In the second edition of our #socialenterprisestories, we hear from Aditya Bose about his incredible startup journey, and the lessons he learnt from ProBano.
Aditya is the founder and CEO of ProBano, a career guidance social enterprise. An engineer by training and entrepreneur by heart, he has grand plans to provide quality and affordable career counselling for all youths in India. Read on to find out more about what motivates him, and the incredible impact he’s making.
Born and bred in Delhi, India, Aditya graduated with a Bachelors of Engineering in Information Technology from the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST) Shibpur. While he studied to become an IT engineer, his real interest lay in education and entrepreneurship. In College, Aditya participated in many Business case competitions, initially with the thought of earning certifications to add to his CV and earning good prize money. While he did not win the first time, the experiences grew his interest in entrepreneurship. When he first conceived and pitched the idea of ProBano at a case competition, he was growing increasingly disinterested in his major, IT, despite his best efforts at reading programming books. Upon asking his hostel mates, he realised many chose to major in Engineering or IT based on advice from family and friends when deciding what to study in University. He realised there was huge societal pressure for many Indian youths to choose certain tried-and-tested career paths, in order to earn more money. An intriguing and relatable problem, he began to do more research and discovered a growing problem at hand. He found out that: - Only 46% of students surveyed are found to be employable - 60% of employees are not satisfied with their current jobs He also saw that many underprivileged students studying in government schools in villages, were thinking of working as daily wage laborers later on in life. They had not considered other career options, such as teaching as possible future professions. The more he researched, the more he was inexplicably drawn to the cause. Passionate about helping others find their true career calling, he continued to iterate and polish his ideas in later business case competitions. In his third year of University, he created a Facebook page for ProBano and began recruiting his team. Finally in July 2017, after graduating, he took the plunge and started working on the fledgling startup full-time. And the rest, is history.
