From the beginning itself, Harsha saw her father work hard to provide for her education which made her realize the importance of education. And it later inspired her to start her own venture that aims to make quality education accessible to every child.

Harsha Upadhyaya is the CEO and founder of Imperium Edutech Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai. She founded her startup with a vision to make quality education accessible to every child globally.

Harsha was born and raised in Mumbai. She completed her schooling in Mumbai itself. She did a B.Tech. in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering. She also did an MBA from JBIMS in Mumbai itself.

Harsha shares that her father moved from a small town in UP to Mumbai when he had attained his adulthood. He struggled to settle in the city and provide his children with a good education. And growing up, seeing her father work hard, made Harsha realize the importance of education and it also inspired her to do something in the field of education only to make quality education accessible to every child.

After completing her engineering, Harsh worked in the IT sector as a software engineer for a couple of years. Later, she realized that working in IT wasn’t meant for her. And then she did an MBA. After her MBA, she worked as a consultant for three years and explored different places. She met many different people during that period. However, later, she quit her consultancy job to do something of her own.

Harsha initially started by making educational content for kids. Later, she also started a corporate training company to teach employees through simulation games to help them do their jobs better.

Harsha says that currently, her company is into the ed-tech space full-fledgedly. Her company works in tie-ups with not-for-profit organizations that work on the ground level to educate children and provides them with digital educational content.

Talking about her mistakes, Harsha says that initially she was very emotionally attached to her business and would keep pumping her own money into it to grow it, and owing to that she had to face financial challenges later. Besides, being in a rush to scale up her business, she hired people who later proved to be liabilities to her. Furthermore, not hiring legal consultants to draft and review her company’s legal documents was also a mistake for her.

Talking about her achievements, Harsha says that in her twelfth board examination, she stood fifth in the order of merit in the whole of Maharashtra which was a proud moment for her. Besides, being able to get into a coveted B-school with bare minimum preparation, is still an achievement for her. Whenever she feels low, she looks back to her achievements to boost her morale.

Reviewing her COVID experience, Harsha says that initially, she had to face some challenges in her business as everything was shut down in light of the pandemic. She had to pay her employees from her own savings but she didn’t sack a single employee of hers, she says. However, later due to online learning, demands for her products surged up and it improved things at her end considerably.

To aspiring entrepreneurs, Harsha advises them that there’s no right age to become an entrepreneur. Now is the right time and get on to what you’re really passionate about.

When asked about her role models, Harsha says that she always looks up to her elder sister who has always stood by her through thick and thin as her role model.

In her spare time, Harsha likes to do painting and reiki healing.

Her Life Mantra is that “If you can dream big then you can achieve big.”  She opines that nothing is unachievable if you put in the required hard work.