Manasvi Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of India’s largest scholarship platform.
Achievement. 30. CEO. Youngest. Game Changer. Innovator. Startup. Does this ring a bell? Of course yes, because these are not only words, these are the contemporary definition of people who have created an impact, people who have changed the way we see and experience things. If you know these words, then it is easy to understand Manasvi Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of India’s largest scholarship platform.
What do most people achieve before 30? A job that they do not love, a house that eats away all their earnings or an ever-mounting burden of not doing what they had always wished for. While most people his age are busy trying to change their own lives, Manasvi is changing the landscape of the oldest known system in India – Education. He has transformed the scholarship landscape to an organized ecosystem that was never seen or experienced before in India. Not only this, he has used his business acumen to turn a relatively mundane domain of scholarships into a booming social enterprise.
As with all the new-age CEO’s, Manasvi is not only content with profits. His approach is a fine example of social entrepreneurship where profits are always doubled with purpose. His style of giving back to the society is not typical. It is transformational. It impacts the lives of all those who come in contact with his style of conducting business and also those who work to create this business.
Early Years
Born and brought up in the oldest city in the world, Varanasi, Manasvi’s case is not that of a dropout making it big. He has worked his way to success. He has taken challenges head-on and emerged victoriously. A fine leader since his school days, he has held meritorious ranks across his schooling.Manasvi completed his Engineering from JSSATE in Noida and went on to pursue an MBA from IMT, Ghaziabad. The college is where the magic happened. Unable to think of leading a routine life with fat bank balance, Manasvi spent sleepless nights trying to think of an idea that would change the world for better. This turmoil gave birth to several game-changing ideas that would soon see the light of the day.
Professional Life
Entrepreneurship is not a profession; it is a way of life. Manasvi has displayed traits of being an innovator, a problem-solver since his early years. A fact testified by his mentors, teachers, and counterparts alike. His style of working resembles that of a mountaineer; never seeing what he has left behind and always focusing on where he needs to go. Calling him an achiever will fall short of this young management guru’s stupendous feats. He has earned every material possession at such a young age. He has built and sold companies making illustrious profits, catalyzed growth for startups and devised unique ways to conduct business. Manasvi has created his own management mantras, something that is peculiar to him.
He ardently propagates that only three things make a person successful; BOP i.e. Balance, Opportunity and Paranoia. Balance because most of the people achieve either one thing or the other, their success is never wholesome. He strives to strike a fine balance, at work, in life, and in matters of social entrepreneurship. Opportunity because successful is not the one who waits for an opportunity to come, successful is one who finds an opportunity that is invisible to common eyes and turns it into success. Paranoia, because when you approach a problem with the same attitude that created it in the first place, you will never be able to find a solution. Only a paranoid person can rise above the routine and display an insatiable hunger for success. The best part about this young CEO is that you can see him putting these mantras into action every day. A doer, a man of action, that is what leaders are, isn’t it?
Manasvi has held many leadership roles in his career and catapulted companies from break-even to highly profitable enterprises. His stint with My Own Space, a company he co-founded, revolutionized the real estate space. Never settling down on one success, Manasvi sold the company when he found the right pair of hands to take over the reins of the venture he founded.
A bright student himself, Manasvi has a special interest in the EdTech space. This is where he exercises his profits with purpose philosophy; something that has reaped massive results for Buddy4Study, the company he co-founded and is currently leading. Manasvi believes that although first-movers have their advantage, innovative-movers are a cut above the rest. While there were numerous listing platforms for scholarships on the internet, Manasvi used technology to have an edge over others. This idea led to the birth of India’s first scholarship search engine; a unique platform where students can search for scholarships that match their profile. Buddy4Study is a platform that actually allows students to win scholarships rather than just informing them about the thousands that exist. Manasvi, as an inspiring leader, paved the roads for the company to emerge as the finest CSR implementation partner in the country. A move that has helped Buddy4Study progress into an operationally positive zone and earned a series A funding.
Personal Life
The workaholic that he is, it is only obvious that the effects ripple to the personal life as well. Manasvi is an avid athlete and spends his early waking hours running on the treadmill or working on his body. He is fond of music and loves living life to the fullest. As with all great leaders, the trait that places him on the pedestal of stalwarts is nurturing leaders. Because leaders do not create followers, they create more leaders. Under his young leadership, the company is nurturing future leaders or micro-CEOs as he prefers to call it.
