Mr. Sripal Jain, CA, CPA, first-generation entrepreneur co-founder, and lead instructor of Simandhar Education LLP

Interview with Mr. Sripal Jain, CA, CPA, is a first-generation entrepreneur co-founder, and lead instructor of Simandhar Education LLP

Mr. Sripal Jain, CA, CPA, is a first-generation entrepreneur co-founder, and lead instructor of  Simandhar Education LLP (AICPA’s channel partner in India).

He is an innovative and skilled  professional with over a decade of industry experience in Audit, Corporate Finance, IFRS, GAAP, ICFR  (SOX-404), and Finance. 

Mr. Sripal Jain is one of the top LinkedIn influencers in the domain of accounts and finance with  more than 40k followers.

He has been named one of the “10 Best Education Leaders of 2021” by  Industry Era and the “Best Edupreneur of Telangana (India) 2018” by the Progressive Academy.

He  has taught at IIMs, GITAM, CTARA, and ICAI as a visiting faculty member. He frequently speaks at  corporations such as Microsoft, Reliance, AIG, EY, Wells Fargo, D.E. Shaw, Hitachi, Deloitte, and  many others. 

He has been mentioned as an editor and content writer in the Becker and AIMA (All India  Management Association) coursebooks. He has been featured in India’s prestigious newspaper, The  Times of India (TOI). 

On the professional services front, he has spoken to over 300 people at Reliance Industries, Jio, and  Retail (India’s largest company in terms of market cap) about blockchain, IoT, and AI, and was the  first speaker to speak about blockchain at ICAI Hyderabad. 

He aspires to create engaging learning journeys for students, ultimately making them more  employable.

What inspired you to start this venture, and how did you get started?

Sripal Jain: A few months into teaching, I realised the job gave me immense happiness. Incidentally, I also discovered that many students were unable to clear the CA exams.

That was how Simandhar Education came into existence, where I introduced many short-duration courses, and alternative options for students, apart from CA, namely CPA USA, Enrolled Agent ( US tax ),CMA USA, US GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) etc, which could be done simultaneously with CA and also have standalone value in Indian market.

What types of programs you have and how they are helping the students?

Sripal Jain: We have US CPA ( US chartered accountancy ), US CMA ( Cost accountancy of US), EA (Enrolled agent- US tax certification), ACCA ( UK chartered accountancy ), IFRS, Data analytics and CIA( Certified internal audit).

All the courses have huge potential in India especially with US and UK based outsourcing happening at rapid scale and India is more global than local today, all the programs have been yielding jobs for students in range of INR 7-10 lakhs per annum CTC, we at Simandhar education are tied up with more than 100+ MNCs giving job assurance to students and placing them in various MNCs in India.

What sets your venture apart from others in the industry?

Sripal Jain: We feel that placement is an important part of any professional course, thus we have huge corporate tie ups with Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC, BDO, RSM and much more and that’s kind of make us different from others,

We strongly feel that every education institute must strive to place their students apart from helping them pass the qualifications which is typically basic expectations.

What challenges have you faced along the way, and how have you overcome them?

Sripal Jain: Any International  professional course need to be accepted in India, so we had to educate lot of companies operating in India to push our talent and we were very successful in convincing them by grooming our students through not just professional qualifications but also making them job ready through Simandhar Samarth program with various skillset like Data analytics , excel, PPT, Soft skills and technical skills.

How do you keep up with the constantly changing landscape of education and placement?

Sripal Jain: We have a separate corporate relations team which keep hunting for new corporates where we can place our students, the team does end to end research of companies trying to establish their offshore locations in India and thus we collaborate with such US , UK based companies and help our students to be placed in those corporates.

What has been your most successful project, and why do you think it was so successful?

Sripal Jain: Tie up with Big 4 like deloitte, EY, KPMG, PWC has been one of our biggest wins as these companies hire lot of talent, we established ourselves in those companies through our extensive focus on quality and pass percentage, we have students who won CPA Elijah watt sells which is typically given to 40 students out of 1,00,000 students sitting for exam in the world. Thus by sending such strong students in these companies, we have developed a great brand and reputation in market.

How do you measure the success of your Venture?

Sripal Jain: To start any venture, you need a strong team and mentors, I was lucky to be joined by my wife in initial years then my elder brother joined in and took the company to next scale through his great strategies and management.

We feel that in order to be successful, you need a strong team and we are glad to have very strong people working at Simandhar education.

What advice do you have for someone who is considering starting a same venture?

Sripal Jain: Always be patient with your results and be fast in your work, The customers in India are very demanding and require instant results so one need to be very proactive and fast in its work so that they can meet the demand of customers.

Try to be aggressive on what your customer want and that’s one biggest factor to be a successful start up.

What are your long-term goals for your business, and how do you plan to achieve them?

Sripal Jain: We are trying to place our students overseas through tie up with lot of companies in US, UK and networking with foreign universities, apart from it we are also trying to focus aggressively on colleges and K12 segement in coming years so that we can create awareness about this courses at all levels.

We are also aggressively focussing on our recruitment company called Kikifin where we want to see students be placed in good companies.

Our short term and long term both goals are to ensure students are settled in their career- we feel if one student get job, entire family is settled.

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