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Upskilling India | Hari Krishnan Nair @ Great Learning
171 Plays4 years ago
“For education to be meaningful it cannot be superficial" - Hari Krishnan Nair.
Co-founder of Great Learning, India’s largest online learning platform Hari Krishnan Nair is the entrepreneur who made professional education easily accessible to Indians so that they could equip themselves with career critical competencies.
A trailblazer in the ed-tech segment Great Learning has delivered over 9 Million learning hours & boasts of 15,000+ alumni with a turnover of approx. 300 Crores!
Catch us in conversation with Hari Krishnan where he shares his entrepreneurial story of triumphs, loses & what led to the genesis of Great Learning. Here are our key takeaways from this episode:
- Perseverance is the key to success.
- How to market premium service products.
- Focusing on quality over growth in the inception phase.
- Nurturing & engaging audiences through content.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:02
Speaker
H.T. Smartcast. You are listening to an H.T. Smartcast original.
00:00:24
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay. Hi, this is Aurob. And you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated charter founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Challenges of 2020 for Young Professionals
00:00:44
Speaker
Hi, I'm Hari and I am the co-founder at Great Learning.
00:00:52
Speaker
Even though 2020 has been a really horrible year for young working professionals, there has been a silver lining to it. That online courses have not only become mainstream but are readily accepted by employers looking for great talent.
Hari Krishnan's Role in Online Education
00:01:09
Speaker
It is now really easy for a young working professional to upskill on new-age skills like analytics, digital marketing or machine learning.
00:01:20
Speaker
Today's guest, Hari Krishnan has been partly responsible for this trend. He founded Great Learning. The startup is not only the trailblazer in this segment but is also the largest Indian startup in its category with an annual turnover of more than 300 euros. Here's how Hari empowered stacks of learners to enhance their careers.
Hari's Early Life and Education
00:01:47
Speaker
What was it like growing up as a Malukid in the Hindi heartland? I don't know how things are now but at least then there was always these biases and prejudices. Now of course cities are a lot more let's say cosmopolitan in the sense that you know there are people from all over the country
00:02:06
Speaker
in most of the cities, right? But then it was not like that. Though there were a lot of South Indians in Bhopal, even then, most of them would definitely be North Indians and many of them would be from, you know, their natives would be in Madhya Pradesh. The embarrassments used to happen because, you know, there would be usage of Hindi or terms of Hindi that, you know, I would not understand or I would call it wrong.
00:02:27
Speaker
I'd like to give you an example. So I remember this, that you know, I used to call those, there's another city called Indore. So I used to call Indore as Indore. I've had embarrassing situations like that. So I think that is something that you know, friends would always kind of pull your legs on, but otherwise it was all fine.
00:02:47
Speaker
So towards the end of school, you had that IIT kind of a goal only, I'm guessing. But then you got into Kerala for your BTEC. You know, most kids then engineering was the stream of preference. So that's what I chose. And then IIT becomes like, you know, the natural goal to aspire for. And academically, at least I was good enough to believe that I could make it. Then this whole kind of rituals of tuitions and all of those start. Right.
00:03:13
Speaker
And usually the performance used to be fine in those, so there was an increasing level of confidence that, you know, yeah, this could happen. After the IIT entrance in 12th, when I did not make it, I was quite disappointed and that is when I, and at this, the other national entrance and the seat in Kerala had already happened. But I, you know, I was like, no, no, I'm not going to go to Kerala and study in some
00:03:34
Speaker
you know, government college, that's not what I want to do. So I decided to take a break, you know, after 12 and I was pushed off to put up and that was hell for me, you know, there is no phase of life that I hate as much as those nine months there. But why did you hate that period? I just could not relate to it. I think one was that I probably was not comfortable kind of going there in the first place. It's not a decision that, you know, I could take. My parents saw that that was the best thing for me then.
00:04:04
Speaker
And I did not have the confidence or the courage to tell my parents this. Essentially, I just kind of lingered around there. And my performance after that break was actually even worse than before.
00:04:16
Speaker
go and take up that engineering scene that I had and basically just kind of take it on from there. And how was that experience studying in Kerala? What was that like and was it a better experience than Kota? I think it was definitely a better experience than Kota because there as an engineering colleges you will make friends and you know life will try and kind of figure out a way right you will you will build it block by block and you know you will have some very good memories some great experiences of that but
00:04:40
Speaker
Because what preceded me getting there was not very pleasant. I took a lot of time to frame a positive outlook. One of the things that really helped me was that one of my closest friends who was also with me in school and who also happens to be from
00:04:57
Speaker
very similar background like me who was also Malu he also got into the same college so at least I had one companion that companionship helped me a lot to kind of find my footing and once that was done then I was in some sense able to get on with life and then towards the end of engineering what what were you like by the time you finished the course like how did your personality change during the course
00:05:18
Speaker
So in the entering college, you know, I again kind of realized by the third year of engineering is that I was not at out on these technical careers. And I was I was posting computer science engineering. And that's when, you know, I started hearing about CAD and, you know, the business schools and options and all of that stuff. And that's when I decided
00:05:38
Speaker
I did that you know probably that is what I should do not because I knew a lot about an MBA education is or what are the kind of careers that exist post an MBA or whether I would kind of like that at all but largely because I was sure that you know I could not see
00:05:54
Speaker
myself being soft energy. So you started preparing for the cat in your final year only? In my final year, yes. So I think the Institute was timed. So time in Trivatran is where I used to go. Somewhere in the early half of the seventh semester or so, I decided that, okay, this is what I want to do.
Career Decisions and CAT Preparation
00:06:10
Speaker
So let me give it my best shot. I did not want, you know, the same episode happening again that I'm aspiring for something and I get somewhere else and I continue to, you know, view the fact that I missed an opportunity. So I wanted to be more certain of what
00:06:23
Speaker
that I had to take was that, you know, that was also placements time, right? So there are also early placements happening. So I had to better choose whether I sit for companies or do I keep my focus and just prepare for this. And I chose the latter because I knew that, you know, if I get a safety net, I would not push myself hard enough.
00:06:44
Speaker
So I decided to purposefully not kind of go for placements and go for company interviews or try and get a job. That was, I think, probably a risky decision and one of the few risky decisions I take until that point in life. And it was a decision that
MBA Experience and Evolving Learning Perspective
00:06:59
Speaker
I took.
00:06:59
Speaker
myself. It's not as if somebody forced me to work. And then I took that much to my disappointment. I think the only kind of IAM that I got a call from was IAM Bangalore. Beyond IAMs, I had light MDI, MDI, SPJN, and IMT, I think. So IAM Bangalore, I kind of really screwed up in the interview. One of the professors in the panel wrote me deeper on my knowledge of computer science engineering.
00:07:23
Speaker
So, right out of that interview, I knew that, you know, this is not going to happen, you know, because I had no idea in terms of the questions that were asked and the few questions that I did have an idea to, I did not answer them convincingly at all. And I chose M.D.I. over I. And so, did you have a better approach towards learning once you got into M.D.I. as compared to your B.Tech?
00:07:47
Speaker
I think it was slightly better. And I'll tell you why was it better was that I came into MDI kind of running away from computers as engineering, right? Because I knew that I can't use software engineer, right? And one thing I told myself is that, listen, this is where it stops. Now, there is no other path after this, or at least I did not get
00:08:05
Speaker
of you know consider it and you're here because you do not want to do something so now if you're here then you you start learning and doing better at it so there were i think again it was a it was a mixed bag in the sense that the courses that i liked i really enjoyed learning them i used to do fairly well at them entrepreneurship was a subject in the second year and by that time i had already kind of cultivated an interest in entrepreneurship so so that's something that i really like but there were not a whole lot of courses back then in entrepreneurship i think there was one
00:08:30
Speaker
or probably two courses at max. I wanted to learn finance well, but somehow I never got around to learning it well. That was always a
Internship Insights and Career Re-evaluation
00:08:39
Speaker
weakness for me and other courses in terms of organizational behavior and HR. And I think though they are extremely important courses today in the phase of life where I am right now, but then I just did not have an appreciation for it. And also because I went into MPA right after college, so I had never worked anywhere
00:08:57
Speaker
before. I did not even know what kind of problems exist in our organization. Everything was academic. So what was your internship about? My internship was actually in sales and distribution management. As soon as you enter, your thoughts are formed by what you hear from your seniors and what's happening in their careers, right? And your super seniors rather, because your seniors would not have gone
00:09:17
Speaker
And then those initial few months of classes and you will kind of start saying the role, you know, marketing is interesting for me. So that's, that's the journey that I went through, like all marketing students in a business school, or at least then, you know, FMC companies were the dream companies to work. So I said that, okay, that's, that's where I should work. Right. I really need to get to that to understand that better. As a first step, I got into the placement committee. I was lucky enough to, you know, within placement committee, also you have sectors, right? That you work. That's how the placement committee gets divided. So I, I got allocated.
00:09:47
Speaker
the FMCG sector itself. So I got an opportunity to talk to recruiters and then talk to seniors, you know, trying to understand what kind of roles do they play and all of that world kind of seemed very, very exciting for me. So in my internship, I was very focused that what I want is an FMCG internship. That's how I landed up
00:10:04
Speaker
in Asian paints. First two weeks I was in Bombay and then I was in Bangalore for the next two and a half or three months. So they had, from what I remember now, Asian paints had just launched a category of premium products, what is now called the Royal and the Royal Play and stuff, right? What it was called back then, but they just ventured into that and
00:10:24
Speaker
they wanted to do on-ground study of dealers and distributors in Bangalore trying to understand how will this get perceived by their customers and there was some kind of consumer behavior and some kind of analysis to be done post that and how do we choose which are the right distributors and dealers or retail stores where that should get showcased and how I think a small part of it was in terms of how are targets defined and stuff like that. So then towards the end of
00:10:52
Speaker
your MBA, what was your mind frame like? So then when I came back from internship, I said that, okay, this is one option, but then this is what one's work life is going to be. And is that something I really want to do because it's not, it's definitely not as glamorous as I thought it. And again, because I think it's largely because I had never worked anywhere before. That's why this, these thoughts of, you know, a glamorous role and a glamorous job for that.
00:11:15
Speaker
But that's not how it looks like. That's when I thought that, you know, I should at least spend some more time thinking about what are the other options. And interestingly, it's around that time, by the way, that one of my school friends, he moved from Bangalore to Gurgaon. This happened in my second year at MDR. He is the one who told me about, you know, there is this whole thing of startups, right? You can actually start something.
00:11:37
Speaker
Because he was very interested, because he was from an IIT, so he had those examples, various IITs doing it. He was like, you know, he's the one who got me thinking around that, we should look at it, you know, it could be a real opportunity, we could build something very worthwhile.
Book Genie Startup Journey
00:11:52
Speaker
for ourselves and it's not as if you know people don't do it people do it it's just that we are not aware of it and that's when i started actually seriously considering this as an option thanks to him so you had the idea form by the time placements came around that this is what a startup is going to be or you just knew that i'll do a startup and we'll figure it out along the way
00:12:12
Speaker
So me and ever, we kind of decided that, you know, we should really give this a shot. So then almost the next two trimesters were completely focused and that placement probably happens between the fifth and the sixth trimester somewhere around that time. So, so that one trimester, it was completely focused on what should we be doing? What should we be starting? Right? So that's, you know, MBA did not have an entrepreneurship club. And I rallied with a few of my friends just to see if they were interested. And we started a small entrepreneurship club. Through that club, we got to interact with more entrepreneurs. One of the interactions that I remember was with
00:12:42
Speaker
Mrs. Sanjeev Bichandani. As we spoke to more and more people, what we realized is that there are living examples and living role models of folks who have done it. So those interactions really helped. And then we started debating and talking about different ideas, doing research on different ideas. And I think around placements or before placements, we had our first idea and we were sure that this is what we were going to do. It was called Book Genie. And the idea was think of it like a Netflix, but for books. And Netflix then was different because then
00:13:11
Speaker
you were, you know, they were mailing in DVDs, think of the same use case, but for books, right? It's not as if you have to go to a library, you know, through a website, you can create a reading list and we will, you know, mail in the copies to you or the books to you and you then send them back to us. And it's a month.
00:13:27
Speaker
That was the idea which we wanted to launch. And we given him a bunch of research, open to multiple folks. And then we started working towards, you know, how to, how to source these books. Both Bebam and me both come from very similar backgrounds. No one in our family has ever done any kind of venture or business. And it's not as if there's a lot of capital one can kind of bank upon.
00:13:49
Speaker
So we were pretty much starting from scratch and with very little in hand. So we started talking to various book distributors, trying to see if we can source books, spoke to a lot of secondhand book dealers, and we even got started with that. So around the placement time, that is what we had decided, that this is the idea that we could work on. So we launched it and we realized to our dismay that nobody really cares about reading books.
00:14:16
Speaker
Did you launch it for academic books? It was actually not at all academic, it was mostly fiction non-fiction. So the first challenge that we had was that books are expensive to buy and you had to keep multiple copies, right? So how do we kind of get the money to buy that? So we raised some money from friends and family, not a whole lot. I think back then it would be like a few lakhs probably and best.
00:14:38
Speaker
And we kind of created an inventory of books that we could go with. And then we thought, you know, there are people who already have a good book collection. Why don't we go talk to them and tell them that why don't you loan out books? We will source it from you and we'll return it to you.
00:14:54
Speaker
Of course, you know, you will get paid or you will have a free subscription so that you can get books from other people. And we thought that was a really cool idea that would bring down costs. We don't have to buy books and all of that. And then we realized that, you know, books are something so personal that people don't like sharing it. I mean, maybe share it with their closest friends or family, but definitely not with strangers.
00:15:12
Speaker
So that was not going to work. They were very particular about the fact that, you know, I'm not going to trust a stranger with my book. So we realized that's not going to work either. Then we spoke to a bunch of secondhand book distributors, went to those guys, tried to cut deals with them, so was the little more books. So then two realizations happened. One is that the interest in reading books is nowhere close to what we thought it would be. People like to claim they read more books than what they actually do. So yeah, so we got hit on both those sides, right? Even the folks that are an avid book reader,
00:15:42
Speaker
Actually, they're not. And the other bit on inventory, what happened was that we tried to create, I won't say it was a vast collection, but at least we tried to create some diversity in the collection. But what we saw was that everybody, or there's a huge demand for a small set of books. So, you know, Jeffrey Archer's books and, you know, fiction, few fiction authors.
00:16:01
Speaker
Everybody wants to read the same kind of books. So what we had thought was that, okay, if you've already read Jeffrey Archer, we can now recommend you to another fiction, right? Thought by Jeffrey Archer, but by somebody. Because when your soul is secondhand books, right? They really can't give you the, you know, the best selling title. So we realized that even that is not a behavior that exists.
00:16:20
Speaker
So I think overall we did that for about seven, eight months. And by then I had finished, you know, business school and all of that. And by then I had also quit his job. We realized that, okay, this is not going anywhere. And that's when we then started focusing on what do we do next from there. You know, now it's called pivot, but you know, whatever we did then, what's
Zipify Experience and Acquisition
00:16:40
Speaker
the next thing that we did?
00:16:40
Speaker
And that's how our next venture then was, we called it Zipify. So it was actually around coopling. So, you know, then what was happening was that Groupon was a big thing in US, right? This whole social deals and stuff.
00:16:55
Speaker
stuff, right? So you'll have the number of people who collect for a number of you aggregate demand. And then, of course, when we started coopening and zipify, Snap did in their earlier avatar, they were called money saver. We and money saver, the two of us used to compete a lot in terms of getting the same brands.
00:17:14
Speaker
Tell me exactly what you started. We would go and tie up with brands and tell the brands that you should offer coupons on our website. And I mean, it's important to note that then people do not have smartphones or anything, right? So the only way to kind of redeem a coupon would be to download it, take a printout when you go to a store.
00:17:31
Speaker
So that's what we would do. And we tied up, I think, close to 80 to 90 brands. What we were hoping to do is that, you know, these coupons to consumers would stay free, but brand should start paying us because we are getting more business because what we knew is that consumers are not going to pay or at least we had no reason to believe that they would pay for a coupon. Even globally, the way couponing works is that, you know, for the consumer, it's free. And for the brand kind of either subscribe to it or there's some kind of payment model.
00:17:58
Speaker
So that's how we started and it was not very hard to sign up the brands. Even with a very bare-boned team, I think in Zippify we probably had five or six people. Even with a very bare-boned team, we were able to sign up 89 and good brands, like within Apparels, things like Nike and Adidas and so on. Lots and lots of good restaurants.
00:18:18
Speaker
restaurants and pubs you know both us and money saver erstwhile snapdee so you know both of us used to go to these I mean we would have very frequent run-ins we are pitching to someone and right after us they would be pitching or we are pitching after them or they would say you're already doing it there okay we give you the same offer so what we realize is that these brands I mean it's easy to get those they get those coupons from them what is stuff is that they're not going to do anything exclusive for
00:18:45
Speaker
What they're doing is something that they're doing with 100 other people, and you are basically just another place for them to list those coupons. That is the way they're looking at it. That power equation wherein you kind of say that, oh, I'm going to send you so many customers, and that's why you should give a deal to me is very, very hard to achieve, especially with a big brand that's almost impossible to achieve. You are a very, very small place for them, and they would not want to partner their margins beyond the coupon or give you anything exclusive to that measure.
00:19:14
Speaker
So that's what we realized, but we still kept doing it because at least here we were seeing transactions happening. We were not making a whole lot of money, but we were transactions happening, people downloading. So we kept doing that. And I think so Zipify in that form, we would have done for about close to one, one and a half years with this whole thing. You said you had five people team. So was the business making enough to pay those salaries? No, not at all.
00:19:39
Speaker
So after Boogjini, what we realized is that we absolutely have no money. So we had to figure out some sources of revenue. What I used to do was that I started teaching at time. So there were two things that I would do. One was teaching at time. And the other was, I got in touch with a bunch of our seniors from MDI who were either running their own ventures or were running their own consulting organizations. And I would take some work from them and get paid for that to get us
00:20:09
Speaker
senior's name, but there was the senior wizard of Hyderabad. He used to then run an, I think an tech company, you can call it now. But the focus was that it was essentially homework support for students based in US. So for essentially what that would mean is that students in US, you know, whenever they needed homework support, they would probably upload it to his website. Now he needed to have an army of people who could solve those. But you know, of course, he can't employ people full time, because that will be huge for him.
00:20:35
Speaker
it essentially used to be freelancers would help so I became one of those freelancers and these are mostly you know school level mathematics science questions but it was time consuming because you would get paid only when you do you know an x number of homework support and stuff right so I used to do that on a you know most of my weekends or a good part of my weekends would be consumed by that that used to get some money then time I used to teach every day
00:20:58
Speaker
Now, if I remember, my days used to start around eight o'clock or something, so eight to ten, go through morning batches, and then two evening batches, again from evening. So about four batches every day. I used to check time, and then I think they also had another time that I used to go to. So two or three time centres I used to go and I used to teach.
00:21:15
Speaker
So I think that was essentially what was kind of getting us money and these couple of gigs. Because with that money, we were then paying our rent. But rent was a small part. I think the larger part was salaries that we had to pay. They were not very expensive resources, but of course they had to be paid on time. And what were they doing? They were doing the merchant sign up?
00:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, they were largely doing the merchant signups and I think there was, apart from, so Weber was the tech person, I think he had one more person like an intern or so to say who was supporting him, but everybody else was essentially largely on merchant and there was one customer support. It was extremely strenuous to do it because you know, your days would be super long, but I think that is a part and parcel of, you know, doing a startup.
00:21:54
Speaker
But the other bigger problem was that not all of your time is going into a startup because now suddenly as I said, you know, four hours of teaching every day and teaching and that's the first time I realized how hard teaching is. It is extremely exhausting. I had a lot of respect for my mother who's a teacher and all the other teachers.
00:22:11
Speaker
One of the things that would always keep hitting me is that there is a good amount of time that I am not giving to the business because of the financial conditions. And I'm actually doing other things just to generate cash. And I always just to question myself about how smart is it or am I even giving enough time. So that was always the existential question back then.
00:22:33
Speaker
But there was no other option, so that's why we kept doing it. And between me and Beverly, what we decided was that, you know, both of us kind of trying to do part-time gigs is not going to work out. Uvara first will, so that's why I said I will. And while his entire focus should be on the business and, you know, getting the product and getting stuff done and signing up merchants and stuff like that, I also try and generate some cash for us.
00:22:54
Speaker
So we did that. I think the whole couponing side of it would have gone for one and a half years or a little more. And that's when we realized that this is not going to go anywhere. I mean, you can keep signing up brands, but that whole hope that we had of brands paying you at some point in time is not going to happen because our perceived value to them is very, very little. So that balance of power is always tilted in their benefit.
00:23:20
Speaker
So we decided that, you know, no point in continuing to do this. And interestingly, I remember this because there was this conversation we were having with Barista, you know, the coffee shop. So with their marketing head. And he said, like, you know, your young kids, you guys are trying to do something that is very tough.
00:23:36
Speaker
As we were talking and one of the things we realized then was that the marketing teams in these brands, it was very hard for them to keep track of their marketing communication. Marketing automation, as we call it today, they would send emails, they would send SMSs. Facebook was just about starting then, but Orkut was quite popular back then. Or there was a transition, let's say, from Orkut to Facebook that was happening. So manage those community pages.
00:24:02
Speaker
So they were all completely dependent on agencies to do it and they had very little visibility in terms of what was happening. There were some problems that we saw or then it did not appear to us as problems but this did come across from this conversation at Barista and then we kind of validated that across the other brands that we are working with and we realized that there was no technology or no product that any of them were using to drive these communication.
00:24:26
Speaker
There was not a, I won't say it was a big problem for them, but it was a problem nevertheless. So what we did was now because, you know, the way we had built Zipify, there was always a merchant sign up. So, you know, as a merchant, you could sign into the platform and you could just upload your coupons. Our whole vision was that it should become a self-serve.
00:24:45
Speaker
but let businesses do it themselves. And we also wanted local businesses, smaller businesses to start coming and doing it. So that's how it was built that way. Now, because we already had this, you know, this platform where a merchant could sign in and put out communication, put out their deals, we decided to, you know, pilot it with a few customers where we said that we were going to give it to you for free. And we said that, okay, can this platform essentially become where they can manage a lot of their
00:25:10
Speaker
marketing communications. So the SMSs that they send out, the emails that they send out, the social media, you know, postings that they do, right, can be a place where, you know, they can collaborate with the team members, they can just put it out there. You know, it can get reviewed when it comes to SMSs or emails, it can just be a single click from there that pushes out the campaign, but that start seeing adoption with brands with a brand that we are working with.
00:25:32
Speaker
And slowly, they were even ready to start paying us for it. And that, I think, was a big opportunity or was a breakthrough moment for us. Because until then, we had not figured out any way of making money. The first time that we had clients saying that, OK, we can think about paying for this. But what this also meant was that now, because we were working with all these brands, all of them had their own set of customized requests.
00:25:57
Speaker
coming in, like 80% was largely the same, but everybody had that last mile 20% that they wanted to do. And then, you know, because of our immaturity as entrepreneurs, we would kind of take the line that whatever it takes to please the customer. But today, of course, you would think very differently about it, right? But then we were immature and we said that, okay, you know, our objective right now is to kind of please slash delight the customer so that 20% is extremely important and let's go start building it. But the 90, 100 brands had their own set of 20% requirements.
00:26:27
Speaker
And we did not have a large enough team to build that out. You know, even with all the teaching at time and all, you know, we could have recruited another 10 engineers or, you know, stuff like that. So that's when we started, you know, working with, and this came through a personal contact. There was this technology company, HBS, based out of Bangalore, Kerala and US. So we started working with them, you know, so we were kind of outsourcing it parts of the development.
00:26:50
Speaker
And because this came through personal contact, we had some favorable terms in terms of payments and stuff. All of those things were there. And that's what we started doing. Now, this company that we were outsourcing, it was already a product company. They had both products and services, but they were trying to transition from a services to a product company.
00:27:09
Speaker
Their whole focus was around building a mini ERP for organization for much larger enterprise. And they started supporting us in this development. And over a period of time, as more and more work started happening, but it's not as if we had definitely proven the point that this can start generating big revenues or meaningful revenues.
00:27:27
Speaker
But they kind of indicated interest when they said that they wanted to acquire Zipify as a product and integrate it with their ERP that they were building and start sending that to global clients. So this happened, I think, around the mid of 2010. Yeah, around that time. So roughly about three and a half years after we started up. I mean, of course, there was some kind of, you know, it was a transaction that was happening. So there was some amount of money to be made. Very little, but still.
00:27:55
Speaker
So those kind of years, we've not seen any money. We were also kind of getting a little bogged down now. When we started out, we were whatever 24, 25, but now we were approaching 30 some other pressures and milestones. So we knew that that was approaching and we were a little unsure in terms of where people with that area.
00:28:14
Speaker
and my co-founder Vero really wanted to pursue Masters. So what we decided was that, okay, let's take whatever money we get, let's sell the product and then we'll see what we have to do from there on. So that's how around mid of 2010 is when Zipify kind of was done. How much cash did you have? Are you at Liberty too?
00:28:32
Speaker
I think then, see there were a bunch of things. One is that I had an educational loan running for MPI. So that's the first thing. So I think overall, you know, it was, I would say a few tens of lakhs that we will make, both of us. But again, as I said, I mean, today, probably if you are a SaaS startup and if you have a product market fit, depends upon what you call a product market fit, you can probably, maybe after any multiples, then we did not know any of it. And you can also kind of imagine that we, you know, till that point, we had seen no money.
00:29:00
Speaker
Even 20 lakh was a really big amount for us. You get the hell out, you're getting it when we figure out what to do with it. So I think I cleared out the loan, paid my friends and family, bought a car for my parents. So those were the things that happened around that time.
Post-Zipify Ventures and Business School
00:29:16
Speaker
So then after that, you know, I there was a little bit of confidence, I think, that that I gained because, you know, in those three, three and a half years, there were many, many times when things looked so abysmal that I was not even sure how long would I be able to continue. They were largely not because I was not enjoying the journey, but it was largely abysmal because of financial pressure and financial conditions.
00:29:37
Speaker
So having kind of come out of that, though in a small way, gave confidence that it's possible. In those years, actually, I used to talk to, you know, other, much more senior mentors and entrepreneurs. So I'll give you an example. Like, through MDI, I had the opportunity to interact with Mr. Sanjeev Bikchandani a couple of times. So other things that he said, which I think even today I truly believe in, is that ultimately all of this is a question of perseverance. You may be well-funded, you may be smarter or more intelligent than many others. All of that can give you
00:30:07
Speaker
you some benefit can probably think of, if you think of it like a race, you know, you could probably be starting a few steps ahead of others, but ultimately this race is so long that, you know, the only ones who succeed are the ones who persevere. So that is something that, you know, after this experience at Zipify, right, my kind of confidence in that thought was reinforced. Now, I was very sure that I don't want to take up a job. Whatever struggle that I went through and the little success that I had at the end of the day, I was very certain that I want to continue on, you know, on the entrepreneur.
00:30:37
Speaker
And by then, by 2010, 2011, Indian entrepreneurial scene also started shaping up. I think Flipkart around 2010 is when they raised one big round. So stuff started happening. You would read TechCrunch and all of that.
00:30:52
Speaker
So you would see what is happening elsewhere. There was more and more interest. So I decided that this is something I want to do. I don't want to take a job. I have to figure out what should I be doing next. So then I started talking to more people. I started looking at different opportunities, what should be the areas that I should consider in terms of starting out. There was this school friend of mine who had graduated from IM Amtibar. And he had also not sat for
00:31:19
Speaker
placements at IMA and I had done the same thing from MDI so he was looking to do his next venture which was all around solar based LED lighting and he was an electrical engineer from IAT and then an MBA so he knew the text
00:31:36
Speaker
stuff behind it. Around that time, there was a lot of talk around solar, not lighting as such, but solar power generation for India and around 2011. So that was one thing that I seriously considered, that joining hands with him, you know, joining him as a co-founder and trying to build that venture. So I went and even worked with him for about, I think, three, four months, not really as a co-founder, but just to go and try and understand what this opportunity means and, you know,
00:32:02
Speaker
In those three, four months of working there, what I realized is that the opportunity for sure is real. It makes a ton of sense and now it makes even more sense. In fact, his venture is doing very well as well. But what I realized is that I have very little to contribute. Though I liked the opportunity, I was not very sure in terms of what can I do about it. And that's when I also got to talk to another batchmate from MDI. His name was Gautam. So Gautam then was working
00:32:27
Speaker
working in Bombay in a consulting company and Gautam and his brother Mohan then was the managing director at Tiger Global in India. They wanted to basically set up a business school in Gurgaon which was focused around energy management.
00:32:43
Speaker
I thought that was very interesting because on one side I had, you know, by working in that French startup for three months, I had seen how acute a problem our country faced in terms of energy, right? And how renewable energy could be the future provided few other things fell in place. So that opportunity was there. And when I spoke to Gotham,
00:33:02
Speaker
he wanted to set up a business school that focuses purely on that and education is something that was, I won't say it was a business interest, it was a well formed out business interest, but education is something that I think like most people I've been very passionate about. So it always felt good when you could contribute through teaching or contribute by giving good education.
00:33:21
Speaker
Pleasant memories at times would always be about your students from a batch, clearing a cat and doing well. So I think that had any kind of interest in education and this was an opportunity to work with them on setting up a business school. So I thought, let me give it a shot. And it gives me an opportunity to also understand education from an entrepreneur's perspective. So that's how I got attached to that team. I was part of the management team that was setting up this business school in Gurgaon.
00:33:47
Speaker
I joined as, you know, as the senior member of the team, you know, trying to understand or trying to set up the school. And the understanding was always that, you know, if I'm contributing, then, you know, at a future date, that will be good. So I did that. That was also very entrepreneurial because, you know, we were just starting up and you had a lot of freedom and you essentially, it's like, you know, setting up something right from scratch. So, so I was part of that for 2010 to 2012.
00:34:11
Speaker
So you joined the Institute of Energy Management as part of the leadership team in setting up that B-School. So when did it become Great Lakes? In 2011, you know, IEMR Institute of Energy Management and Research and Great Lakes, there was a merger that happened.
00:34:28
Speaker
And then this institute in Gurgaon was rebranded as Great Lakes Gurgaon. So Great Lakes till then was in Chennai and they were looking to expand. And that's how Mohan got in touch with Dr. Bala, who was the founder and dean of Great Lakes. And Mohan put in money and also got this merger done. We were able to bring Great Lakes to Gurgaon.
00:34:48
Speaker
So in 2012, you know, after about two years of running, setting up the business school and then bringing Great Lakes to Gurgaon, I got talking that was also the time when Coursera or this whole MOOC revolution had started, Coursera and
Great Learning's Foundation and Growth
00:35:02
Speaker
others. We said that, you know, there is a massive opportunity in India when it comes to executive education, because until then, executive education in India was largely delivered through a few institutions and their programs were almost always completely campus based.
00:35:18
Speaker
And they were still catering to a very, very small set of, you know, audience or a small set of professionals. And the opportunity that we saw was that, you know, India has probably the world's largest, if not one of the world's largest set of working professionals, skilled professionals. Whereas when it came to options of executive education, we were very, very underserved and there was a huge problem in quality as well. So apart from, let's say, a few handful of good institutions that were providing good quality executive education,
00:35:45
Speaker
And there was also not enough, given the number of skill professions that we have. So that's when we said that, you know, let's start great learning, you know, which focuses completely on executive education for working professionals. Let's try and identify areas where we know that there is an industry surge that is coming up or is already there. And it is, it is very underserved when it comes to programs or executive education options in those areas. So that's how we started great learning. And we started with analytics as our domain.
00:36:13
Speaker
and it was an online play right from the original conception like you wanted an online education it was not an online play back then it was a blended play which means about 50% was online 50% was through weekend classroom sessions it was very hard for people to accept online in 2012 so while MOOCs were gaining prominence and MOOCs were completely online but then MOOCs were free nobody had to pay anything for them you know and when you're free you know when you offer a product
00:36:41
Speaker
or service for free people will surely try it out but what we very quickly saw was that you know the percentage of completion on MOOCs was very very poor and continues to be very poor for that matter it's like 6% 7% of learners really complete their program so we do not want to
00:36:56
Speaker
to do that. We wanted to impart education that actually transforms their careers, but at the same time, not look at, you know, something that is completely campus based. So we wanted to do what we call the blended approach when 50% is online and 50% happens through live teaching in class from over weekends.
00:37:14
Speaker
and that's how we started that you know rather than let's say doing an MBA program like an executive MBA program can we look at an emerging skill where there is not a lot of competition where we can quickly kind of you know establish our quality and our credentials in that in that market we're talking to a bunch of industry leaders we identified that analytics then was something that was growing in demand companies were really struggling in terms of having analytics trained talent and and we started our first
00:37:44
Speaker
program. First of all, that's how great learning started. And then we started the first program in analytics. So this was our first batch, our cohort launched in November 2013. So even today that that is what we celebrated great, great learning as a foundation day. It was the day that our cohort got launched. Okay. And how many students in the first cohort?
00:38:03
Speaker
So the first cohort had 28 students. How did you acquire these students? So these students were acquired, you know, we would do digital marketing. So Google and Facebook predominantly, and we really did not have much of a sales team per se, but there was me and there were, you know, a couple
00:38:20
Speaker
people, four of us, we would take these calls and they were all very, very senior professionals. So there was no point in hard selling them, but we would try and explain to them as to why is it important to learn analytics? Why is the program a good choice for them? You know, it was around the same time that we launched this program. There was also ISB with its analytics, you know, executive program in analytics, and there was also IMB and so all these three programs started around the same time, I think in the span of five or six months here in the
00:38:47
Speaker
but those were really the only options that were there. Though our first cohort was actually in Gurgaon, so what that means is that to attend those physical classes, you had to come to Gurgaon. What we saw in this first batch of 28 that we launched, that more than half of them were actually not even in NCR. So there were people from Bangalore, from Chennai, from Hyderabad. We had a few learners from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore who would fly in every month to come and attend classes.
00:39:14
Speaker
And that kind of gave us a sense that there is something much larger at play and excellent, excellent, excellent profiles. Most of them were all with more than 10 years of experience across industries, technology consulting, automobile manufacturing. And how much were you charging them for the course?
00:39:33
Speaker
I think when we started, we were charging about three lakhs. I'm not wrong. So there were a few things that, you know, that we had kind of ingrained as our tenants when we started a great learning. On the business side, the first and foremost thing was that we are going to build a business with solid unit economics, right? We did not want to be very particular about that, that, you know, we did not want to build a business where there were no unit economics and we wanted to build a business that was sustainable.
00:39:59
Speaker
The other tenet that we very strongly believed in, even now believe in, is that, you know, for education to be meaningful, it cannot be superficial. So there's no point in trying to teach people R, back then it was SAS and R and now it's Python. Just trying to teach people these tools and tell them that they've learned analytics or data science. So if, you know, if it truly has to bring about a difference in their careers,
00:40:24
Speaker
It has to be a very meaningful and exhaustive learning experience. We were certain that you really cannot learn analytics in 10 days. And if you have to learn it, you need time. So which is why we went with a longer format. We went with a price premium such that it makes sense to run this as a business. And the third thing that we said was quality over growth always. We never kind of said that, oh, you know,
00:40:55
Speaker
first cohort is 28, then in two years, it should become 2,800 or 28,000. We said that we need to figure out how to teach people well. We need to figure out that they learn very well. And unless and until that piece of the puzzle is solved, that we know what it takes to help people learn well, we are not going to chase road just for the heck of it.
00:41:20
Speaker
In our journey at Great Learning from 2013 to almost 2016, 2017, we only had one program. We only had this analytics program.
00:41:31
Speaker
and we kept launching it in more and more cities. But having said that, it does not as if we pursued an exponential growth, still incremental growth. Those first three, four years, our entire focus was on how do we figure out how to deliver these learning experiences and how do we ensure that once candidates come and learn from us, they get meaningful career outcomes or meaningful career growth.
00:41:58
Speaker
So first three, four years was completely spent on just solving those very foundation aspects. So I think by around 2017 itself, we only had that analytics program. And that analytics program was catering to about 1,000 learners in a year. And in India, that was the largest executive program of any kind. Once we hit that milestone, we were more confident that, OK, now we have a playbook. We know what it takes to deliver. We know the constraints. We know the problems. We know how to solve them.
00:42:27
Speaker
Right? And now there is more confidence of scaling it up. That is where, you know, so from 2017 really is when we started scaling up by adding online programs, by adding more programs in general, being more aggressive in marketing. So from there, just last calendar year, we had about 18 to 20,000 learners. So how do you think it became the largest executive program? Was it word of mouth? Was it smart marketing? You know, what helped you reach that hill?
00:42:55
Speaker
I think it was largely word of mouth. I would not kind of say that we were smarter in marketing than many others. Of course, you know, at that point, then in those formative years, we were largely competing with educational institutions and not tech companies. Today, we are competing with tech companies, but then there were not as many tech companies. It was largely traditional educational institutions, such as IAM or ISB or other institutions.
00:43:17
Speaker
Of course, they would not put that kind of effort to market, whereas we would. So from that sense, yes, we were much better in marketing. They had a much, much bigger brand and you know, you really cannot compete with a brand of an iron Bangalore. You know, we had in terms of marketing, we were more nimble and more aggressive in reaching out. What ultimately really worked to our advantage was, I think A, understanding the
00:43:40
Speaker
consumer better and be word of mouth. So what I mean by understanding the consumer better is that the way traditional educational institutions look at these executive programs is that many of them are a derivative of what is being done on campus. Because of that, what happens is that it always doesn't sync with what that professional wants to learn or what kind of career aspirations he or she has. And that was the opportunity for us. We were not constrained in that
00:44:08
Speaker
sense, we could change the curriculum every six months and we did. So the way the industry kind of in analytics, we were always the first to change. That was, that was something that really helped us that we used to our advantage. Second bit was word of mouth out because this part was working because the delivery was working and people were having, you know, good outcomes and a very meaningful learning experience.
00:44:30
Speaker
you know, words started spreading. So there were countless cases then of, you know, people recommending their peers like that. We started seeing a lot of benefits in terms of word of mouth and that is essentially what took the program from 28 to 1000 learners, you know, in a span of whatever, three years or so. So in that initial cohort of 28, what was the conversion ratio? Like how many leads had you got out of which how many converted?
00:44:56
Speaker
I have no idea about that today, but I'm sure it would be a fraction of what it is today. See, what I do remember is that in that first cohort, you know, there were a lot of, you know, one of the first questions we had to address and answer was, why should you be upskilling?
00:45:12
Speaker
Today, that question doesn't have to be answered. But then, you know, we had to actually face that battle first. Let's say you should be upskilling, and this is why you should be upskilling. And then it would come to, you know, why should you be upskilling in analytics? And then it will come to why should you be upskilling in this program by Great1? Today, I think the first two questions are answered. A lot of professionals understand that they have to upskill.
00:45:33
Speaker
You know, we don't have to, you know, market those skills and we don't have to market the necessity of upskilling. Those two questions are now answered largely. What we still need to, of course, answer is, you know, why is great learning the right option for them? It's a much more refined and abounded problem now. Write that back then. Is your sales operations like a very human intensive or is it like largely a lot of sales just happen online or, you know, how does that happen?
00:45:58
Speaker
see at our price points though we have experimented multiple times and what we've realized is that first there are two things at play first of all when it comes to education people want to talk they want to while you may put all the information you have on your website but they will still want to talk to you more from an aspect of verifying whether everything that you put out there is is indeed the case or not in the case of you know an amazon or a flipkart or a you know or a zomat or
00:46:28
Speaker
Most of these things, what you see is what you get. But in education, because of the way historically it has happened in our country, consumers don't always believe that what you see is what you get. So they want to talk. They want to talk to you. They want to talk to past learners. They want to do their research. All of that will happen. And that, I think, exists in education. And the only way that will change in a more and more high quality education place is that that starts becoming the norm.
00:46:51
Speaker
So that is one. The other aspect of why it has never worked as a checkout funnel is because of the price point. So the price point at which we are operating our average program price is a few lakhs. But it can range anywhere between 1.5 or 1 lakh all the way up to 4.5 lakhs.
00:47:09
Speaker
At that price point, you know, people are not going to do a checkout. It is a very involved purchase. So yeah, so to answer your question, there is a human element involved. Email communication, informative emails that go. We have counselors that talk to prospects, multiple conversations that happen. So it's not as in one conversation, a person will be convinced. And there is a certain sales cycle, you know, it takes our average sales cycle is about 10 to 15 days that it takes a person to convert.
00:47:38
Speaker
And you continue to send emails to people who fill up a form, like an inquiry form. Yeah. So for us that nurturing and engagement is extremely important because it is, as I said, it's a very involved purchase.
Innovative Strategies for Growth and Education Impact
00:47:51
Speaker
We do a lot of it for nurturing. Apart from emails, we do a lot of webinars. Now we have a very, very active YouTube channel where we post some learning content almost on a daily basis. That is received very well. We do a lot of these industry talks.
00:48:08
Speaker
We have now recently launched what we call as Great Learning Academy. We have over 85 courses that have been opened up for free, so free content. But what is the business logic for doing that? Free courses.
00:48:23
Speaker
the free courses the logic is that see because what we do in terms of our paid courses is that it is all packaged what we call as a structured learning format you will know exactly what you have to do week on week for the next 12 months or six months whatever the duration of the program
00:48:38
Speaker
And you will go from point A to point B. There are a lot of people who are not convinced about taking that, that big, you know, commitment right now. And when I say commitment, it could be in terms of price, it could be in terms of time commitment, or it could even be in terms of, you know, interest in that area. Right. So what we decided is that, okay, you know, we will give you, you know, free courses and these are much shorter, you know, bite size snackable content.
00:49:17
Speaker
Have you raised funding so far or has there been no need for it? Like it's been profitable from day one.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, so since that was the tenet that we based it on, right, you need to comment. The business has always been profitable right from year one. And that was one of the things that we were very particular about that what we said is that we will raise money, but we will raise it on our terms. You know, we want to retain that, call it flexibility or call it, you know, control of vision, which is the reason why so far, you know, we've not because the business has been generating cash and, and we have been growing more than a hundred percent ever since inception. But in the last six, seven months, we've been talking to a lot of investors.
00:49:55
Speaker
There's been a lot of inbound interest, heightened even more now. As things stand, we are still engaging in those conversations. We are involved in those conversations. The reason for raising is different. There are a couple of road directions that we want to pursue. Right now, the option would be to take it out of reserves and put it. While part of it will happen like that, but we still need additional capital. There are also initiatives such as we want to build a brand. We've not done a whole lot when it comes to that for great learning.
00:50:23
Speaker
There is also opportunity that we see towards consolidation in organic growth. So acquisition and such. And that actually is one of the key reasons for us to wanting to raise right now. But even then, it will still happen at our terms. We're still not willing to compromise in terms of the direction the organization should take. So all the conversations are around that.
00:50:44
Speaker
See what has happened in the last kind of three, four years in the edtech and I'm talking again only about the professional segment. Competition has increased a lot just with any other market or market opportunity. Smaller players are finding it very tough to sustain and we find it tougher as time progresses.
Scaling and Acquisitions at Great Learning
00:51:00
Speaker
So there are a lot of deals to be had. We have been getting a lot of inbound interest over the last one year now.
00:51:06
Speaker
But our kind of approaches is very straightforward. We want to acquire businesses or organizations where, you know, we are getting some complimentary skills that we don't have. It could either be, you know, in a certain segment where we don't operate or it would be a specific skill set that we don't have. Right. We are not going to acquire to grow scale. Point being that we don't want to acquire to get customers. That is what we are evaluating right now across various organizations.
00:51:33
Speaker
So what is Harry learning personally right now? And, you know, all entrepreneurs are essentially learning machines and they're driven by learning.
Hari's Current Learning Focus
00:51:42
Speaker
So what is it that you are personally learning right now or things which excite you right now that you want to learn? Great question. So right now, currently what I'm learning is a lot about, you know, how do you build organizations at
00:51:58
Speaker
So what I mean by that, in an entrepreneur's lifespan, what happens is that when you start, and as you grow, you have a lot of control on what is happening. And that feeds your knowledge, that feeds your position making, so on and so forth. And there are certain processes you set up, whether it is for tracking or whether it is for growth, whatever it be, that take you from, let's say, you know, one to 10, from zero to one first, and then from one to 10.
00:52:22
Speaker
But now when the journey that has to be made is from a ten to a thousand, what you realize is that two things. First of all, you won't have that clear line of sight because you're now going to be leading much larger teams, much larger organizations, right? And possibility has to be divided. There will be other people who have to do what you were doing and probably they'll do a better job at it. That is your job as a leader, right? That the people that you have are going to do a better job than what you were doing.
00:52:46
Speaker
And the second bit is that the processes that you set up or the process that you are banking that took you from a 1 to 10 will not take you from a 10 to a 1000. While you may not have a clear line of sight, the action on the ground, how do you build systems and processes such that you are not disconnected from your customer? Those are the challenges that I am facing as an entrepreneur today because we are at that, we are making that journey from a 10 to a 1000.
00:53:10
Speaker
My learning right now is largely from reading. Reading, listening, listening to podcasts and of course talking to other entrepreneurs. So that was how Hari built up one of India's largest edtech companies that is not only growing fast, but is also profitable. If you want to benefit from some of the free courses that Great Learning offers, then do check out the Great Learning app.
00:53:50
Speaker
If you like the Founder Thesis Podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit thepodium.in that is t-h-e-p-o-d-i-u-m.in for a complete list of all our shows.
00:54:38
Speaker
This was an HD Smartcast original.