Meet Ashwin Damera, owner of Rs 26488 crore Ed-tech firm who wanted to be a salaried employee

Ashwin Damera is the founder and CEO of Eruditis and Emeritus, the companies that bring global education to the doorsteps of people who can't really afford to fly abroad. These two companies tie up with world-renowned schools and bring them to aspirants via the internet. He, last week, invested Rs 240 crore in InnoVen Capital. His two companies have a valuation of a whopping 3.2 billion dollars, which is Rs 26488 crore in Indian currency. He came about starting the company in a very interesting fashion. Here's his story.

Dhamera grew up in Chennai. He became a chartered accountant in 1999. He scored all-India rank 44 in CA finals. After working for a few years, he went to Harvard Business School. He moved to Mumbai for a job at Citigroup. The thought of becoming an entrepreneur never crossed his mind. All he wanted to do was to become a corporate honcho.

When was studying at Harvard, he took part in a business plan contest. He was runners up in the contest. He was elated with the result of the contest. However, two of his classmates were so impressed with his business plan that they offered him a cheque of 200,000 dollars to start his business. He had a job offer at that time. However, he took a leap of faith and accepted 200000 dollars and started a hotel booking company called Travelguru. It was to be sold to Expedia for 19 million dollars in 2008. However, then the recession struck and the deal went south. It was then sold to another company for 12 million dollars, reported Forbes. He calls himself an accidental entrepreneur. 

This happened in 2010. Dhamera and his co-founder Chaitanya Kalipatnapu opened a company that offered certificate programs from all across the world. They started gaining traction in 2015 after they switched to an online medium of imparting courses. They focussed on Small Private Online Courses. They collaborated with top rated universities like Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Cambridge, MIT, Stanford and INSEAD. His co-founder had worked with INSEAD and it was the first institution to have agreed to partner with the company.

His company remained bootstrapped for the first six years. Since they were working at one university at a time, they didn't concentrate on raising money. He used to operate the phone, his co-founder used to do the marketing. Then he realised he needed investment in technology. Hence, he started the fundraising exercise.