Quit IPS after 8 years, built 3 companies: How former police commissioner Rajan Singh founded ConceptOwl, HabitStrong- Moneycontrol.com

Rajan Singh, an electrical engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur who spent eight years in the Indian Police Service and served as Commissioner of Police, Thiruvananthapuram, left policing to pursue an MBA at the Wharton School and later worked at McKinsey & Company and private equity firm New Silk Route before turning to entrepreneurship. Since exiting the IPS in July 2005, Singh has founded three education and habit-focused ventures — CourseBrew (2012), ConceptOwl (around 2015–16) and HabitStrong (launched in 2020) — and has raised outside capital, pivoted business models and repeatedly redefined his professional trajectory.

“The experiment initially began with a simple YouTube programme around waking up at 5 am,”

Singh said, adding that he “continued it for about 100 days and found that participants were reporting meaningful changes in their routines.” That early experiment in routines and habit formation evolved into HabitStrong, a structured programme focused on building routines, improving focus and reducing digital distractions.

Singh’s career path has been unconventional and iterative. After graduating from IIT Kanpur he chose to appear for the Civil Services Examination and joined the Indian Police Service in September 1997, first serving as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Karunagappally, Kerala. By 2001 he was appointed Commissioner of Police in Thiruvananthapuram, one of the youngest officers to hold the post. A Kerala government order dated June 17, 2004 records his transfer from Commissioner to Superintendent of Police (Security), SB CID, Headquarters, Thiruvananthapuram.

His move to business school followed a moment he later described on LinkedIn: while conducting a police raid in a slum he received a call from fellow IPS officer Sunil Asnani, who had secured admission to Wharton — “the contrast stayed with him,” he recalled — and Singh applied and enrolled at Wharton in 2005, completing his MBA in 2007. He then joined McKinsey & Company in New York, working across insurance, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and banking, before moving to New Silk Route to gain investor-side experience. That exposure to entrepreneurs and investors shaped his decision to build companies rather than continue on a conventional corporate path.

• CourseBrew (2012): Singh’s first startup, an online learning marketplace for courses and tutoring; the venture ultimately shut down.
• ConceptOwl (2015–16): An education startup focused on science and mathematics for students in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, blending online learning and classroom programmes and partnering with Bansal Classes for tests and practice. Singh at times taught physics himself when the company struggled to retain teachers.
• Funding and corporate structure: ConceptOwl and HabitStrong sit under RankSurge Learning Private Limited, with Tracxn-style data showing the company raised around Rs 3.5 crore from Indian Angel Network and other investors and a post-money valuation near Rs 22 crore in 2019. Company filings place FY25 operating revenue in the Rs 1–10 crore range, with Singh listed as a director.

Singh’s pattern — moving from engineering to policing, then business school, consulting, private equity and entrepreneurship — underscores an appetite for reinvention. Looking ahead, the HabitStrong pivot shows how experiential experiments can be productised: a routine-building YouTube pilot became a paid programme during the COVID pandemic. For Singh, future growth will depend on scaling HabitStrong’s structured programmes beyond early adopters while continuing to refine delivery for learners in smaller cities through the ConceptOwl playbook.