It gives me great pleasure to share that eTutelage has been nominated in TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards, link here, but more than that, the support of our friends and well wishers has been overwhelming.

We are getting good wishes and congratulatory messages from far off friends, peers, old classmates, friends of friends, eTutelage team mates, site visitors and customers. It is an overwhelming feeling and we are savoring every moment of it – more so because entrepreneurship can be painfully lonely at times.

Thanks everyone for your support. It means a lot to us all and it gives us the strength and conviction to plough along when the going gets tough.

For those of you who haven’t already voted, voting is on, you can either go online and vote or send HOT 374 to 56767 through your mobile phones.

We launched the unique “Quiz a Day” for SAT and ACT students – register for free, come every day and solve a new quiz building yourself up for the gruelling challenge of a real SAT and/or ACT.

Tackling some of the common questions about “Quiz a Day” that I come across:

But isn’t there enough material on SAT and ACT already?

Yes and no. There is material but most of it is in the form of bulky text/guide books. Internet as a delivery medium has not yet been fully exploited for SAT and ACT practice content delivery. Also, good practice content comes at heavy price tags and most of the free stuff essentially doesn’t really say anything.

Even a preliminary round of googling around will demonstrate that good online practice material for SAT and ACT is much more difficult to find than we possibly imagine.

What’s with a new quiz every day?

The idea is to provide consistent practice over a period of time. This, coupled with systemic reinforcement of struggle areas is the only real method to build competency. Quiz a Day takes care of the first part – once the weaknesses are known, in most cases, a review the particular topics from the school curriculum suffices. It puts the control back to the learner and with control comes the responsibility. It’s not spoonfeeding a set of techniques and tricks to get a particular type of problems solved.

How is it different?

Standardized tests put a huge amount of stress on kids, ask any high-schooler or his/her parents. Our kids are continuously bombarded by messages highlighting the need for a great score and how a particular course or book or program is their ticket to academic nirvana. All this conditioning creates an artificial awe and fear of the tests and the preparation becomes a gruelling task.

Quiz a Day seeks to give them consistent practice in a fun way sans the unnecessary overload. The imperative is to think ahead, start working while there is still time and give some time every day to the test prep without really going overboard and building unbearable stress loads.

Are the questions of the same pattern and standard as the tests?

Absolutely. That is a pre-requisite for any test prep program to be successful. All the questions are carefully created to reflect the testing philosophy, standards and competency level of the respective tests.

How do you tackle various sections of the tests and various question types?

The “Quiz a Day” provides a proper mix of the question types and sections carefully designed with the actual tests in mind. followed over a period of time, it will give proportionate practice in all the sections and sub-sections covered in the actual tests.

But are there any free lunches?

No, but there can be free drinks thrown in with the paid lunch package, and to take it a step further, you can offer free drinks to people who just pass by to get them to the restaurant.

But how can you offer premium content for free?

The location of our Content Development hub in India gives us a strategic advantage enabling us to provide top quality content with a cost advantage. If creative allocation of our resources helps us provide premium value to our customer base and build a connect with them, good, and if we can reduce their entry load, even better.

What’s the roadmap?

More features and power to “Quiz a Day”. Let me emphasize, it is still evolving and will be a much more potent test prep tool in the months to come.

A different nature of post but it’s tough to continue remaining silent.

Another round of serial blasts in Delhi – human blood and flesh on the streets, severed limbs, wailing women. Strong condemnation from the PM and the powers that be. “It’s a dastardly act”, yeah, so insightful. “The perpetrators will not be spared”, yeah right. Can we ask Mr Prime Minister which jail are the perpetrators of the earlier bomb blasts being punished in.

The pattern is so predictable, it’s sickening. People die, PM whimpers a condemnation and then everything goes back to normal. Till we have another set of serial blasts.

And then, to add insult to the injury, they talk about the “Spirit of Delhi (or Mumbai or Ahmedabad or Bangalore or Jaipur)”. The truth of the spirit is that people have no choice but to resume their normal activities to earn their livelihood, get by and complete their share of their personal and professional obligations, duties and responsibilities. They have no other option. If I have a business meeting in Cannaught Place, I have to go there, knowing fully well that if the terrorists have decided it to be the day of mayhem, I could be one of the casualties. It’s not spirit, it’s helplessness.

Whether you like Bush’s policies or not, whether you like America or not, you have to agree that the cavemen have not been able to do anything on American soil ever since 9/11. More than a couple lessons to be learnt on how to tackle homeland security.

Compare this with India, we are probably the only country which does not have an anti terror law despite being one of the top most victims of terrorism. Not just that, the government fiercely opposes any proposal to bring in any such laws – the center’s refusal to ok Gujarat anti terror law a very recent example.

Several prominent members of the PM’s cabinet actively support the organization everybody knows to be behind these acts of terror, “It’s a cultural organization”. Correct. Now will you, Mr Minister, care enough to explain what kind of culture espouses exploding bombs in crowded places? I guess not because people who get killed and will get killed in the blasts to come will never be of your kin.

The nuclear deal is done. The surging economy, the India miracle, superpower by 2020 – a whole lot of you-know-what. No one is going to respect us as a country if we cannot protect our people, if we continue being a corpse collector whether it is the embassy in Kabul or markets in Delhi or temples in Jaipur. We can never be a a super power as long as it is so ridiculously easy to kill us.

Another word often bandied about whenever these blasts happen is “the people’s resilience”. Resilience, my friend, is to get up when hit and reply in the same coin. Resilience is not getting hit again and again and wiping the blood only to be bloodied again. Resilience is not picking one tooth from the road only to have another one punched out.

Platitudes don’t help Mr Singh, action does. Tough action.

Real people are dying here. Families are being destroyed. Kids’ futures are being ruined. Are you going to wait till eternity to do something apart from throwing banalities? Or is it that our worst fears are true, these deaths don’t matter to you, these people don’t count?

An innovative offering from eTutelage is in the final stages of development. This new service is designed to be an enormously useful tool for students preparing for ACT and SAT. The beta version will be out soon.

Watch this space for more updates!!!