We have surely heard of people working in the private sector who wish to appear for civil services exams. But there are not many who do the opposite. Among the very few exceptions is this IPS officer of eight-year standing; he is now leading a tech company, Concept Owl, as well as a `habit-learning’ platform by the name of HabitStrong.
Mr. Rajan Singh had a proclivity for education from the very beginning. He graduated from one of the best engineering colleges in India, IIT Kanpur. Growing up in a family where his father was in the Air Force, he used to travel a lot which gave him the gist of diverse India. As an engineering graduate, civil service was an interesting area he wanted to try.
Clearing Civil Services To Become An IPS Officer
Mr. Rajan completed his graduation in 1995 after which he appeared for the civil services exam. He cracked the exam and was allotted as an IPS posting in the 1997 batch from Kerala cadre. He was given the first posting as an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Karunagapally – a municipality situated at Kollam district in Kerala.
In his eight years of service, Mr. Rajan held various senior positions in Kerala. He was also named as one of the youngest to hold the position of the city police commissioner of Thiruvananthapuram in 2001. During his stint as the police commissioner, he managed and motivated a 3,500 strong police force. He was also involved in handling civil disturbances and conflicts, traffic management, crime control, and police modernization.
However, after a point, he started losing interest in civil services, as he had bigger plans lined up. While speaking with the media, he said “Initially I thoroughly enjoyed the civil services, but it became less challenging for me once I learnt the ropes. By 2004, it started getting monotonous. I was barely entering my 30s and I didn’t think I could continue it for two or three more decades. Thus, I made my decision to quit the civil services in July 2005.”
Entering The Private Sector
Soon after quitting the civil services, Mr. Singh joined an MBA program in one of the most prestigious business institutes in the world, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Some of the notable alumni of Wharton school include the United States President Donald Trump), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Alphabet Inc., and it’s subsidiary Google LLC), business tycoons Warren Buffet and Elon Musk, among others.
Mr. Singh completed his masters in 2007 and was placed at McKinsey and Company in New York. He worked there as a consultant where he advised insurance, pharma, biotech, and banking companies. The major area of his work included the screening of acquisition targets, launch of new businesses, cost rationalization, private equity due diligence, valuation, and corporate finance. However, after working there for two years, he shifted back to Mumbai and became the Vice President of New Silk Route – a private equity fund.
He worked there for three years till 2012 and was the key member of the team dedicated to building a large medical device company focused on emerging markets. While working in Mumbai he decided to start his own venture and found a lot of potential in the education sector in India. So, he started Course Brew, an online learning platform for video-based learning, in August 2012.
The main purpose of starting an online learning portal was to change the style of teaching and making studies more practical and entertaining. However, Course Brew was not standing up to his satisfaction as it was not science-specific, so he left the organization to reach his utmost destination.
ConceptOwl
Focusing on the roots of engineering, Mr. Singh wanted to focus on school science education and the students appearing for various competitive exams. He wanted to promote concept learning rather than rote learning and making things interesting for the students. Thus, ConceptOwl was born in 2015 and was based out of Thiruvananthapuram with the main aim of providing cost-effective science and math learning program for Tier II and Tier III students.
Concept Owl then partnered with Kota’s Bansal Classes which is an established coaching institute in India for engineering and medical students. With this collaboration, they also initiated offline coaching centers for students belonging to class 9 to class 12. Mr. Rajan is the founder of the organization was highly focused on the startup and even started teaching Physics as they were unable to retain a good teacher.
Currently, Concept Owl is providing coaching to students belonging from class 8 to class 12 with an annual price range of Rs 20,000 to Rs 60,000, depending on the various packages. They conduct both online and offline classes, where the online classes are accessible all over the country.
Apart from this, Mr. Rajan has also launched a habit-learning platform in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Habit Strong, which is an initiative of Concept Owl, offers boot camps to help build life-changing habits, covering areas such as digital detox, rebuilding focus, building a learning routine, beating stress, etc.
Mr. Rajan wrote on his LinkedIn page, “This startup happened somewhat accidentally, with a YouTube program I ran to build a 5 am morning routine. When most participants called the experience life-changing, I figured that people need discipline and routine”. Mr. Rajan is among the few people who took the risk of starting a new venture after quitting civil services and is successful in his journey so far.
