Ask any HR head what's wrong with fresh graduates and you'll get the same answer, almost word for word. They're smart, they've studied, and they still can't do the job on day one. Ask the graduates, and they'll tell you they did everything they were told. Attended the lectures, cleared the exams, collected the certificate. Somewhere between those two conversations sits a gap that colleges don't own and companies don't want to pay for.

Devendra decided to own it.

Before Academic Option, he spent 7 years working across startups in India, from fintech to web3 to crypto. What bothered him wasn't that students lacked talent. It was that nobody was responsible for the stretch between the last exam and the first salary.

Academic Option is his answer to that stretch. Students get bootcamps in digital marketing, AI and machine learning, Node.js and web development, plus a Career Launchpad that tests where they actually stand. Recruiters get a CRM built for hiring early-career talent. And alongside the technical tracks sits something most bootcamps skip entirely: modules on social awareness and corporate ethics.

But this isn't only Devendra's story. When he told his family he wanted to leave a stable startup career and build something of his own, the first person to say yes was his mother, Mrs. Bhagwati Kahti. She didn't just give her blessing. She put in the first money and helped run operation took on the role of co-founder, and today she's Director of Academic Option. In a country where most parents still push their children toward the safe job, a mother backing her son's startup and then stepping into it herself is a story worth telling. We talked to both of them.

Key Takeaways: Fixing the Stretch Between Graduation and the First Job

The Gap Nobody Owns:

• Colleges measure success by exams cleared, companies by work delivered, and students fall into the space between the two
• Academic Option trains, assesses and places students on one platform instead of handing them off between three different systems
• The public benchmark is 75% internship within six months of completing a program. It's a target, and the team treats it like one

Skills Are Only Half the Hire:

• Bootcamp tracks cover digital marketing, AI and ML, Node.js and web development
• Social awareness and corporate ethics modules run alongside the technical training, because people get rejected for how they work, not only for what they know
• Seven years inside fast-moving startups showed Devendra which freshers survived and which didn't, and it was rarely about the degree.

The Woman Behind the Founder:

• Mrs. Bhagwati Khati backed the idea before anyone else did, at a time when relatives were asking why he'd leave a good job.
• Her focus on young women students, especially those whose families hesitate about relocation and careers, shapes how the platform thinks about internships.

Q: For someone hearing about you for the first time, who are you and what is Academic Option?

Devendra Singh Khati: I'm Devendra, founder of Academic Option. The simplest way I explain it is that we bridge the gap between classroom and corporate. A student comes to us with a degree, or while still studying, and we help them become someone a company actually wants to hire. That means training, then honest assessment, then getting them in front of recruiters. Before this I spent seven years in Indian startups, fintech, web3, crypto, and in every one of them I saw freshers struggle with the same things.

Hot Take: Plenty of platforms do one of training, testing or hiring. Very few want responsibility for all three, because then the outcome is yours too.

Q: Fintech, web3, crypto. What did those seven years teach you about freshers?

Devendra Singh Khati: Startups don't have time to train you. You join on Monday and by Wednesday you're expected to ship something. While handing marketing of an Indian crypto exchange had a hire who looked great on paper has relevant internship experience but couldn't cope. What I noticed was that the freshers who did well weren't always the ones from the best colleges. They were the ones who had built something on their own, who knew how to ask for help, who didn't panic when things broke. None of that was on their marksheet.

Hot Take: Startups are a brutal test of job-readiness. If a fresher survives a crypto startup in their first year, the degree was the least important thing they brought.

Q: When did you decide to actually leave and build this?

Devendra Singh Khati: In February 2026. It had been in my head for a while. But thinking about it and actually resigning are very different things. You're giving up a salary, and in India that's not just your decision, your whole family feels it.

Hot Take: In India, quitting to start up is rarely an individual decision. It's a family vote, and most founders don't talk about who voted yes.

Q: And who voted yes?

Devendra Singh Khati: My mother. Before anyone else. I think I went in expecting to have to convince her, and she ended up convincing me. She asked me practical questions, how long can you survive without income, who's the customer, what happens if it doesn't work. And then may father backed her decision. After that she didn't just support me from the side, she got involved.

Hot Take: A parent who says "go for it" is a blessing. A parent who asks about runway first and then says go for it is the beginning of a co-founder.

Q: What does your role look like inside Academic Option?

Mrs. Bhagwati Khati: I'm not the one writing code or building the AI. But someone has to make sure the money lasts, that the students who call are spoken to properly, that nothing gets wasted. I've managed the household for 30 years. Running a company isn't so different. You just have more people to answer to.

Hot Take: India has millions of women who've been running complex operations for decades without a title. Some of them are just one family startup away from being called COO.

Q: Devendra, how has working with your mother changed how you build?

Devendra Singh Khati: She's much more careful than me with money, and early on that frustrated me. Now I'm grateful. In startups I'd seen how quickly companies burn cash chasing growth. She doesn't let that happen. And she asks about the students in a way I sometimes don't. I'll ask how many got placed. She'll ask how that one girl from Almora is doing.

Hot Take: Founders track placement rates. Mothers track names. A good company needs both.

Q: You run social awareness and corporate ethics modules alongside technical training. Why?

Devendra Singh Khati: Because I've seen people lose jobs over things that had nothing to do with code. How you write an email. Whether you own a mistake or hide it. How you speak to someone junior to you. Nobody teaches this, everyone is just expected to know it, and students from families with corporate exposure pick it up at home. The ones who don't have that start at a disadvantage. So for us it's not a soft add-on, it's about fairness.

Hot Take: "Workplace common sense" is mostly inherited. Teaching it openly is one of the more equalising things an edtech company can do.

Q: Tell us about the Career Launchpad. What does a student go through?

Devendra Singh Khati: It starts with aptitude and skill assessments. The idea is to give the student an honest picture of where they stand, not a feel-good score. Then the AI recommends tracks and roles based on that, so you're not applying to fifty jobs you're not ready for and getting rejected from all of them. Rejection without explanation is what breaks young people. If you know you're two skills away from a role, that's a plan. If you just get silence, that's demoralizing.

Hot Take: The kindest thing a career platform can do is tell you no early and tell you why.

Q: Why build a full CRM for HR partners instead of just a job board?

Devendra Singh Khati: Recruiters don't have a shortage of applications; they have a shortage of time. A job board gives them five hundred resumes. What they need is to see who's been trained, how they scored, and where each candidate stands, in one place. If we make the recruiter's life easier, they come back, and that's what keeps placements happening for our students. The HR partner is as much our customer as the student.

Hot Take: Job boards sell volume. Recruiters are already drowning in it. What they'll pay for is fewer, better candidates.

Q: 75% placement in 12 months is a bold public target. Why put a number out there?

Devendra Singh Khati: Because if you don't commit to an outcome, you end up just selling courses. A number keeps us honest. It forces us to care about what happens after the bootcamp, whether the student got interviews, whether they got the offer, whether they're still in the job three months later. It's a target and we're clear about that. I'd rather miss an honest target and learn from it than hit a vague one.

Hot Take: Edtech has spent years selling enrolments. A founder who puts a placement number on the homepage is choosing to be judged on the harder metric.

The bottom line: The classroom-to-corporate gap has been around as long as there have been fresh graduates. It lasts because it falls between two institutions that are each doing what they were designed to do. Academic Option is a bet that one platform can carry a student across, training them, telling them honestly where they stand, and connecting them to recruiters who have time to look closely. Seven years inside Indian startups gave Devendra Singh Khati a clear picture of what freshers lack, and it's rarely what their degree says.

The part of this story that stays with you, though, is the kitchen-table conversation before any of it existed. Indian startup culture loves its origin myths: the dorm room, the garage, the angel cheque. Far fewer founders say the first person to believe in them was their mother, and fewer still can say she then joined them. Mrs. Bhagwati Khati brings what she has always brought: careful money, close attention to people, and an ability to talk to worried parents in a way no pitch deck can.

For young women whose families aren't sure about that first job in another city, having a mother on the founding team could matter more than any feature on the platform.

"A degree proves you can learn. A job asks whether you can do. For years, students have been left to work out the difference on their own, usually after a string of rejections nobody explained. Devendra is building Academic Option to own that problem, and he isn't doing it alone. The first person to back him was the woman who raised him, and she's still in the room, asking the questions that matter. Whether 75% holds up will become clear over time. A founding team that tracks both the numbers and the names is a good place to start."