Recently when ‘10 startup founders to follow in 2025’ were selected in Nigeria, a special place of honor went to Manish Sardana, co-founder of Craydel, a startup which has won a reputation for helping and guiding higher education students in Nigeria and Kenya and is now planning to widen its work to Ghana, Uganda and South Africa, apart from increasing its reach-out in other ways.
These startups were selected on the basis of not just economic success but also contribution to social progress including inspiring new innovations and innovators.
Manish Sardana is quick to share credit with his co-founders, John Nguru and Shayne Aman Premji. These three highly talented professionals from three different continents (Asia, Africa and North America) have worked together to take Craydel towards fame based on real achievements within a short time.
Sardana left a promising career in India to try his entrepreneurship skills in Africa and within a short time he has mixed up so well with people, students and colleague here that now Africa is more like ‘home’.
He had shown entrepreneurial pangs from very early times—first starting a library of rented books and comics as a 10 year old, then in college trying to start a youth magazine, then while still a student writing a textbook.
These ventures had mixed success. His magazine was popular but could not establish commercial viability due to lack of advertisements. The textbook he wrote was widely used but the publisher did not use his name as the author. Being from a family of modest means, he could not sustain these ventures long enough for economic viability to come his way.
So he continued to teach other students to partly pay for his higher management education, and soon enough got well-paying jobs. However his entrepreneurial spirit continued to prod him, and he responded first by leaving well-paid jobs and then by his efforts to help small scale businesses scale up, using innovative technology for this. The willingness to try something new also brought him to Kenya.
Craydel, an online career guidance platform, was next in line, and helped with the special technology skills of John Nguru, entrepreneurial talents of Manish Sardana and many-sided contributions of Shayne Aman Premji, this has already found an important place in the higher education scene of Africa and beyond.
Sardana’s exposure to the higher education scene in Kenya, where he lives, convinced him that the agents who were handling a lot of pushing and placing in higher education lacked the capabilities, training and the motivations for genuine, truly helpful career counselling. Craydel, which is a play on the word cradle, was set up to try to fill this real need and provide truly helpful career guidance to students, including those who were already employed but wanted to continue their education.
The top 10 startups selection committee describes the achievements of Craydel and Manish Sardana in these words, “Under his leadership Craydel has successfully connected thousands of students with reputable universities and institutions, facilitating their journey towards academic and professional success… Manish’s strategic vision focuses on leveraging technology to remove barriers to education, ensuring that students can easily navigate their options and make informed decisions.”
He has been instrumental, this citation says, “in shaping Craydel’s mission to provide seamless access to quality education for learners across Africa and beyond.” His “proactive approach and dedication to fostering educational accessibility position him as a key player in the evolving landscape of African education.”
This recognition could not have come at a better time for Manish who had been feeling very low and sad following the sudden death in India of his father Narendra Sardana who had stood closely by him in all his earlier entrepreneurial efforts. In fact Manish says that he owes his success most of all to his mother Neena Sardana and his late father Narendra Sardana who ensured that no matter what the economic constraints, he could complete his higher education without any problems while at the same time having a go at his amateurish but very creative entrepreneurial plunges right in the middle of his school and college life.
One can only hope that he and his colleagues continue to be successful in bringing the same creative opportunities in keeping with their aptitudes and skills to a growing number of students.
Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, A Day in 2071, Man over Machine, When the Two Streams Met and Hindi Cinema and Society.
