I work, actually.

So I co-founded the startup.

It's called Secure My Scholarship.

It's an edtech platform that connects students with scholarships at universities around the world.

So I work full time, longer than full time, if you may say.

What do you love about your job?

I love the impact that we create, man.

So we give, you know, students that come from hardworking middle class families or working class families a chance at going to the university of their dreams.

And personally, I love that about what we do.

Did you always want to do that job?

This specifically?

No. But have I always wanted to work in something that would allow me to create an impact?

Yes. Everything I've ever done in my life has been around companies with impact or with social causes.

And somebody once asked me if I wasn't with Secure My Scholarship, what would you do?

And I said I'd work at a nonprofit.

Is there anything that you dislike about your job?

Me personally, no.

But if you ask my fiance, she will tell you that my job takes up a lot of my time.

And I think she hates that about my job.

Would you like to do any other job in the future?

I got my hands full with Secure My Scholarship right now.

But in the future, who knows?

You know, I mean, I love solving problems and helping make people's lives better.

And the world has a lot of issues.

So, you know, who knows?

Now let's talk about mobile phones.

How often do you use your mobile phone?

Oh, I use my mobile phone every day.

The company basically runs off my mobile phone.

What are some of your favorite apps?

I use LinkedIn a lot.

I use a productivity tool called Asana.

It allows me to track my tasks and manage my day.

I use Slack a lot.

Internal team communication.

WhatsApp, obviously.

I mean, everybody uses WhatsApp.

And yeah, a couple of apps.

Not that many.

I'm not one of those guys with 1,500 apps on their phone.

I have about eight or nine apps that I use.

Do you think that you use your phone too much sometimes?

Yes.

You know, it's funny that you ask that.

Before Secure My Scholarship, myself and the same founding team, we actually founded a startup called Lock & Stock.

It was a mobile app that basically rewarded you with offers and discounts for not using your phone when you were in class.

We wanted to kind of help students pay attention more in class, learn better, do better in their studies.

And then when they were done, they could buy one, get one free at the pizza place or something like that.

So, yeah.

Now let's talk about your school.

Did you enjoy school?

That is a tough question.

When I was in school, I hated it.

But I think the beauty with school is that the later in life you go, the more you begin to appreciate the school that you went to.

Who was your favorite teacher?

My favorite teacher?

My favorite teacher was a woman named Mrs. Mallika Menon.

She was my math teacher in grades 10 and 11.

And I really liked her classes and I really enjoyed them.

And what specifically did you dislike about school?

I went to a school that made academic performance very, very important.

Everything revolved around, okay, do better.

You gotta do better, your grades, all of that stuff.

Much to the neglect of maybe extracurriculars or sports,

I played cricket and football in high school.

And I remember we wouldn't have any training practices, any practice matches.

We wouldn't go to any tournaments or we'd go to very few tournaments.

And I didn't particularly like that when I was in school.

The focus on academics and not really on other stuff.

Describe a period of time from your studies that was difficult.

I'd say the hardest time during my studies that was difficult was when I was in university,

I think second or third year university.

To go to the university that I went to, it required a lot of effort.

I think my parents really saved to send me to university and I had to get a bunch of scholarships and all of that stuff.

I wanted to make the most of it, but I didn't quite know how to do that.

I was majoring in economics, but I also wanted to study this class and this class and this class and all of that stuff and really make the most of my time because I was lucky to be at the university that I went to.

This was perhaps 2015, 2016, second or third year of university.

It was hard because I had only a limited amount of time and to fit all of this stuff in.

But I think through that experience and I came out very well, through that experience I learned,

I think I learned time management, just actually breaking down what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it.

I had to schedule out my day and my week very, very, very well and really just make it happen for myself.

And that was super difficult, right?

Because the school I went to, everything was given to you on a platter.

These are your classes, this is what you gotta do.

But at university, I had to basically make my own schedule.

And if you were doing a simple major and that was it, then no harm, no foul.

That's very clear cut, whatever.

When I graduated university,

I graduated with a major in economics and minors in political science, international relations, mass communication and business administration.

I would have had another minor in finance as well.

So I had four minors that I graduated with along with my major and I would have had a fifth minor as well.

And to make all of this work and just fit it into my schedule, super difficult.

But as I said, I was lucky to be at university when I was and I wanted to make the most of my time there.

So we've been talking about a difficult time you had at university and we're gonna continue to talk about university education and higher education in general.

Should higher education be free to all citizens?

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In an ideal world, yes, I think.

The cost of quality education today is incredibly expensive and is rising year over year.

What happens with that is that this phenomenon then prices out so many people from the middle class and the working class who aren't given the same opportunities.

It shouldn't be that, okay, only if you can afford to pay $150,000 a year, you can go to a top 10 business school around the world and succeed in life.

I mean, that's not fair.

It shouldn't have to be that way.

Through Secure My Scholarship,

I remember there was this one girl two weeks ago who applied for an MBA in the USA and the cost of that MBA was like $65,000, which, I mean, $65,000 is a lot of money and especially when you're earning in rupees in India, that's a hell of a lot of money.

Now, I mean, what's her solution?

I mean, should she give up on her dreams?

Should she not go ahead and do it?

I mean, what does she do?

She applied through our platform.

We helped her get a $25,000 scholarship to bring her fees down from 65,000 to 40,000.

We can't make it free.

Unfortunately, we're not the government.

We're not God or the government or whatever.

We can't make it free, but we can minimize it as much as we can.

I remember I was on a call with her and just the look of excitement on her face when she got this because she was taking a loan to go do her MBA and we effectively cut her loan by half and that's amazing.

Should scholarships only be given to gifted children?

In a world with finite resources, I suppose.

I guess this is a tricky question, right?

Because if there are only N number of seats and there's a cost that is Y and whatever, then you have to ensure that students who are,

I guess, academically talented or talented at a sporting level or an athletic level or whatever are able to get that push that they need because there are only limited seats.

So, you know, if they're not gonna get it, then somebody else is gonna get the seat and they're gonna miss out.

So in that scenario, yes, scholarships.

In this sense, I mean 100% scholarships should be given to gifted children because they've displayed some sort of aptitude or level where they can succeed and they should be given that push, I think.

Now, who determines how scholarships are given out?

And I know there's a lot of foul play at the university level or, you know, this guy is my cousin's kid, so give him 100% scholarship.

It shouldn't be like that.

There should be an unbiased council that has to vote and decide or however these things are done, but it should be fair.

But in a world with limited seats and limited opportunities,

I guess, you know, you have to make sure that students who display a level of talent get access to those scholarships, I suppose.

But again, just coming back to the previous question, if every student was allowed to study, that's a much more ideal world, I think.

Some people think that charities should provide gifted children with scholarships and other people think that the government should do it.

Who do you think should provide scholarships?

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Can I say everyone?

I mean, the government, see, it's in the government's best interests to ensure that its best and brightest receive the best education possible because they will then contribute to society.

So it's in the government's best interest to do it.

From a charity or a nonprofit standpoint, 100%.

I actually, so someone once asked me,

I was on like another, someone once asked me, I was having a discussion, and they asked me, you know, Craig, if Secure My Scholarship, you know, just becomes this huge company and you exit someday, you know, what are you gonna do?

And, you know, my ambition, at least, if I have the resources, my ambition in life is to someday open schools, not university schools, at the primary level or up to the middle school level and make it free just for any student to come and get a great education for free, literally.

So that's something that I am passionate about.

That's also why I work 100 hours a week on Secure My Scholarship.

So, I mean, if there's a charity or a nonprofit that's committed to this cause, then 100%.

And the third, I guess, stakeholder is the universities themselves.

I mean, let's get one thing straight, right?

Universities are incredibly wealthy institutions.

You look at not even your top 20 or top 30, you look at your top 200 universities in the US, in the UK, they have billion dollar endowment funds that are invested into, you know, some invested into government bonds or T-bills or whatever it may be.

There are billions, I think Harvard's endowment fund is 40 billion or 50 billion.

I mean, don't quote me on that, but it's in that ballpark range.

And that's a lot of money from a university standpoint as well.

I feel like it should just be a part of their social responsibility to give back to the community that has given them so much.

That's what I think.

How will third level education change in the future?

I think tertiary education, university education is gonna get more creative.

It's already happening as well, but I mean, these like higher education is something that it will never go through like a sudden like shift.

A lot of people said after COVID, everything will be online, physical campuses are done, whatever.

And that just wasn't to be.

I mean, even till today, we have students who apply through Secure My Scholarship for on-campus classes and online classes.

And 99% of students are applying for on-campus classes.

Online just didn't shake up the industry like everybody predicted.

But I think the real change is in the mode of education itself.

Gone are the days where you have to go to class, take notes, memorize, come back next week and regurgitate that on a test or an exam.

That doesn't work anymore.

You're not training people the right way because today, if you need information, there's Google, there's ChatGPT and probably a lot other resources that can't come to mind right now, but information is available at your fingertips.

What you need to train people about or train people for today is how to utilize this information.

How well can you analyze the information in front of you?

How well can you use the data that you have available to you?

Do you know where to look?