Civil Services aspirants Upal Jyoti Baruah and Daydeep Chetia have been the exception to the rule. They did not enroll for expensive private coaching to prepare for the challenging entry exam. Both took advantage of the free coaching provided by the Assam Government. When friends asked about it, the duo was happy to share their knowledge.

Daydeep and Upal formed WhatsApp groups to share study materials (PDFs), videos, audio and pictures, and decided to launch Let’s Learn Together to provide affordable coaching for competitive exams in regional languages. Soon, mentors, teachers and candidates who had successfully cleared civil services exams joined them. Of the 156 students who appeared for the examination this year, 65 successfully passed.

“We use WhatsApp Business because it is fast and secure, requires less bandwidth, is compatible with almost all smartphones"

Let's Learn Together extensively uses the WhatsApp Business app to communicate with their clients.

“We use WhatsApp Business because it is fast and secure, requires less bandwidth, is compatible with almost all smartphones and lets us share most required file formats,” says Upal. “Greetings or away messages create a positive impact and help buy time. Also, sharing a location can be more effective than describing it.”

They find features like in-app recording, attachments, short links and greeting message useful. The WhatsApp Business app has helped them improve customer satisfaction as they can reply faster and answer client queries efficiently. In the last year, they have grown from five faculty members and 25 students to 30 faculty members and over 600 students.

“The biggest challenge was creating an effective system which allows everyone, irrespective of time and location, to communicate,” says Daydeep. “WhatsApp helped us solve this problem.”