One of the biggest advantages of MOOCs is their wide reach. Distance and time are no longer constraints for the learner and teacher in a MOOC platform. Because of their versatile nature, MOOCs are more inclusive and help learners from all walks of life.

Recently, Yash Raj Karthikey – a young entrepreneur – shared with everyone his experience of the MicroMasters programme IIMBx offers on entrepreneurship. The MicroMasters programme is a set of 4 courses that are designed to guide budding entrepreneurs start his/her own ventures.

Yash Raj’s learner story was unlike any other – it’s stories like these that inspire the MOOC community to work harder and create better content for its learners.

Yash was from a small town named Bokaro steel ciy in Jharkand. Unfortunately, Yash lost his mother at a very young age; her sudden demise led him to build on an idea that would help benefit women in society.

Despite his effort, due to lack of coordination, Yash couldn’t get his first team “Silverspark” to work. But, that didn’t deter him, it instead taught him to come out of his comfort zone and try new things.

Yash quickly picked up the basics of web designing by going to the cyber café near his house in his free time. He tried his luck in the Google Ad sense program when he heard that you could monetize your website by placing ads in them. After multiple rejections, his first website – computergk.com was finally picked and he never looked back.

After finishing his higher secondary education, Yash decided to apply for IIMBx’s MicroMasters Programme in Entrepreneurship. Under the guidance of Professor Suresh Bhagavatula, Professor. Ashis Mishra and Professor Vasanthi Srinivasan., Yash flourished and is currently in the final stage of the course. His startup is now accepted into Microsoft Bizspark Startup Program and is being funded with thousands of dollars of Software, Azure credits and resources which has further helped him scale his startup. He also now owns his own private limited company, Silverspark, the same one that was discontinued 6 years ago.

Yash’s inspiring story shows us that despite whatever obstacles one may face in their life, you can always overcome and learn from them. We at the IIMBx MOOC team were delighted to be a part and help him in his journey and wish him the very best of luck in the future!

You can read Yahs’s full story here.