A place meant for the young and the smart. A place brimming with life experiences of students as they pass another great hurdle of life, an MBA.
InsideIIM started as a blog which has now transformed into "The Management Education University of the future". Over the years, this website was one of the chosen few which actually made a difference in the lives of its readers. The funny thing is that its founders too strive towards the same.
InsideIIM boasts of the best talent in the country and grows larger year after year. The major services provided by the website are content (Student Stories + Chat forum) and Placements & Recruitment. They have collaborated with several institutions and organisations to connect prospective students and employees with their dreams.
Now without further ado, lets find out more about the website and the services from Ankit, one of the founders of InsideIIM.
On the Website
Mohit: I bet, your "What's worth reading?" posts are a real crowd puller. How much is the truth behind it and what importance do you give to similar posts which lead your readers towards external websites?
Ankit: I don't know what you mean by truth but we are here to solve a problem for our users. Our users want curated quality content. Shreyas does it and we are happy to do it even if it send traffic to other sites. InsideIIM is a platform and our aim is to solve our users problem whichever way possible. What's worth reading is very popular and Shreyas Panse is a star.
Mohit: Good to hear it Ankit, Currently, you have a lot of stories at insideiim.com with several of them written by your own authors. Do you ever feel the need to revise a previous article?
Ankit: Data based stories need a revision but personal stories and opinions no
On Growth Strategy
Mohit: I once overheard a discussion at Quora which said, "InsideIIM covers only crème de la crème of B-Schools", do you strive and pride yourself at being an elitist website, or was it by an accident?
Ankit: Over 80% of the content is user generated. There is no design to involve only the supposedly top ranked schools. But when we started we had to start with a limited set of schools. Today the platform is open to all business schools. Any student from any part of the world can write and we will publish. There is no intentional elitism. But the name became catchy so we stuck with it.
On Business
Mohit: For the sake of my readers we'll come to the business part, what is the revenue model of insideiim.com? OR How do you decide which revenue source to act upon?
Ankit: Advertising and Recruitment. We help business school and universities reach out to too talent. We help companies recruit top talent. Currently we don't charge students or users anything.
Mohit: On a blog of your stature, I'm curious about the source of the majority of your readers (Is it through Email Marketing, Google Advertisements, Organic Growth Or some other method?)
Ankit: People keep recommending our content on Facebook. Also our content is highly relevant or Google gives us better discoverability. Emailer came in very [late] because until. 2013 late we didn't even have proper registration on the site
On Making a Difference
Mohit: Being an active part of many aspiring students' lives, How does it feel when students attribute their successes to insideiim.com?
Ankit: We didn't make any money in the first 12 - 18 months. That's what kept us going and it still keeps us going.
Mohit: With the ripples you're creating, I'm sure you affecting millions of lives indirectly. Thank you so much for your candid responses. We'll wrap-up here, but the readers can ask Ankit by commenting below. I'll make sure your questions reach InsideIIM.
Note. The author is pleased to divulge that though the interaction with the founders for the interview went on for about 3 months, it was in a scheduled public chat forum when the author finally got a hold of Ankit.
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