Headstart - EdTech Entrepreneur Meet

I was told by my friend Harsh about this Startup Saturday conducts by HeadStart on every second Saturday, this time they have chosen my interesting topic EdTech. Immediately registered few hours before the event. It was at Riveria Food Court, Embassy Gulf Court...

9:00 AM -- Reached there, met few stalls and had just chat with of the participants

9:45 AM -- The first inaugural speech was from Vamsi - CEO , Co-Founder of Vedantu

                    Vedantu is specialized in online tutoring for 8th to 10th std students. Looking very young and dynamic.
                    Very impressive speech and really connected very well.. There was no PPT,was talking from his expereince...young Champ..

https://in.linkedin.com/in/profilevamsikrishna 

                     Vamsi and his few other friends from IIT went to Punjab on a job, 3 of their friends started tutions to local students. Slowly grew from 50 students to 5000 students in the span of 3-4 years. They finally sold it to Mahesh Tutorials  (Very popular in Mumbai)
                     They started their next venture with B2B, where directly providing content to schools and colleges. But it didnt work well because of multiple constraints. They had to shutdown and started Vedantu..which recently received 5 Million funding from TigerGlobal..He smarly answered saying it took 10 years of hardwork to get 5 million funding and it wasn't a celebration time for him rather it has brought is more responsibility on the organization... nice way of saying...isn't it?

Vedantu is a platform where students rate their teachers, teachers can tag their cost per rate depending on their skill set and rating...

He mentioned the below points as his learning from his 10 years of experience

1. Don't over create the concept, just start with handling a small business problem..Regularly take feedback from your audience in the initial stage before plan big
2. Education industry can't be commoditized like flipkart and other eCommerce space..
3. Education is seasonal business - should know when to spend on marketing unlike other industries 
4. It will be slow initially, so have patience 
5. Engagement with student is real critical for success
6. B2C is price sensitive 
7. There is Huge market potential in Education industry
8. Non-Impulsive Buying...

Couple of questions asked by the Audience and his answers, just listing down few question found them interesting...

1. How did you resolve language barriers in Edu space?

     Vedantu don't create content, they use white board and tutors directly delivery lecture to students on selected topics. So no issue of Language barriers..Still students can search for tutors with their local language in the platform.

2. What is their plan to expand Vedantu to 3tier and 4tier cities where people may not be techsavy?

    Mobile and internet is in the reach of 3tier and 4tier cities, tutors too available in these locations. Vedantu R&D team is working on various projects to eliminate barriers of Low Internet bandwidth, bufferring issues while teaching over the platform..

There are few more questions asked by Audience..but didnt find interesting...

10:45 AM : The next session by MobTatva 

I met these 3 gentle men before the session and saw their mobile platform. What they do is..create flash cards in Maths/Science/Social studies for students 8th to 10std...

They explained their jouney, 2+ years .--25000 downloads so far....No revenue source at this point, planning to introduce Premium model in the space..

11:00 AM: VRFirst.in 

This is one beautiful concept to understand how technology can imfluence in educaiton space...

We all know VirtualReality is fast growing market, googlecardboard is an App available..there are CardBoard glasses available for 150 Rs...

Virtual Reality will play an important role in Education industry, where many schools have already started using in schools, where students can visit a famous monument, go to Jungle with their friends and explore animals and birds. Solving a math problem together, Understand how a critical surgery can be done by Doctors...etc..

Nice...Very interesting isn't it..I am just ordering one GoogleCardboard to explore this.... are you?

11:15 AM Jayadev from HashLearn

Similarly to Vamsi, Jayadev also started multiple ventures in Education. His earlier venture Tandem was acquired by Manipal Education. His new venture HashLearn, where tutors available round the clock. Students can connect to any tutor to solve their doubts. It is a monthly subscription model of 500 Rs. per month.

The below few suggestions or inputs to the entrepreneurs who is trying to enter into Education segment...

1. Try to understand what you are trying to solve the problem...is it Efficient or Revenue

2. New platform or a solution shouldn't be an additional barrier to Teachers or staff, this will never work

3.  Each selling will take minimum 3 to 6 months, so have patience and dont spend too much money in sales. Rather directly reach out to Chairman or decision makers to conclude the sale

11:45 to 12:00 had tea/snacks break

12:00 PM VervBeat 

It is a facebook kind of a social network platform to meet Artist, could be Dancers, Musicians, Photographers... Detailed profile can be created and any one can search for them

Finally ended up with a Panel Discussion, the below top gentlemen were Panel Members

Karthik KS, Founder, Avagmah
Piyush Agrawal, Co-founder and CEO, SuperProfs 
Amruth, CEO & Founder, Guru-G Learning Labs 
Dr. Senthil Kumaran, Principal Counsellor - Education Excellence at CII Institute of Quality

Couple of insights from the Panel Discussion

1. Education is not a glamorous industry, convincing angle investors is real challenging

2. Many suggested not to go for external funding immediately, it will put lot of pressure on founders and founders have to spend lot of time for meetings and sharing data pointers to investors regularly 

3. EdTech should help schools/students in improving the efficiency..

4. Working with Govt. Schools or Colleges is real challenging, don't celebrate when you close one deal by paying under the table as there is a risk of new board members coming on board and have to start a fresh engagement

5. Some insights on spending on marketing in the initial stage

    5.1 They all started with Email and Facebook marketing as an easy way of marketing their products

    5.2 Students referral is the biggest marketing opportunity to be created

    5.3 SuperProfs - started their marketing campaign with one of the popular tutor in Charted Account - New Delhi... it worked wonders with very less cost 

6.  87% of the schools/colleges are run by Govt...

7.   Total 5.6 Billion funding across the world last year, out of which only 2% funding provided in India...2016 seems to be promising

8.   Think before going the funding, as it brings in a risk of burning money fast and you will have to run on a TreadMill..

Overall,it was worth attending this session. I liked their insights and their experiences. More importantly, each of the founders openly discussed their challenges and business expansion plans openly infront of their customers...

Except one of the speakers ,rest all are in late 20s or early 30s in their age. There is lot to learn from them...

Thanks friends, hope you all like it...