Hardik Shah, CEO at Sundaram Multi Pap Limited

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

Hardik Shah: The E-Class story was born out of the need for high quality, engaging and accessible education. The core philosophy of E-Class is to inspire a lifelong love of learning, to spark interest in studies and spread easy digital education to all.

At Eclass we believe that with technology we can transcend traditional boundaries and truly enable customized self-paced learning. We realize that the learning needs of every student is unique based on her learning style, interest and her past academic history and understanding is the key to making every student successful.

Our aim is to bridge the digital online and offline divide and provide equal education to all. We cater to the learning needs of school students of classes 1-10 of Maharashtra State Board and are soon expanding over other boards. We have created educational content of over 2000+ hours for the state of Maharashtra and have implemented this successfully.

Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Sundaram Multi Pap Limited

Hardik Shah: We have introduced various services under our digital arm. We provide syllabus based educational content and products for students. These are offline and also online.

We also provide our school management dashboard with content and training programs. We have also been very active in providing educational tablets and solutions for NGOS & CSR campaigns.

Our experienced team of educationists and technologists is passionate about changing the status quo and challenging one another continuously to provide a seamless product that empowers tomorrow’s leaders. Having made a huge difference to the lives of lakhs of students, it will be our constant endeavour to be a worthy partner in their quest for excellence.

Great Companies: What makes Sundaram Multi Pap Limited different from hundreds of other similar service providers?

Hardik Shah:

Unlike other companies we do not provide generalised educational content, but we provide target oriented syllabus based education. We not only offer online but offline solutions also to students, keeping in mind the internet issues in the country.

We are working in the state board schools, where there are 2 crore students and 1.5 lac schools , which is an untapped market. The potential is huge, and a lot can be done in this space.

Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?

Hardik Shah: Due to covid19 the schools and colleges are shut, which has hampered our digital classroom solutions. Also the knowhow of digital tools, internet and general acceptance of new way of learning has been a challenge.

However we have kept our patience and sailed through the rough patch. Now with schools opening up in parts, the market looks good.

Also because of our new online app, we were happy to provide our digital educational products to over 1,00,000+ students and schools in Maharashtra.

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Sundaram Multi Pap Limited?

Hardik Shah: We are aiming at over 500 crores in revenue which will be a mix from our traditional paper stationery manufacturing business and also our elearning segment. Our manufacturing business contributes over 100crores in revenue, and we aim to increase this as well. 5 years down the line, new products and markets will be explored by the company and growth with good profits will be the key focus. Sundaram has always been a in the news for innovating, and we will surely be coming up with various new products.

Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Hardik Shah: The covid19 pandemic has surely broken the world, but it also taught everyone a very important lesson. Innovation is the only constant. It’s very important for everyone to keep innovating at the same time people should address the requirements and needs. The best piece of advice would be to be true to what you do, and to do it with complete honesty. The idea is to make a product which solves real problems and also helps the society to grow.