chat sessions with industry experts in order to get advice specific to your situation. Zuriy uses a combination of paid and free content made available to users to generate revenues.
“Having a video chat definitely makes you more comfortable in sharing your problems and makes the conversation very easy, personal and informal. Something that an email or written chat conversation might not be able to achieve.”
adds Chintan. The experts selected by Zuriy are entrepreneurs, startup CEOs, industry experts, leaders working at very senior positions in their organizations and so on.
Zuriy was launched on 1st December 2014 and has 100 registered experts and more than 200 registered clients till now. They are a 4 member team with 3 more people working with them on a part time contract basis.
The company was founded by Chintan Thakkar and Rajat Lala. Chintan has completed Master of Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied systems and entrepreneurship. Chintan worked at Goldman Sachs as Vice President in their Technology group from 2007 to 2014 prior to starting Zuriy. At Zuriy, Chintan can be found on the phone with experts, reviewing metrics in Excel or dreaming up new ways to help advice seekers connect with experts.Rajat has worked on a few start-ups in technology sector and gained expertise on starting up new venture. Recently, Rajat worked as senior software engineer at Citrix to oversight their iPhone Apps development. At Zuriy, he can be found in running behind different priorities of start-up, forming out system that team can follow and discussing ways to scale up system.
So what next for Zuriy in the coming few months ?
“We want to create awareness about the importance of getting an expert advice. In India, traditionally we are not used to paying for advice. Zuriy will create a radical shift in the Indian mindset wherein users will have to pay for the advice they get. Also building an expert network is the next big priority for us.To be able to create value it is critical that CEOs, VPs, MDs of all companies big or small are on our network and we are working hard towards achieving this.”
says Rajat.So what advice do Rajat and Chintan have for all the entrepreneurs out there ?
“When you are providing your service via website, it is necessary that you learn application development by yourself and do not depend on anyone else. Focus on creating a lean startup. Do idea validation before you go ahead an build a product. Do not just build a product that competition has missed. Goto market and test your product before deciding on an idea.”
