TL;DR: Pravesh is a prep companion for Indian competitive-exam aspirants (UPSC, SSC, Banking, NEET, JEE). Its bet is that families, not peers, keep aspirants consistent, so guardian visibility is the core of the product and community features are only a way in. I reversed a planned ₹149/month guardian paywall, made everything free with voluntary UPI contributions, and kept data collection to what the product needs.

Built product · Product owner · Live app, pre soft-launch

Live app · PRD · BRD · MRD · Spec

The problem

Aspirants usually study alone for months. Content is everywhere; consistency is not. Meanwhile the families paying for coaching and supporting them have no view of whether the daily work is happening, so they either worry quietly or nag. Most prep apps add more content or a leaderboard. Neither solves the gap between the aspirant and the people backing them.

Evidence

Pravesh hasn't launched publicly, so there's no usage data yet. The evidence so far is a persona-based usefulness review I ran against the build. It showed the daily loop was too thin to bring people back, which led to the additions listed under How it works.

How it works

A live web app (TanStack Start, React and Convex, with email-OTP sign-in). The aspirant runs a daily loop; a guardian can follow along if the aspirant chooses to share.

flowchart LR
	A["Aspirant signs up<br>(email OTP)"] --> B{"Under 18?"}
	B -->|"Yes"| C["Parental-consent<br>email"]
	B -->|"No"| D["Daily loop"]
	C --> D
	D --> E["Daily targets, focus timer,<br>syllabus checklist,<br>mock-test log"]
	E --> F["Opt-in<br>guardian sharing"]
	F --> G["Guardian sees progress<br>(no app install needed)"]
	E --> H["Check-in reminder email<br>and badges"]
	H --> D

The daily loop. Daily targets, a focus timer that logs study hours automatically, topic-level syllabus checklists, a mock-test score log, a daily check-in reminder email and badges. The core loop runs in English, Hindi and Hinglish; Marathi and Tamil are waiting on native-speaker review. An "Electric" theme targets the 18 to 25 core audience.

Guardian visibility. A guardian can follow progress without installing anything. Sharing is the aspirant's choice, by explicit opt-in.

Community as a funnel. Leaderboard, mentors and discussion exist to bring aspirants in, not as the reason they stay.

Feedback. NPS, multiple-choice and free-text feedback in the app, visible only to me as product owner.

Decisions and trade-offs

• Family-first over peer-community-first or institute B2B2C. I considered three directions. A peer community is easy to start but weak at keeping someone consistent for months. Licensing to coaching institutes (B2B2C) brings distribution but makes the institute the customer, not the family. I chose family-first: guardian visibility is the differentiator. The institute route is shelved for later, not dropped.
• Reversed the ₹149/month guardian paywall. The original plan charged guardians. It would have excluded exactly the families who can't pay, who are often the ones who need this most. Everything is now free, with voluntary pay-what-you-want UPI contributions. The cost is no predictable revenue yet.
• Privacy as a product decision. No phone-contacts collection and no location collection. Updates to guardians need explicit opt-in rather than hidden data capture. The guardian app install is not mandatory. This slows growth loops that rely on contact uploads, and that's accepted.
• Keep under-18s in, with consent. Instead of an age gate that turns away school-age NEET and JEE aspirants, under-18s go through a parental-consent email flow. A Privacy Policy and Terms are published.

What I cut