Interview with USF alumnus and entrepreneur Ranvir Singh
USF World: Mr. Singh, tell us a little bit about your journey since leaving USF.
I didn’t realize then, but each job or work experience was preparing me to start my own venture decades later.
Ranvir: I graduated from USF with a MS in Computer Science in the early nineties and soon moved to New York. I worked in R&D at Verizon Communications (then NYNEX) and developed very early neural networks for speech recognition. It may seem hard to believe, but AI was very much in vogue in the early nineties. It is amazing to see the progress AI has made in the last few years. While at Verizon, I also obtained an MBA from New York University and later worked at Deloitte Consulting advising clients on M&A transactions. After about 15 years in NY, I had an opportunity to relocate to New Delhi to start an offshore software development center for Pitney Bowes. At that time, I thought it would be a short-term assignment, but I have now been in India/SE Asia for more than a decade!
I didn’t realize then, but each job or work experience was preparing me to start my own venture decades later.
USF World: So, what made you decide to start educerts? Tell us briefly how it works.
Ranvir: Yes, that is an interesting story. When my nieces were applying to US universities around 2020, I noticed they used the same paper-based process I did almost 25 years ago when I applied to USF! Academic credentials had to be manually attested from your university and mailed to the receiving institutions. It was an extremely long, expensive, and unproductive process. Even with all the advances in technology, the area of academic credentials seemed stuck in the manual, paper-based past.
I conceived the idea of an ‘electronic academic document’ which is tamper-proof and would lead to a paperless process of verification. That led me to found educerts, which is a SaaS company that helps universities, school boards and other issuing institutions to create secure ‘digital degrees/transcripts’ that are always accessible to students and easily verifiable.
USF World: That’s exciting, can you tell us a bit more about how such digital degrees can be trusted by receiving institutions (perhaps like USF)?
Ranvir: India has over 40M students enrolled in higher education and several hundred thousand students also go on to study in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe. However, these universities are not going to accept or trust documents from a startup named educerts right away, correct?
India has over 40M students enrolled in higher education and several hundred thousand students also go on to study in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe.
Fortunately for us, the Government of India also realized the need for digitization in the area of academic records and roped in startups to help onboard universities to digitize/secure their documents given the massive student population. All these documents reside in a Government of India repository called DigiLocker/NAD. This was a huge step in establishing trust since it was backed by government authority. educerts helps onboard universities to DigiLocker/NAD. As an approved partner, we maintain the trust chain and help in the massive effort to securely digitize Indian student records.
For receiving institutions, like USF, educerts provides a service wherein Indian students looking to apply to USF can automatically attach their academic achievements in the application process. Third party credential verifiers can also avail this service. Since we interface directly with the DigiLocker/NAD platform, receivers can be assured the documents they are getting can be trusted and are genuine. Moreover, since it's a paperless process, it is instant and leads to time and productivity savings.
USF World: That’s wonderful. Seems useful to both students and university administrators. How has your entrepreneurial venture been so far?
I was fortunate to put together my skills, including those gained at the MS Computer Science program at USF, to a business that I hope will benefit those involved in credential verification.
Ranvir: In an entrepreneurial venture, you and your team must be passionate about your idea and commit to it as there are going to be periods of disappointments. I was fortunate to put together my skills, including those gained at the MS Computer Science program at USF, to a business that I hope will benefit those involved in credential verification. As I mentioned earlier, even skills gained in the past can prove relevant much later - we are now including advances in AI/Machine Learning to detect fraudulent documents…and it is a skill I picked up on my first job!
Our goal is to make verification of academic documents easy across the globe. This should improve the student experience, help university administrators, and improve productivity. We are also excited to be growing our services to the SE Asia market from our Singapore location.
USF World: If someone wants more information, what is the best way to contact you?
Ranvir: Email is best. I can be reached at ranvir.singh@educerts.net