Tech Entrepreneur Dev Garg Plans To Disrupt The Education Industry

Forced to take more than one job to make ends meet, teachers find themselves trading their lifelong passion for learning for jobs that can pay their bills and put food on their tables.

Here are some hard-hitting facts:

• Teachers are underpaid by an average of $7,500 a year in America.
• Last year teachers made 18.7% less in income compared to other educated professionals.
• According to a survey conducted in 35 countries, teachers were underpaid in at least 28.

The problem is clear. So, how do we fix it?

Dev Garg, a University of Minnesota alumnus and serial entrepreneur, asked himself the same question back in 2015.

Inspired by the plight of his own mother, a high-school geography teacher by profession, and other teachers in his community, Garg spent months trying to understand why educators were working in such dismal conditions while being paid only one-third of what their engineer and corporate friends made in a year.

The question led to the inception of EdHero.

The first of its kind, Edhero is an online platform dedicated to creating and empowering a global community of teachers, and helping them do what they do best: spread knowledge.

The startup’s advantage lies in its educator-centred approach. Providing more resources than any other site, and a budding marketplace where like-minded teachers can interact and collaborate, the platform is pioneering a future where teachers no longer have to choose between money and doing what they love.

It functions in three simple ways:

• You create and publish your portfolio on the site. This lets organizations and potential students review your credentials and know if you’re the one they’re looking for.
• It provides you a platform to showcase your passion and skills through online blogs and videos. You don’t need to create and maintain a separate website now; you can easily upload your content to EdHero and share it with the world.
• It has an inbuilt marketplace where educators can share, sell, and buy quality resources.

Right now, most organizations or individuals looking for educators post ads on different sites(upwork, freelancer, craigslist). EdHero aims to create an all-educator exclusive job board, so teachers don’t miss out on opportunities just because they weren’t at the right site at the right time.

Dev Garg is also the founder and president of EasyAnalytic, a leading software development firm, dedicated toward helping entrepreneurs succeed. The concept was born out of his own entrepreneurial struggles and the company’s mission is to take other software startups from idea to fruition by equipping them with a team of highly-skilled professionals that will take care of everything, from marketing to accounts to strategy, and by providing extensive mentoring and exposure through media outlets.

Garg is extremely passionate about startups and aims to help fresh entrepreneurs create and launch the very best product they can.

His own plans for EdHero involve creating an array of opportunities for freelancing educators in the gig economy. By helping them connect with global organizations and students, and giving them an opportunity to make extra money, Garg’s mission is to drastically improve the lives of teachers, and in doing so, improve the quality of educational content that flows through digital channels.

Technology is changing the way we interact and learn now. Online degrees are soaring in popularity, and new educational sites are popping up everyday bringing the world’s best learning experience to students free of cost. The current market size for freelancing teachers is around 23 million. Garg’s goal is to capture one-tenth of that, bringing more than 2.3 million educators under EdHero’s umbrella in the next three years.