Pramod Maheshwari

Pramod Maheshwari

Founder - Career Point Group
Kota, Rajasthan

Pramod Maheshwari (born 6 May 1971) is an Indian educator and entrepreneur and currently Founder Chairman, CEO and MD of Career Point Ltd. Kota, India-based Education Company.

Early Life

Born on May 6, 1971, as a second son to a grain trader, Pramod belonged to a traditional Marwari family. In his childhood he excelled in studies in school and joined his alma mater IIT Delhi for graduation. Pramod graduated in 1993 the very same year he founded Career Point.

An IIT Delhi alumnus and an avid physics teacher, Pramod founded Career Point in 1993 as a professional tutoring company from a small garage and 50 students as a very humble beginning. His company now coaches more than 25,000 students every year. The Education pioneer has also set-up four private universities, two engineering colleges and numerous schools across India.

Today he is best known for his contribution in making Kota the preferred coaching destination for students preparing for competitive exams in India. He is nationally renowned for developing and implementing the effective teaching and learning methodologies for success in competitive examinations.

Awards and Honours

Pramod Maheshwari was honoured with Star CEO Award during the 3rd BT–YES Bank SME Awards held in 2012 in New Delhi.


Oyo room founder

Ritesh Agarwal

Founder - Oyo Room

A college dropout, who once wanted to sit for an engineering exam, Ritesh today heads among the most valuable start-up by a person who never studied beyond school. He even sold sim cards to survive, afraid his well off family would end his entrepreneurial dreams and summon him back home to Odisha if they knew of his struggles. In Kota(Rajasthan), where he was ostensibly preparing for his IIT entrance exams, Ritesh says he couldn't wait every weekend to slip out to Delhi and meet those doing their own business. This 19-year-old had traveled for months staying at budget hotels, attended customer calls everyday and immersed himself in every possible experience to learn about budget hotel customers and their expectations. That was the kind of on-the-ground learning that helped him pivot Oravel to Oyo.

Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.

According to a research carried out by CB Insights for The New York Times, OYO Rooms is among the companies that may be the next start-up unicorns. The company is backed by investors like the Softbank Group, Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital and Light speed India.

Ritesh Agarwal was selected for the “20 under 20” Thiel Fellowship in 2013. The Thiel Fellowship is a two-year program wherein fellows receive $100,000 and mentorship from the foundation’s network of tech entrepreneurs, investors and scientists.


Aditi Gupta

Aditi Gupta

Founder - Menstrupedia

She can't enter the kitchen, the temple or her house even. She isn't allowed to bake, come in contact with men and more often than not, she has no clue why she’s being ostracized and more importantly, what the hell is going on with her body. This is how menstruation is dealt with in most rural and certain urban areas in India.. till Aditi Gupta could stand it no more. Having empathized with similar situations herself while growing up in Jharkhand, Aditi created a Hindi comic book with her now husband Tuhin Patel, illustrating and educating girls about menstruation. From here, Aditi and Tuhin's venture has scaled to a whole website called Menstrupedia.com. Along with a comic book section to simplify menstruation for the reader, it has guides on hygiene, health and ways to be active during periods, plus – answers to frequently asked queries.


Patricia-Narayan

Patricia Narayan

Winner of this year’s 'FICCI Woman Entrepreneur of the Year' award.

She started her career 30 years ago as an entrepreneur, selling eateries from a mobile cart on the Marina beach amidst all odds - battling a failed marriage, coping with her husband, a multiple addict, and taking care of two kids. Today, she has overcome the hurdles and owns a chain of restaurants.

"I started my business with just two people. Now, there are 200 people working for me in my restaurants. My lifestyle has changed too. From travelling in a cycle rickshaw, I moved to auto rickshaws and now I have my own car. From 50 paise a day, my revenue has gone up to 2 lakh rupees per day on an average. The 'Ficci entrepreneur of the year' award is the culmination of all the hard work I have put in over the last 30 years. It came as a surprise as this is the first time I have received an award.Till now, I had no time to think of what I was doing. But the award made me look back and relive the days that passed by. Now, my ambition is to build my Sandeepha brand."

Advice to young entrepreneurs, Do not ever compromise on quality. Never lose your self-confidence. Believe in yourself and the product you are making. Third, always stick to what you know. When you employ people, you should know what you ask them to do.


Prem Ganapa

Prem Ganapathy

Founder - The Dosawala

Prem Ganapathy, was stranded at the bandra station,when the person accompanying him left him and ran away. Prem had no local acquaintances or knowledge of the language. Out of pity, a fellow Tamilian guided him to a temple and appealed worshipers to contribute money for his return ticket to Chennai.

Prem refused to go back and decided to work in Mumbai and started cleaning utensils in a restaurant. He appealed to his owner, to let him become a waiter as he was class 10 pass. The owner refused, because of regional politics and Prem bided his time till a neighbor hood dosa restaurant opened and offered him a job from a dishwasher to a tea boy. Prem became a huge hit with the customers because of his excellent customer service, initiatives and relationship and brought business Rs. 1000 daily which was almost 3 times as compared to other tea boys. The life was good.

A customer made him an offer. He was planning to open a tea shop in Vashi in Mumbai. He wanted Prem to be his 50 – 50 partner where the owner would invest the money while Prem would run the shop. The shop started doing brisk business when the owner became greedy. It hurt him to share 50 % of the profit with Prem and he threw Prem out replacing him with an employee. Prem was made of a different material and he was never going to be defeated. He took a small loan from his uncle and with his brother, opened his own tea stall. Unfortunately the neighbourhood residents objected. He then started a hand cart but that also did not work out. He found a spot and set up a south Indian stall. He did not know a thing about dosas and idli but learnt by observation, trial and error. The dosa stall was a huge hit and flourished during the 5 years from 1992-1997. But why was the tiny dosa stall was was so successful in spite of competition from ubiquitous eateries prevalent in Mumbai. According to Prem it was its hygiene, proper appearances of the waiters and fresh ingredients which stood out as a difference.

He saved a couple of lakhs of Rupees and instead of heading home he took the biggest risk of his life and opened a new shop near Vashi station and named it as Dosa Plaza. His Chinese plaza next to the Dosa Plaza flopped miserably and was shut down in 3 months. Undaunted, Prem realized some lessons from it. He applied those lessons in making Chinese cuisine in his dosas which worked very well.

He got passionate and invented a variety of dosas with Chinese style like American Chopsuey, Schezwan Dosa, Paneer chilly, Spring roll dosa etc. The 108 types of Dosas in his menu gets him a lot of publicity. A chance encounter with a customer who was part of the team setting up a food court in a mall in New Bombay advised him to take a stall at the food court and again Prem was ready and willing to grow and expand. His vision was to grow by better offerings and better customer service. He also went to ad agencies to create the brand identity including the logo, brands, menu card, waiters dress etc. He started getting a lot of offers for franchising and had to find out the meaning of franchising and its modus operandi. Dosa Plaza currently has 26 outlets and 5 of them are company owned. It has 150 employees and a turnover of 5 crore. All the branches are connected and networked and there are training managers and proper manuals to maintain standard and uniform product and services.

Address :
The Incubation & Entrepreneurship Cell Career Point University, Hamirpur (HP) 176041
Contact : 01972269702 / 269703

Guest Speaker Program, on


"Witting Winning Proposals for business and Research Plans"

Guest Speaker- Dr S K Sikka,
Director-cum Adviser Agri-System
Afghan Expo Center New Delhi
will deliver on "Witting Winning Proposals for business and Research Plans" on 12-02-2016 at 2:00 PM in the MP Hall of The University.