A college student who had come to campus to study started with a small experiment after noticing a common problem among students struggling with the transition from Class 12 to college. Questions about admissions, courses and future options were reaching Hemkesh and his friends almost every day.
What began as a Telegram group with a few hundred students eventually developed into something much bigger. Today, Hemkesh is the founder of Delta Education, a company he built while studying at Scaler School of Technology. He said the business generated revenue of Rs 10 lakh in the last financial year and is now aiming to grow beyond that amount.
For a college student, it offers a different perspective on what can be achieved during those years.
While many of his classmates are focused on placements and employment, Hemkesh is concentrating on expanding a business that started when a group of students came together to find answers to their questions.
Delta Education has not received external funding.
Hemkesh said the company is profitable and capable of financing its operations on its own. In his view, not every startup needs to rely on outside investment.
The company has also started creating opportunities for other students. Hemkesh said three to four students from his college have been taken on as paid interns, working in areas such as growth, problem-setting and teaching.
FROM A STUDENT COMMUNITY TO A BUSINESS
Hemkesh was part of the inaugural batch at Scaler School of Technology. During the early days, students had numerous questions about the institution, admissions and what it was like to study there. Many of these queries began arriving through Telegram and WhatsApp.
“We had a Telegram community of initially around 200 to 300 students,” Hemkesh said. Within a year, the group had expanded to more than 700 members.
That is when the founders identified a business opportunity.
New-age colleges were conducting admission tests that were different from the examinations students were accustomed to. Although the subjects and syllabus could be familiar, the testing and selection methods were different, with interviews also playing a role.
Delta Education initially focused on helping students prepare for these entrance tests and interviews.
The company was started around February 2024. At the time, it had no formal product and was essentially built around the existing community. By the next admission cycle, the founders had introduced a test series and preparation programme.
During its first year, Hemkesh said, Delta Education attracted more than 50 paying customers and generated over Rs 2 lakh in revenue. The company later expanded its offering by adding recorded lectures alongside live classes.
THE STUDENTS WERE ALREADY THERE
Delta Education did not initially have to spend heavily on marketing to reach students.
The first pool of customers came from the community that Hemkesh had already established.
“The members in Telegram community, we were able to convert them,” he said, describing the group as the company's primary source of students.
Co-founder Srimai Somani also brought in students through his YouTube and Instagram accounts. Hemkesh said Somani's YouTube channel had more than 10,000 subscribers and featured content similar to JEE preparation material. Delta Education was also featured on the Scaler website, which became another source of students.
In its early stages, therefore, the company essentially turned an existing student community into a business.
A STARTUP GROWING ALONGSIDE COLLEGE
Hemkesh continued his college education while simultaneously running the company.
Scaler's innovation lab supported students interested in developing startups. Hemkesh said students attended weekly meetings where they could discuss challenges and seek guidance. The institute also offered access to contacts through its network and opportunities to interact with other institutions, including chances to discuss and pitch their startups.
He was also active in student administration. As a member of the first batch, he became the first general secretary and spent nearly two years working with the student council. He recalled spending several nights awake with volunteers while organising events for the incoming batch.
For him, startup work was not something that happened only after college hours. It became part of his college experience itself.
Hemkesh's interest in helping students discover their interests also comes from his own experiences.
When he was in Class 9, he worked on a robotic manhole cleaner after reading a local newspaper report about people dying while cleaning gutters. His team's prototype made it to a national-level CBSE science exhibition in Delhi. Although they did not win, the experience convinced him that technology was the field he wanted to pursue.
He now hopes to offer similar opportunities to students who might otherwise not get the chance to explore their interests and identify what they want to pursue.
'START SMALL'
Hemkesh does not believe young entrepreneurs need to begin with a completely developed idea.
“Nobody is perfectionist,” he said. He advises students to start with whatever resources they have, accept that failure is possible and return to the problem to understand what went wrong.
He also cautioned students about another challenge.
According to Hemkesh, college can create a sense of FOMO when students see their peers building projects or companies and begin questioning how they are spending their own time.
He considers this a potentially useful form of FOMO.
His advice is to surround yourself with people who can teach you something. “Do not be the smartest in the classroom,” he said.
He also feels that many young entrepreneurs spend excessive amounts of time trying to perfect an idea before taking the first step.
“Start small,” he said, encouraging students to focus initially on solving a simple, identifiable problem instead of immediately attempting to create another AI product or automated system.
Delta Education continues to expand. Hemkesh intends to keep building the company, while his broader ambition is to tackle problems affecting large numbers of people and develop a profitable business around solving them.
His degree is still underway, but his entrepreneurial journey has already begun.
