The Problem Behind JEE Preparation and College Counselling
Preparing for JEE is difficult, but the challenge does not end with solving enough questions or securing a good rank. Many students struggle to stay motivated through repetitive, isolated preparation, while the college counselling process introduces another layer of uncertainty through cutoffs, rounds and complicated choice filling. Students from families with money can turn to private tutors and counsellors, while many others are left to figure out crucial decisions themselves. For some, years of preparation can be undermined by a poorly understood counselling process. It was this gap between effort and access that eventually led Oviqo to look for a different approach, beginning with one student’s own experience.
That student was Mohit Pratap Singh Rathore. After spending two years preparing for JEE and earning a rank good enough to secure strong options, he lost seats during counselling because he filled his choices in the wrong order. Students with lower ranks received seats he had qualified for, not because they had performed better, but because Mohit had not understood how the counselling process worked. Rather than keeping the experience to himself, he began mentoring JEE aspirants on Reddit, helping students navigate their choices for free. Months of answering similar questions revealed that his experience was far from unique. Thousands of students were facing the same uncertainty, raising a larger question about how many futures were being affected simply because guidance was difficult to access.
From Reddit Mentoring to Building a Solution
The Reddit experience also exposed another problem. Many students were struggling to sit through long study sessions, not because they lacked ability or ambition, but because maintaining attention had become increasingly difficult. Mohit saw students trying to prepare for one of the country’s toughest examinations while competing with an internet designed to constantly capture their attention. At the same time, the counselling problem remained unresolved. One person with a Reddit account could only help so many students. The need was clearly larger than individual mentoring, and solving it required a product that could make preparation more engaging while providing reliable guidance at a much wider scale.
Oviqo took shape with Mohit and Gunveer Kalsi approaching the problem from different strengths. Mohit, studying Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Ramaiah Institute of Technology, eventually dropped out after college attendance requirements became incompatible with the hours he was putting into the company. His family did not support the decision, leaving him without financial backing, income or a safety net. Gunveer, pursuing Computer Science Engineering at the same institute, was still in his third year and balancing his degree with the demands of building the technology. He eventually opened his home to Mohit, allowing both founders to work together full-time. Their circumstances left little room for treating Oviqo as a side project.
The Challenge of Growing Without Paid Advertising
The first six months forced the founders to confront a simple constraint: there was no money to buy growth. Unlike many edtech platforms that rely on advertising, paid installs or promotional campaigns, Oviqo had no marketing budget. If students did not genuinely value the product, there was no alternative channel to keep bringing them in. That pressure shaped the founders’ approach to product development and made student satisfaction central to growth. They focused on creating something students would voluntarily recommend to others. The stakes were personal as well. Mohit had left college and lost family support, while both founders were committing themselves to a company with no team, no marketing budget and no fallback.
How OviBattle Changed the Experience of Exam Preparation
The founders responded to the problem of lonely preparation by building OviBattle, a real-time 1v1 format where JEE aspirants compete against other students from across India. Instead of simply working through a question bank alone, students race through questions head-to-head and receive a rating that changes with every battle. Winning moves them higher on the ranked ladder, giving students a way to understand where they stand against other aspirants. Oviqo also developed OviGuide to address the uncertainty that comes after the exam. It provides college information including placements, fees and campus life, while generating a choice-filling order for counselling based on a student’s situation. The products addressed two different moments in the same journey.
The Growth That Came Entirely Through Word of Mouth
The first strong indication that students genuinely wanted the product came from a Reddit post. With no marketing audience to rely on, the founders shared what they had built with JEE aspirants and waited for the response. The post crossed 90,000 views and received more than 600 upvotes, giving the founders their first clear evidence that the problem they had identified was shared by thousands of students. From there, Oviqo continued growing through recommendations rather than paid advertising. The company has now reached more than 200,000 students, with every one acquired without spending a rupee on ads. Last month, the business generated ₹4.5 lakh in revenue, but the founders consider another outcome more important: trust.
For Oviqo, the numbers are only part of the story. The founders deliberately chose not to run advertisements for private colleges, sell student data or build the platform around pushing a test series. Their belief is that college recommendations should be based on what the data says is suitable for a student, rather than who has paid for visibility. That approach has become especially important because the decisions students make through Oviqo can influence their education and future. The trust expressed through student messages has also kept the founders going during difficult periods. Students have told them that OviGuide revealed options they did not know existed and that OviBattle made preparation feel less lonely. Those messages gave the work meaning beyond revenue.
How Oviqo Plans to Personalise Education Across India
JEE is only the starting point for Oviqo. The founders envision an education system that adapts to individual students instead of expecting students to fit a standard model. Their long-term goal is to provide personalised practice, guidance and educational pathways regardless of where a student lives or how much their family can afford. They see a significant divide between students who can access private tutors and counsellors and those who must navigate the system alone, particularly in tier-2 and tier-3 towns. Oviqo aims to close that gap by making personalised support accessible at scale. The ambition extends beyond JEE to every exam and eventually to students across India, carrying forward the lesson that shaped the company:
Guidance can change what opportunity looks like.