Faculty will be celebrities of site, says founder.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC; An educational tech startup that is the brainchild of three Indians and a German student has received $100,000 from an unnamed, private investor after being founded at Mississippi State University.
CampusKnot — the online educational hub created by Rahul Gopal, Hiten Patel and Perceus Mody of India, as well as German student Katja Walter of Germant — is an online hub designed to catalyze communication between faculty and students and consequently make collaborating more efficient.
Free to users, CampusKnot is a clearinghouse for schedules, assignments, and other academic events, reported The Clarion-Ledger. It also provides a marketplace for textbooks, including a feature that makes them handily searchable by title, subject, and author’s name.
CampusKnot’s goal is to eventually will serve as a single site for students across a multitude of universities and colleges across the United States to easily reach teachers and classmates, residence halls and student organizations — plus offer space for faculty to post course syllabi and related academic material. The completed site also would allow students to access automated calendars based on their network groups, according to The Ledger.
“The faculty will be the celebrities of this site,” said co-founder Rahuk Gopal. “They can post access to knowledge for their ‘fans.’”
Of the founders, Gopal is a senior aerospace engineering major, while Patel graduated from MSU in 2013 with a degree in information systems and is pursuing a second degree in marketing. Mody is a senior majoring in medical technology and Walter graduated in May with a degree in art and graphic design.
Using the new funds, the team has moved their fledgling company — which currently serves 150 users — to its first office space, situated at the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park’s business incubator. Gopal expects the new space will “allow for a more sophisticated product.”
CampusKnot debuted in 2013 and since then, its multinational team has spent two years honing their product at MSU’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the College of Business. The nascent company won second-place in the center’s 2013 startup competition and, in December, earned a $2,500 E-Center startup grant.
The recent $100,000 injection set a record for private investment in a student-run startup at MSU, and has provided CampusKnot with enough capital to comfortably operate for the next year.
With his or her investment, the angel investor received a 10 percent stake in the company, therefore placing its valuation at $1 million.
“We’re excited, but we’re scared at the same time,” Gopal said in a school news release. “It’s funny, I guess, how I feel about it, but I’m looking forward to continuing to grow the company.”