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The B2B Edtech Platform | Arjun Gupta @ Courseplay
128 Plays3 years ago
Courseplay is the scalable learning technology solution for enterprises to deliver delightful learning content, engage hard-working employees, automate tedious workflows, and accurately measure impact for employees using any device. Tune in to know how this B2B platform aims to meet changing industry demands as well as bolster personal growth!
What you must not miss!
- How did Courseplay start?
- Monetization strategy
- Business model
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Transcript
Introduction and Startup Mindset
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone. My name is Arjun Gupta. I'm the founder and CEO of Cosplay. You have to get your hands dirty. You can't do a start-up with a corporate mindset. When people tell me that I can't do something, I will do whatever it takes to keep them down. One is your learning and one is your learning. Fundamentally, each has always been good.
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm your host Akshay Dutt and you're listening to Spotlight, a podcast in which I speak to disruptive startup founders.
00:00:38
Speaker
But there are two ways in which a job can compensate you. One is through learning and the other is through earning. And the best companies are the ones that ensure a healthy mix of earning and learning for their employees. But the challenge for companies that want to invest in training their employees is the fragmented nature of solutions leading to companies working with multiple vendors for different needs.
Cosplay's Platform for Training and Productivity
00:01:01
Speaker
This is exactly the problem that Coresplay is solving. Coresplay offers companies a platform that gives them both training content and software off the shelf, thereby allowing them to deploy it instantly to their workforce. And Coresplay goes beyond just training into the domain of helping employees to be more productive and effective at their job.
00:01:20
Speaker
Arjun Gupta, the founder, of course played us not fit into the mold of the typical IIT and techie founder. Rather, he is an economics graduate and a self-taught techie who has had a journey filled with highs and lows. Listen on to Arjun telling Akshay Dutt about how it all started.
Arjun's Background and Tech Affinity
00:01:37
Speaker
When I was growing up, I wanted to completely avoid the complexity of doing business in a country like India. So I think for that reason, my natural affinity was towards the tech sector because it was so clean, right? There was minimal government intervention. It was all very clear-cut. Everything is on the record. Everything is sort of quite transparent. And that really appealed to me. So I think that's when those early years when I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do, that was one thing that was very clear to me that
00:02:04
Speaker
I wanted to work on something that didn't require too much oversight and too much people asking what you're doing and checking in on the business and just having that kind of freedom. And I think maybe that's what this generation, maybe that's why we're seeing so many new tech startups in the country is that's probably one of the factors that our generation is wants that degree of freedom. We don't want excessive government oversight. We don't want to worry about too many regulations.
00:02:29
Speaker
and just create value and deliver something with a little bit of freedom. So I think that's something that I think is a big pattern across the country. So I went to Boston University and I studied international relations and economics.
Economic Studies and Market Challenges
00:02:41
Speaker
And even what I studied, I left it open-ended because with international relations, I don't think too many people take this, but it's very open-ended. You learn about politics and geography and economics and military science and all history and all sorts of different things. When you study in the US,
00:02:56
Speaker
They give you the opportunity to work there for a year. So they give you this OPT thing that allows you to stay back for a year and work without requiring any additional visas or anything. So I did stay back for a little bit of time. I did try to find a job, but back then it was, I think it was January, 2011. And, you know, they were still recovering from the financial crisis and jobs were really not available. So
Creating Impactful Businesses
00:03:17
Speaker
I came home.
00:03:17
Speaker
Also, for some reason, for me, a big passion was working on a business that touched, that made an impact. Of course, number one, I wanted to do something that really made an impact and changed the lives of people. But at the same time touched every company because I was still not ever sure that I want to go into this line or that line.
00:03:34
Speaker
So I wanted to do something that I could do work with all the different lines and I could work with all the different types of companies out there. And so I guess organically sort of learning and training became a line because through this we could touch the lives of people across all sectors, all different types of companies. And I could learn and I was super curious and I could learn about all of these different types of companies and what they do and how that business model runs and you know, things like that.
00:03:58
Speaker
What was the start of the business as such? Most businesses start either through like there is a product idea and then the founders build a product and launch it and that's how it starts or there is a customer who is offering an opportunity to do a certain
00:04:17
Speaker
deal and that leads to a product later on. How did it start for you? So it started for me with this idea that I think learning and skill development is going to be very important. So this was 2012, roughly. And back then, four skill, none of these edtech companies were there, right? So we had no Bijus and we had no none of this other stuff, right? Yeah, you only had like career launcher and Fuji and time as the those were like the edtechs of that era.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah. Aptic was the, as technologically advanced as you could get. NIT. Yeah. NIT. Yeah. Correct. So that was the time. And I realized that something to do with skill development at scale is going to be the key for us. And the big thing also was coming back from the States.
00:05:03
Speaker
Everything in the States, these guys, they got it right. They got it right the first time and the level of quality that you got was very high in all across the Western countries, right? In India, it was much more jowadu, it was much like cheltai kind of attitude and the focus on, no, you have to get this right was not there so much. And you see this throughout the country. You see this in the quality of roads, you see this in the quality of service, you see it everywhere.
00:05:26
Speaker
So for me, it was a matter of how do we get there? And the answer was with skill development. We have to, and it's a poor country. How do we sort this out? It has to be at scale. It has to be a tech solution. So that's sort of the seed, right? That it just bothered me that why is there rampant illiteracy? There's so much scope for us to grow. It's just a matter of knowledge sharing at scale.
00:05:47
Speaker
So that's sort of where the entire story started
Shift to B2B and Strategy Evolution
00:05:50
Speaker
off. And that was always, it had to be B2B for me because dealing with consumers was a very scary idea. Dealing with the, with marketing and the fact that you don't know, at least in the initial days, how the market is going to treat you. But with businesses, with the B2B, you got instant feedback, right? Do you like my product? Okay. Are they moving forward? You get that instant feedback. And that was very reassuring to me. So, so skill development in the corporate sector sort of became the starting point.
00:06:14
Speaker
And within that also there are many spaces like you have these companies like this Franklin Covey and Wilson Learning and some of these which do soft skills training. And so was that the space or like what exactly did you want to do? Yeah, when I first started, I started this, it was called my first venture. And the funny thing was, it was literally my first venture as well.
00:06:36
Speaker
And then I just, you know, I just jumped in and I said, okay, let me see if I can help. I have no clue what the big companies do and how they do it. So let me start with the entrepreneurship story and come up with some kind of an Academy for startups and entrepreneurs and things like that. And I got very involved with, with NASCOM and Thai and all of these organizations. And I met all the top universities talking to their business school professors and okay, how can we put something together? And I created a portal and everything.
00:07:01
Speaker
And then just then is when Coursera launched and Coursera did all the top global universities and for free. And that was a big sort of hit because I realized there's nothing you can't compete with free, no matter what I do, right? You cannot compete. And that became a kind of turning point and I had to decide at that point that I remember. But the version one was to sell a course to B-schools for developing entrepreneurship.
00:07:26
Speaker
Kind of like that. Yeah. So the audience could be B schools. It could be actual startups. It could be sort of the, these associations that tie in NASCOM. Those would be the different audiences. And then we would get startups and the professors at these universities to come and provide those, those different aspects.
00:07:42
Speaker
The ITs had come together to create this government model called NPTEL as well. It was free content from different IITs. So I was trying to set that up also on this thing.
Platform Strategy Amid Content Challenges
00:07:51
Speaker
So lots of different things were happening back then to try to get this idea off the ground. And then with this big sledgehammer of a free, best university free content came out and I was like, okay, how do we now pivot? How do we change the model? And, and I remember I'd met with somebody at one of these Thai events and I was like, listen, I need to figure out, do I go the tech route and create a platform that is content agnostic?
00:08:11
Speaker
or do I grow the content route and focus, be like the Franklin Covey or whoever else of content and own a space. And I remember having that sort of internal dilemma. And then my, that core tenant came back that, look, if we do content, it's, we have to keep refreshing it, but at the same time you have to keep selling it. So every time, every year we have to sell it again to the client.
00:08:32
Speaker
because they may or may not have a need for it the next year, because they may have a different requirement the next year. So you have to keep selling it. So the sales is not scalable. There's a very high marginal cost of sales. At the same time, I would have to commit to a certain sector and say, okay, I'm going to be the king of this kind of training. You cannot train for everything.
00:08:50
Speaker
And I didn't want to make that choice. So even then, and this was, this became, I think 2013, 14. So even then I didn't want to make that choice of committing to one sector. So I decided that, okay, we have to go down the platform route. And, and then the idea of, then the concept of LMS has also started coming out in India, you know, learning management systems. I started to do that. And then that's when cosplay just started to get it sort of legs and started to sort of develop as a concept that we'll have a platform.
00:09:16
Speaker
Let the content, because now with Coursera giving free content, why should I, sort of any content I create is going to be benchmarked against that. So instead of competing with that, let me work on the platform. I'll take the Coursera content and I'll give that to the clients, right? Of course, we never ended up doing that, at least not until much later because we have a partnership with Coursera, but we didn't have that back.
00:09:37
Speaker
But that was the idea, right? That let any content come, let me not have to be worried about the pricing of the content because clients will always say that I am getting this for free. But the platform will never come for free, right? So the platform that allows you to do all of these things, deliver the training and understand the impact of the learning and things like that was the decision. Like this would have been like a user-generated training content platform, like a YouTube for training, like where people can upload their own. It could be, yeah.
00:10:05
Speaker
We kept that flexibility. So we said that, yeah, if clients want to upload their own content, they can do that. If they want to buy something from somebody off the shelf or habit made custom, they can do that. So let the clients choose, right? Let us not sort of pigeonhole ourselves or dictate what kind of content. And that's sort of how it started. And took a year and I had no clue. I was in, I had an economics background and internationalization background, liberal arts background. I had no clue about tech while I'm talking to clients. I'm also
Building a SaaS Product and Early Clients
00:10:32
Speaker
like Googling what they're talking about. We said no clue what they were talking about.
00:10:35
Speaker
And then slowly I started to learn, I became a techie myself, cloud architecture and AWS, all of that I sort of taught myself. I had a shoestring budget, I wasn't able to spend anything, but still I needed to have servers and I needed to sort that out, but server admins are very expensive.
00:10:51
Speaker
So I had to teach myself developer, I could still squeeze and I had one developer back then, but I couldn't afford a server admin. So I just sit and teach myself how do I set up a server and how do I make it scalable and all of that. And it got certified in I think 2019 December on AWS. So I've become a techie now, but it was a rough journey initial first few years.
00:11:10
Speaker
I want to understand that launch product better. Were you selling an LMS product, which companies can like a SaaS subscription, you subscribe to it and then you have an LMS for your company and all your employees can be trained on it. Or were you building a platform like a Coursera or a Udemy where people can upload their own content and start earning from it, like a YouTube approach where creators, like a platform for creators to upload content, find an audience.
00:11:39
Speaker
Like, what was the play here? Was it a SaaS player or was it a platform like a user-generated content platform? It was always a SaaS play. Back then, Udemy was there, you know, and they were doing a fantastic job. So I was like, look, I don't want to take Panga now. I already did it once with Coursera. Now, again, I don't want to get beaten by Udemy. So let me explore a space that's a bit more blue ocean, that's a bit more sort of greenfield. And I hated the phrase LMS. From day one, I always hated it. Even today, I hate the phrase LMS.
00:12:05
Speaker
And so I never called it an LMS, but it was, but let's be honest, when we started on day one, the first version of the product was an LMS. And this was like a SAS, like, like you were selling subscription to it, like a, you had a, like an annual licensing fees for using it or like, what was the monetization?
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was so back then I wanted to keep it super simple. So it was just a one time flat rate for the year. And we would just and I had no clue how to price it also. So when we first launched it, my friends and family got a couple of beta accounts. My first check was for 9000 rupees. It was from a company called Sankalp Energy. It was a solar energy company based out of Delhi and they were doing a fantastic job and we were helping them train their team on installing the solar panels and learning about how to solar energy work and all of that sort of stuff.
00:12:48
Speaker
So this was like an onboarding tool for them. When they hire a new employee, then that new employee can learn. And probably their employees would have been all over the country, so they needed a digital solution instead of a physical solution.
00:13:04
Speaker
Absolutely. I think their model, they were also doing that. They relied also on a lot of partners back then. So this was, I think second half of 2015 and they relied a lot of partners and they also wanted to onboard those partners on how does the company operate and how to do the various tasks. So they used it for that. I don't remember the number, maybe it was 100 users, but 9,000 rupees is what we sort of, that was the first check that I got.
00:13:25
Speaker
and then kept learning, kept building. And the product at that stage would have been like a traditional LMS approach where you can create a course and then create chapters and within each chapter you can upload a PDF or a video and then you can create a quiz and then people progress through it and there would be a dashboard to see progress reports of various people doing the course. Like all of those standard LMS features, that was the first version.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly that actually, exactly like that. And the person who I was in touch with in the company also, she kept saying that, listen, I've searched far and wide and I can't find anything like this. And you guys are doing, you've made a really good product. It really solves a need for us. So that gave a lot of confidence that I've stumbled upon something and I've built something that has value and that people need and that companies can really benefit from.
00:14:12
Speaker
And finally we launched properly in Jan, 2016. And this was our first client, proper paying client called SpiceJet. That was a big deal. And I was struggling a lot to sell and a lot of work was going to sales, which SpiceJet, it was quite effortless. They knew exactly what they wanted and their IT team, I'm still impressed by the team at SpiceJet. And they were very clear with what they wanted and they called us down. And I was, I was still learning a lot of things. I was still learning about how to do implementations and the project management, but
00:14:40
Speaker
the need was clear. And that also then gave a lot of confidence that if SpiceJ found our product useful, right? And if they have purchased it, then definitely there is something here. And that's when really the, also the second pivot started where I started to understand that learning is definitely important and learning was also so new in the company, in the Indian market that people just understood that they needed a learning platform. But then
00:15:04
Speaker
As that's when also we started to talk to these companies and understand, okay, what is actually the root cause and what are you actually looking to solve with the problem? And learning is just, it's a solution. It's a, it's a cure, but for what, right? So what is the real problem? And then as we dealt with more and more clients and as we worked with more and more companies, that story started to become very clear that companies want a way to get their employees to be better at their jobs and they want a way for people to be more efficient and they want a way for people to grow and improve.
00:15:32
Speaker
And LMS and this is, I mean, this comes full circle, but then this is when also that I got to understand that, yeah, okay. I think LMS is the wrong idea. It's the wrong answer because LMS is really not what companies actually want. They have been, they've been convinced that they need an LMS because that's what everybody talks about.
00:15:50
Speaker
but actually they want a solution to help their employees grow and there was and throughout even now there is no clear terminology for that because you know the idea of LMS came from schools right so back in the in the 80s and 90s schools needed a way to track the the learning of their students the homework assignments and what kind of learning they're doing their quizzes and all of that
00:16:11
Speaker
That's where the LMS came from. And the corporate sector just adopted it, saying that, OK, we have no clue. We'll take this LMS and we'll just do this in the company, because we don't know what else to do. And that's sort of what has happened in the corporate sector. That's when the seed of the idea started, that it's not just learning. It's about the employee growth. So the pivot did not come because it did not come from my side. It did not come that way. This is not working. We need to change direction. The pivot came from the market.
00:16:38
Speaker
that LMS is not the total answer. People started asking you that, okay, I don't need only a platform. I need content also. Like that was what people were asking you. They were saying that they were definitely saying that, but they were also saying that, okay, we've heard of LMS and we understand the concept of training, but what about the impact? How do I know what is actually happening on the ground after the training has happened?
00:16:59
Speaker
And many people would tell us about that, right? Because they would say that, yeah, OK, learning is great, but what happens beyond learning? What happens with the actual performance of the employee? Because I'm spending so much on this training. Ultimately, how has that impacted their job? We don't know, right? I have the best LMS in the world, and they are not able to answer this question for me. Can you answer it? I'll start using your services. So these kinds of questions started coming, where people were still buying our platform, people were buying our product.
00:17:27
Speaker
But they would ask us that, okay, can you do this? Can you solve this problem for us? And that message became very loud and very clear after some time that while people are buying learning platforms and learning solutions and LMSs today, that's not the be all and end all of the solution. We've not actually solved the
Product Evolution and Client Feedback
00:17:45
Speaker
problem. We have just.
00:17:46
Speaker
given a temporary medicine for it. We've not actually gone to the root cause and we've not abolished the real problem. And so finally it took us some time. I think a couple of years back then we started to position ourselves as a employee growth platform and employee experience platform. Tell me like step by step, like what features you added? Yeah, we started of course with all those core learning features, right? And that's what we were offering in 2016.
00:18:10
Speaker
And then also I had a very small team. It was again, a shoe shoe string team. We started one employee, then I got one more developer and then one more. Then I got a tester. Initially my devs were only doing the testing themselves and I had no clue. There was no documentation. It was all verbal. Like I would tell them, because I had also no idea what the hell I was doing. So I would tell them verbally that build this feature, make it look like this. And I would like draw it on paper or something. I would tell them just do it. And it was all very sort of haphazard.
00:18:34
Speaker
And then once we got our first few clients and the team started to grow and then I got a testing person and then I got, and in fact, the first person we got on our QA team, she's still with us and she still works here. And she's seen that growth firsthand of how we became this company that had no clue what we were doing to now something that we at least we have some idea of what is going on. Same goes even for our UX, UI-UX head. Gauri does our QA and Hemant does our UI-UX and they're still with us. And they've seen this firsthand and they've seen the kind of growth that we've undergone as a company.
00:19:03
Speaker
And so once we did the learning features, that's what I was asking you, like feature by feature. So first you had the tech of managing learning, the workflows, learn, do a quiz, move to next chapter. So from there, how did the product evolve?
00:19:19
Speaker
Then, so we started looking at customer requirements also. So we had a vision of our own that we wanted to make a system that sort of became like an employee sidekick that became like your coach in the company that would guide you of what kind of training you wanted. We had that vision, but then how to do that and how to execute it, we were trying to still figure that out. At the same time, clients were bombarding us with feature requests and AB banal, AB banal, we want this feature also. And that hasn't stopped. Like give me examples.
00:19:45
Speaker
You know some basic stuff like login should not just be based on a password, I want an OTP login or I want the ability to track skills in addition to my training. I want a discussion forum, I want to send out announcements, I want certifications. It kept getting more and more fleshed out. Even today we get a lot of feature requirements for the learning side of things. So that's a never ending journey and that's also something that I realized. Initially we started off, I had outsourced the development.
00:20:09
Speaker
And then that failed miserably because a tech company cannot, you cannot get by outsourcing. And even all the startup founders I speak to, if I hear they've outsourced in the tech company, I say, listen, you make a mistake. Bring it in house. That's your core business. You cannot outsource that. And I lost a lot of time in working with, with an external software development company for our own product.
00:20:28
Speaker
So you can't sort of do that. So learned a lot of those kinds of things. And it was very expensive also when you're outsourcing, and then you're developing these features. It's super expensive. And every time you want to make a change, you can't do it. It's a whole process. So all of that was also happening side by side. And then, yeah, all these different types of features would keep getting added. And then the list became massive. The list would just get longer and longer.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so we just tried for one, two years, we were just building out as much as we can of the features requested by clients. And we were slowly growing our client base and I was the only salesperson back then. So I was doing the sales, I was doing everything myself. Yeah, obviously. So the two people that were there on the team said that, okay, you're like the chief everything officer, that sort of stuck with me. And for the longest time that was there on my business card, chief everything officer, because I was sort of just stuck doing everything.
00:21:11
Speaker
And as a single founder company and as somebody who hired the junior guys first, because I was super bootstrapped, that was probably one of the biggest challenges in our growth, right? Because everything sort of just came to me. Literally everything came to me, right? So for the first few years, even up to probably 2017, literally I was just handing sort of everything, customer support,
00:21:30
Speaker
Every other than probably software development itself, I've done every job, you know, including HR and everything I've done on my own. Right. And that, that I started to see that was impeding the growth and that was sort of everything was sort of getting stuck on me. Luckily at the same time, we started getting some more and more clients from bigger companies in December, 2017.
00:21:47
Speaker
Amazon came in. So that gave me a lot of confidence, gave my family a lot of confidence. I was able to put in a little bit more money. These were the delivery associates at Amazon. So all the whole network of delivery boys across the country came on with us on cosplay. Amazon India, we got in touch. It was through a partner of ours and they saw what we had.
00:22:06
Speaker
And even back then, the market was so nascent that a tiny, young, small company like ours was able to have a conversation with Amazon. That enough was, for me, a privilege. And I was so excited. I was like, I just couldn't believe my ears, right? That it was the largest company, I think probably still is the largest company in the world. And they wanted a team that was sort of quite agile, young, able to sort of make changes for them. And so it was a good match.
00:22:33
Speaker
And that helped in also getting a little more support from my family, growing the team out a bit more. And so that was a very interesting journey as well. But we were already, by then we were working with companies like Mothercare also and these guys were in Indonesia. We were working with some really good companies already back then.
00:22:50
Speaker
And those features were still growing, right? The real explosion of features came with Amazon because they gave us a lot of inputs. And also I started to realize the importance of the kind of learning that has to happen in the blue collar market, because that's just probably, if not more important, just as important as the white collar market and those are based different.
00:23:07
Speaker
Amazon wanted it for the warehouse and logistics folks. Yeah, that's right. So to start with, they're the delivery associates across the country. And that was a tremendous project and so much learning happened and we're still working with Amazon and we're doing so lucky that we have and so happy and so delighted that we have a client like them because we've learned so much. We've had the opportunity to also deliver such value for them. And so that was a big part of us.
00:23:34
Speaker
How did the product evolve due to the Amazon deal? What changes came in? So they brought a lot of requirements coming from that blue collar site. So multilingual learning was a big thing, right? The mobile app, the interface, I mean, we spent so much time with them simplifying the interface because the audience was finding it too complicated. So that was the ultimate battleground for us. That was the ultimate sort of, if this audience can get familiarized and be comfortable using our product,
00:24:01
Speaker
I've got the UI, I've got the interface sorted, right? Then nobody will tell me. And today we get that feedback that you guys, your interface is so easy, your mobile app, we don't even have to train them. They just have to open the app and they instinctively know where to go. And to a very large extent, that's thanks to this client.
00:24:18
Speaker
So we learned a lot and I think that's a big theme for us is iteration through client feedback and getting that.
Balancing Vision with Client Requests
00:24:25
Speaker
And I think for any startup, for any business in this space, in the SaaS space, that has to be a massive focus because yes, and I think that's also a big struggle, right? Because we have our own vision. We know what we want to do with the product and what kind of features we want. Many of these things, our clients have not even imagined, they've not even dreamt that these things are possible and we're working on that. But at the same time, the clients have this.
00:24:47
Speaker
a never ending list of features and ideas and things that they want are going to make their jobs easy. And then as the CEO, it is that constant struggle that how much do I look at my product with my vision and how much you look at delivering what the customer wants because my vision is going to fuel the growth and people are going to see what we're building and they're going to love it. But at the same time, if I'm not making customers happy, they want something that's easy to use and building out those features for them.
00:25:15
Speaker
is going to be a very important because we're doing it for them. I mean, that's why we're in the market is to delight our clients. So that's the shift in different types of priorities that we had in the product, the innovation, the way we ideated and brainstormed, all of that started to evolve because suddenly now we were becoming a bigger company and we were sort of thrown into the deep end and we had to do a lot of things to grow. And so that started to sort of really evolve the way that we operated. When did Amazon come in? Which year? December, 2017. Okay.
00:25:44
Speaker
Okay. So 17 was a big year for you. Both Spice State and Amazon came in that year. No, 16. Spice State was 16. Spice State was Jan 16. So between Spice and Amazon, sort of two years had gone. We were bootstrapped and we were just organically growing the business, growing the product. You know, a lot of focus was on, okay, what kind of features we need to build and the spending was all going in product development.
00:26:07
Speaker
That pivot also, the shift from product spending to sales spending happened last year, probably to the 2020 or 2021 is when the shift started towards sales rather than only on product, right? Because I wanted to, I was never satisfied and I wanted, I kept saying that I want the product to be more mature. I want to get more client feedback, build it.
00:26:28
Speaker
Now, now that we've understood the story is about employee growth, I have that confidence that, okay, we've reached a level where I can now put full-fledged force into the sales team because we've got something now that is quite special, that's quite unique, and that I can sort of quite nicely sell. I'll take you through a few more features that we built that really started to change the way that we looked at this space. So we looked at things like performance, and this was a requirement even from another client of ours Caritlin, and so we were talking about
00:26:55
Speaker
okay how do we actually show the impact of training and one of the ways is we capture the performance of the team and then we look at how the performance is growing over time and then we have the training data already so we can see that okay this person has trained a lot and the performance is improved by this much or that much and we can actually show that correlation and then clients were loving that idea they were like oh yeah this is fantastic you're able to show me the impact of learning but how would you capture performance data
00:27:19
Speaker
The clients would upload KPIs, so they would upload the key targets and the key performance attributes and things like that. And then we would capture those scores, right? And then we would have a weighted average. Every KPI had a weight, we would take that weighted average, we would get the performance score, and we were then able to show how the performance was changing over time.
00:27:38
Speaker
Another feature we did was the coaching. Our client said that they want a way to capture feedback that a coach is giving to the employee and track that over time and see, okay, what is the person good at? Where can they improve? And capturing that kind of feedback. So we looked at coaching then.
00:27:56
Speaker
And then we had another client tell us that we want mentorship. So we want to be able to connect our employees with a mentor, but our company is so big. We don't have the time and the skill to do it. Can you figure out a way? So we created like almost like a speed dating app that you can sort of upload as a mentor. This is what I can offer you. This is the time that I have. And then as a mentee, this is what I need. And then how do we get connected? Like speed dating within an organization.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly within the company. Even now, we don't open up the platform to outsiders. We're very strict on information security and data controls. And that is quite sacrosanct because there's a lot of confidential data also that clients sometimes share and we have to make sure that it's protected.
00:28:40
Speaker
So yeah, these features would sort of keep coming in and we would keep working on them. We've worked on things like action lists so that you can track your tasks also here. So for example, like on a daily basis, like a daily to-do.
00:28:54
Speaker
Your daily to-do, yes, absolutely. Also your onboarding task, your onboarding checklist, your exit checklist. Maybe you're on a performance improvement plan, what all you have to do for that, and you can track it. So we kept building these out with a laser focus that does it contribute to the employee's experience in the company?
00:29:12
Speaker
Does it improve their experience? Does it make them better connected with their company? Does the company get to understand their employees better? If yes, build it. And we built all of these features with that very clear expectation. We would integrate with a lot of content. We started looking at content partnerships because then clients were like, listen, you're doing all this already. Why don't you only tell us what content we should get? We can't sit and look in the markets. We said, okay, we'll do that also. The product has grown with me saying yes.
00:29:41
Speaker
to whatever the client throws at us, we've always said, yeah, okay, we'll figure it out, we'll do it. We'll figure out, we'll do it. That has brought a lot of, I think a lot of pressure also to our team that we've got so much on our plate, how do we handle it? But at the same time, it's one of those stories, right? Where like all this pressure then creates the diamond. So I feel that's what the story is, is like for us that all these pressures created this product that is quite resilient, that helps companies do a lot of different things and solve some really big problems.
00:30:12
Speaker
If you like to hear stories of founders then we have tons of great stories from entrepreneurs who have built billion dollar businesses. Just search for the founder thesis podcast on any audio streaming app like Spotify, Ghana, Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the show.
00:30:32
Speaker
I want to understand how you plugged in content. So would you like, for example, I've gone to like a Franklin Covey and told them that upload your videos or sell your videos through us. I'm assuming this would be some... That was the first step. That was the natural first thing to do. And I got shot down pretty quickly and I sort of learned a few things about content very fast.
00:30:52
Speaker
And number one is that anybody who has content that has a brand value is not going to give you that content no matter what you do, right? So that was the number one lesson that, you know, a Franklin Kabi, any kind of coach, any kind of trainer, they are not going to give you your content. Their understanding is that their content, their brand has value. If they give it to somebody, they no longer have ownership over that. And that's like the Coca-Cola formula in a way, like their content.
00:31:19
Speaker
They're terrified that I'm going to take the content and run away with it or I'm going to copy it or do something. You know, nobody who has, who perceives that they have a brand value is ever going to give you content no matter what you do. This lesson was, I mean, this was probably 2015, 16 that we would, I was dealing with content companies and sort of understanding how to get the content on and that I had, I was sort of understanding.
00:31:40
Speaker
And so we then had to do a lot of things to build that kind of trust factor. We had to tell clients, okay, you hosted on your server and then give us the link so that you have control. You want to cut it off. You can cut it off. We won't let anybody download it. Even that was a challenge for many because they would say, array, but the customer can just put a video camera in front of the screen and record it.
00:32:00
Speaker
And so there were a lot of these points of frustration that if you're so paranoid, how are you ever going to do anything with your business? These content companies, what kind of companies were they like? So some of these were small trainers who created their own videos or that would do classroom kind of training. There were pre-existing companies that were sort of international brands of content. These are all those old school corporate training kind of organization. They had video content that you were trying to license.
00:32:27
Speaker
Yeah, largely video and then it was the arrangement, like your customer would pay, you would keep some percentage and the remaining would be passed on to. That was the hope. That was the dream that I could do that someday, but, but the, these content providers and all were just not having it. It was just impossible to convince them.
00:32:44
Speaker
So that solution sort of came on its own because once Coursera entered the market and became more prevalent and once more Udemy and all of these other players were there, people started to understand that, look, if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. I might as well build my brand and earn whatever I can. And so that sort of learning came on its own.
00:33:02
Speaker
And so we got very lucky that we were there at the right place at the right time, that then a lot of these content companies started being a little more open with their content options. At the same time, we started working with other content companies that already knew how to do this. And they were selling in a format called SCOM, C-O-R-M, which is like this e-learning format.
00:33:19
Speaker
that allows you to host the content on your own server, but it's highly interactive and you can still offer it to clients. And then so the more sophisticated content companies were doing it in that way. So over time, as we matured, the market matured, it became easier on its own to look at content. And the deal is this, like Ravilu said, you don't pay anything upfront.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, we couldn't also and we couldn't afford to do that. And so there were some content companies that required that. And we said very politely that, look, we can't, that's not something we can do at this time. But you know, with content, there is so much in the market. There's so many content companies and everybody has their own niche. Everybody has their own specialization.
00:33:58
Speaker
So that was quite a nice experience. So then once the market sort of opened up to start then having these deals with companies and working with them to then offer the content to clients and clients would also start looking at getting a very easy plug and play option for content. So for them, we were excited by that idea. They don't have to think about anything. They just sign a contract and the content is there and they launch it for their users.
00:34:21
Speaker
Till 2020, all these things got stitched together when you finally felt satisfied that, yes, now my product is ready for the big leagues. Yeah, absolutely. And we started looking at funding then as well. So I think in January 2020, we started having conversations about, okay, what's the next stage of growth for the company? How do we grow the business? How do we... By 2020, what kind of scale were you at? Like how much revenue were you making annually?
00:34:49
Speaker
We were still, so March 2020, we were still relatively small because like I said, we'd still been focusing a lot on the product. So we were just organically, whatever clients we were getting, we were taking them. So we'd hit a crawl. And when we hit a crawl is when I realized, okay, now we need to start looking at the big leagues and get some funding because I've proven the business model. I've proved that there is some track, there is something here. Now we can sort of explore it.
00:35:12
Speaker
And then, of course, that's when the big pandemic hit and that's when all hell broke loose in that sense because for the longest time, I mean, I remember I was having plenty of calls.
Resilience During the Pandemic
00:35:23
Speaker
We were doing demos left, right, and center with companies. That kind of work was continuing and that's when our partnerships also exploded. We started talking to a lot of companies.
00:35:31
Speaker
like nobody was buying anything so partnerships and just getting out deeper in the market that was all that was happening that was all everybody was able to do what are these partnerships so these are companies that have a some kind of synergy with us so these could be an HRMS HR some kind of an HRMS platform
00:35:49
Speaker
or like a payroll company, which is payroll companies, assessment companies, content companies, all these different types of companies that do something that they don't compete with us, but we can sell that together. Right. So they can sell cosplay and we can sell their products.
00:36:05
Speaker
So a lot of those conversations happened. So in this, in the shadow of this giant pandemic, nobody knew what that was happening. Customers, all spending was frozen, right? We, that kind of innovation was still happening behind the scenes and that kind of the work didn't ever stop to even in the pandemic, like we were also working, the product was still getting developed, but
00:36:27
Speaker
At the same time, I was like, look, we need to also build our sales now. We need to sort of grow the company. On one level, the idea was that just because of COVID, we cannot stop anything and things have to continue. But at the same time, that period also really tested us.
00:36:44
Speaker
I remember having some very difficult conversations about what is the next phase of the business and I still have that unyielding faith that we have something here. This is a product, this is a company, this is an industry that is growing big time but cash flow was a massive challenge.
00:37:00
Speaker
We were very lucky that those few months of lockdown, new deals must have stopped altogether. And it was a very funny paradox. New deals stopped fully for maybe a nine months or nobody was buying anything, but our existing clients were through the roof. So that's spending that they had on in terms of their engagement.
00:37:19
Speaker
3x. Okay. Spending. Okay. Were they giving a flat fees or was it based on usage? It was based on usage. You know, so there is a flat fee for the year. And then if you cross a threshold of uses, then you pay more. And how do you define usage? So we have two models. So one is based on active users in a month. So users who are, if you're logging into an active user, we charge you for those active users. The second is just a flat fee for the size of the company. What happened is that many clients had the same size.
00:37:48
Speaker
Right? So they had the same size, maybe 1000 employees. They didn't increase the number of employees, but maybe where 500 users were logging in. The monthly active users. Yeah, the active users skyrocketed. That did a new problem for us, because now suddenly my service spend has gone up 3x.
00:38:05
Speaker
But my revenue is flat because they're the registered users. You had that deal. Yeah. So the usage spiked like anything 3x usage went up, but then we did have some clients that were based on monthly spends and active users. And that's really what got us through the pandemic because those, that revenue also went quite, quite a bit high for us. And that really helped us pay the bills. Companies would have no choice but to use digital onboarding tools like for their people.
00:38:32
Speaker
And not just onboarding, but for training and for employee growth and the guys who are there still in the company, how to be safe during COVID, how to deal with it, mental health, the new processes, all the protocols that they've got, health and safety, behavioral training, everything, they would do that. And coming back to an idea that we talked about at the beginning, that obsession with me not focusing on a certain sector, that also saved us because we were so sector agnostic.
00:38:56
Speaker
right that while our aviation clients and our retail clients were in a bad shape but our logistical clients are clients who you know finance they were doing well and that really saved us with those payments were still coming through and I was really proud of the fact that we didn't have to cut employee salaries at all so there were delays yes we had to delay salaries but
00:39:16
Speaker
I was hearing about other companies, 60%, 80%. They were only paying salaries. We were paying still 100% salaries throughout the pandemic. We were doing that. But they were delayed. But also the strength of our team also came out. They were also like, look, we have bills to pay, but we understand these are hard times.
00:39:33
Speaker
we are going to stand by the company and we're going to still work just as hard and whenever you can clear those payments, please clear it. And the second, I didn't take my salary at all that entire time. Only now, I think maybe a month or so back, I started sort of taking salary again, but I didn't take any salary. It was very clear, right, that clarity was there, what we had to do and how we had to deal with this.
00:39:54
Speaker
Right. But Casio was still a challenge. It was hard. And that was sort of when we really got tested, like so many other companies, we got really badly tested then. But, but then one thing, another thing was clear that we had to survive that period. If we survive, there was a greenfield on the other end of the, of that fence, right? So that if we were just able to survive that time, that most critical time,
00:40:13
Speaker
So many companies were either shutting shop, they were getting absorbed, there was consolidation, this and that. We just had to survive. That was my number one objective. We cut costs as much as possible. We shrunk down, whatever had to be done, but we survived. We got through it.
00:40:28
Speaker
the features were still getting built. So we were still building the features. And so we saw a lot of good product innovation also happening at that time. And the funding story was still happening. So I was just having back to back calls with investors. I mean, this started even pre pandemic, this had started, but, and it was always, okay. And a lot of these companies, we were quite small looking for seed funding. A lot of these companies, okay, let's see if you survive, right? That was the subtext.
00:40:53
Speaker
So they would say, OK, let's talk next quarter. We want to see how things are going. We want to see traction. All of that we would keep hearing. And it took a long time. It took sort of a full year before I finally understood what kind of investors we needed. And then one of the clear one of the things that became clear to me was we needed angel investors, not a VC house. And even when we speak to these investors, make sure that they are looking at a company that is the same size as ours, looking at the size that we're looking at, because
00:41:19
Speaker
It's so easy to just get caught up in this investor thing and get, have all these calls. But then each time they're either they're looking at pre-series A level or series A level. And then that takes such a hit on your motivation. I didn't have another co-founder that I could lean on to, to share the load. It was me. And then I had to lean on my family and the ecosystem I had around me, but company-wise it was just me. It was the most lonely time of my life, 2020, where all of these things were happening at the same time.
00:41:47
Speaker
But I still had this vision and I had this idea that, no, this company has to make it. Like there is something here. We have real value here. And there is something that can be done. I don't want to give up this dream. I don't want to give up this product. I don't want to have to shut it down. And that was such a difficult time. So that was a really rough period. But then we got through it. And so the guys that are there with me today that were there throughout that pandemic, I'm so, from my team, I'm so grateful for them.
00:42:16
Speaker
Their strength and courage, their faith in me got us through this whole period and their understanding, their patience was what has really made the company what it is today. Even in 2021, there were a lot of these fall starts with funding because we would talk to investors, we would talk to, and things are going well. And then that damn second wave came and that came at such a wrong moment. In March, we were literally like that we had a term sheet
00:42:41
Speaker
We had on the phone accepted the terms, OK, I'll sign it tomorrow and I'm going to send it to you. And tomorrow was like, all hell is broken loose now. This wave has happened. We can't sign anything. You've got to wait. But that gave me a lot of confidence that, OK, still I have something and we can't now back down. So that gave a little more fuel and sort of pushed a little bit more. And then also something very magical happened in 2021 as we started to find that we were cash flow neutral.
00:43:11
Speaker
I had managed to bring the cost down in such a way and we were looking at our client relationships in such a way that we were not making losses anymore. And that was also then a very magical thing because suddenly I felt this weight lifted off my shoulders. When did the New Deal activity start again? So like probably March 2020 onwards, New Deals must have stopped. So when did you see the revenue pickup happening? So actually, funnily enough, the psychology of new business is so strange.
00:43:40
Speaker
I could say that in 2020, we got hardly any business. But then when I look at the numbers, we got, I think, 14 new clients in 2020. 2021, it was a similar story. It's a funny thing where, you know, it feels like you're stuck. It feels like you're stuck at home. Life is on hold. Nothing is happening. Let's wait. The hope is that, okay, anything big we have to do, let's wait till after the pandemic.
00:44:02
Speaker
Right. But somehow work was still happening and deals were closing, clients were coming. The size of clients was very different because 2028 was a lot of very much smaller deals, but we were still closing clients. We were still getting business and we got some brilliant clients. We got PropTiger in 2020. We got, I'll have to look at my list, but we've got some really nice customers. And even in 2021, I mean, it's all a blur, but yeah, I remember we got this
00:44:27
Speaker
We got Effingood, which is this fantastic brewery slash cafe slash restaurant. We got all the party developers. We've got some really nice clients in 2021 as well. So it's not like they stopped buying because I think probably for them, the need for buying was more than ever, but it's just that perception that, okay, things are on hold, right? Because that's what many clients are telling us, but dealers are closing actually.
00:44:49
Speaker
IPV would have also, Inflection Point Ventures would have also helped you because they have a large portfolio of companies who could be potential customers. Yeah, definitely. Many of those companies we got introduced to in the second half of last year, many of those companies we're still getting introduced to now. It's not just the startup portfolio, but even their investor portfolio.
00:45:10
Speaker
So we're dealing with a lot of the investors and the companies that their investors are now understanding, oh yeah, these guys are doing some incredible work, let's talk, let's see what they're doing. So we're seeing some really good traction there as well. And I think as a B2B tech sass play, having the first investors be angel investors has been extremely, has been a boon for us for that reason.
00:45:31
Speaker
that the engine network, you're able to suddenly get exposure to all of these companies and every single one of our investors, every single member of IPV is rooting for us and they want us to succeed and they're giving us those opportunities that otherwise may not have
Investor Networks and Growth Opportunities
00:45:44
Speaker
been there. So that that's also a recommendation to other budding entrepreneurs out there that if you're looking at the B2B space, working with an engine network really helps because you get access to their entire sort of network and that can really help take the company to the next level.
00:45:58
Speaker
And so that's what's been happening here and that's also been quite quite helpful for us. What will you use the funds for like to build up your sales team basically now like sales is number one day I am because now we know how to sell we know what we're selling we know the pain point we've understood the customer so well that is just a matter of scalable sales is a predictable revenue as they say that's what I
00:46:19
Speaker
I'm working on. I'm very lucky that we've got our, we've got a new VP sales who is going to be, who's leading the team and he's sort of running the show for our sales team. The sales team is going to grow like anything. And we are, so where I had probably two sales guys in 2020, we'll have probably 10 sales guys within the next one or two months. We're growing sales like anything.
00:46:39
Speaker
and of course the product. What is your average value per customer? So average value, average order value. Actually growing really fast. So at the beginning of last year, at the beginning of 2021, it was roughly 3.8 lakhs.
00:46:53
Speaker
And now it's gone. I think it's just cross four lakhs. We're hoping it'll reach only six, seven lakhs by the end of this, because as we grow also the size of clients that we're working with is also growing. The amount of business we do with them is also growing. So for those reasons, we're looking at a higher ticket, higher. So this is not really an SME product then, right? Like I can't imagine SMEs spending this kind of money.
00:47:16
Speaker
SMEs won't spend seven lines. It's more of a corporate, it's like a product for corporates. It's like an enterprise product, basically. It is an enterprise product and we work with many SMEs and we really enjoy working with those clients and we'll always work with SMBs. I think there's tremendous growth to be seen from the SMB market.
00:47:34
Speaker
but our target is the enterprise space where they have 1000 employees. That's where the scale really kicks in and that's where we can really make an impact. There are so many companies I speak to that are smaller and they say we get by with Excel. But when you hit a certain scale you need a cosplay and you need to look at not just for the scale but also looking at employee growth for your team and giving them personalized
00:47:56
Speaker
suggestions of what kind of training they need, what kind of focus they need to have, what do they need to work on, what are some behavioral tips for them that they should work on while they're selling or while they're working on the field. So that matters at a larger scale, a whole lot more. In a smaller company, your leaders are there right there with you to guide you and to help you. But in a larger company, that sometimes becomes a challenge and you need a platform like this to help systematize it.
00:48:23
Speaker
So we feel the impact we can make for the larger companies is much larger. The larger clients take all our features, right? They need everything that we offer and then more, right? Whereas the smaller companies, they might just take the light plan. They might just take sort of some of the core features.
00:48:39
Speaker
So we feel definitely the market is also pushing us towards those larger companies because we can make a bigger impact for them also. So what is the onboarding journey for a client? Do they need to create all of those courses and training programs on their own or do you create it for them? How does a new client get onboarded?
00:48:58
Speaker
You know, we have a very nice implementation pipeline or an anticipation sort of tracker that we have that helps clients understand their journey in launching with us. It starts with a little bit of training for the administrators of how the system works and all of that. So we hand, we guide them, we handle them through that process. My, my ops team will upload all the masters. So they'll upload the user list, the content, whatever has to be uploaded the first time around.
00:49:21
Speaker
all the configurations and settings. We have them do all of that. We do daily calls with them because during the beginning, they need that kind of handholding. We also give them something called a hypercare period. So we're with them for at least two to four weeks, if not more, to help them to get acclimatized and anything they need. We have them sort that out.
00:49:39
Speaker
And then as they get more comfortable, as they get more sort of confident on our system, that's when we are a little more hands off. And it's like that moment when you're guiding your child on a bike and then you sort of leave it and they just see how they're doing it. That's what sort of happens. We are a bit more hands off and our clients are able to handle it on their own.
00:49:56
Speaker
How do you achieve things like personalized recommendations that you should do this course or you should watch this video? How do you do that? That's been one of one of those innovations that I'm incredibly proud of. And it all starts with the core rule, the core idea that learning is different for everyone and it is highly subjective and it comes from all different places. Right. So.
00:50:22
Speaker
How do you, it's like water. So how do you sort of, how do you capture that? So we do this in, we embrace that and we say, okay, let's take a few examples. So one is your coaching. So we say, okay, a coach or your manager is going to sit down with you and tell you what you're good at and where you need to improve. We can take that data, right? So where you need to improve, what you're good at, we can take that data.
00:50:40
Speaker
we can cross-reference that against all the training that is there on the system, right? So if you're already... Which the company has uploaded. Which is already there, right? We already have the learning records. We know what you are interested in, what you're good at, what you need to improve. Let's correlate that and then display those courses where there is a maximum score for improvement. You have like a fully functional performance management system through which you can identify what are the gaps.
00:51:08
Speaker
Yeah, so coaching was one example, performance is the next. Where we look at your performance, we see where have you missed your targets, right? What are those KPIs where you've missed those targets? What are the skill sets that are associated with those missed targets? And therefore, what is the learning you need to do? Same thing goes with your individual development plans. What are the core things that you want to work on for yourself? And what are the learning programs that are linked to those core ideas? Your competency evaluation. So what are the skills that you need for your role?
00:51:36
Speaker
What are the skills that you have? And then what are the skills that you need? And then those skills that you need, what is the training? So where we go into all of these different directions.
00:51:45
Speaker
right? So we look at every little aspect of your job, of your role, of your experience in the company, and then we say, okay, as based on this data, what do you need, right? What can we get you? And then we fill in those gaps, right? So that's how we do it on Fosbit. What percentage of content is uploaded by company and what percentage do they buy from your partners? Like you are also now
00:52:08
Speaker
selling content through your partners, like through those licensing arrangements. So what is the split for a company? I'd say it's probably spread down the line because there's so much content that companies already have. They've got these in-house resources. And as companies adopt a platform like Cosplay, that excitement to create something of your own that you can then share with your team is also growing, we found.
Encouraging Client Content Creation
00:52:30
Speaker
So we find that there is this increase, one or two months after cost was launched, suddenly there's an influx of in-house developed content because managers and leaders in the company are saying, oh, this is pretty cool. Let me simplify the training and process for my team. I'll upload a course on XYZ process. So it becomes a kind of grassroots thing that anybody can create training within the company. Of course, it becomes a kind of institutional memory for the organization.
00:52:55
Speaker
So a lot of content comes actually from within the company. So we've also, we have an authoring tool. Again, it's a partner that we send to our clients saying, okay, create the content on your own. We'll show you how to do it. We'll empower you. We'll give you all the resources, create this content on your own and upload it because the best training will come from within the company.
00:53:14
Speaker
And then I'd say probably 10, 20% is also custom content, maybe even more because the client is uploading it. So we don't know if it's outsourced or if it's developed in house, but a lot of it also comes from third party content creators that is built to spec, right? So the client says, I want content to be built with these specifications. They would have deployed a consultant to build something for them.
00:53:36
Speaker
to professionally made really crisp, nice looking, beautiful looking content. And then they have that uploaded. And then probably 30, 40% is content that is off the shelf. Now, again, the client can sometimes procure that themselves from partners, and then they can come to us. And that's something that has also evolved over time, because first, we start off with these direct deals with content owners and content creators, saying, OK, let us license and sell your content to our clients.
00:54:03
Speaker
Now the conversation is going towards content aggregators, where we go to one player and we say, okay, you have this full library of 80,000 titles. Let's launch this in the coming. The client is also delighted with X, Y, Z. One time payment annually, I'm able to get this unlimited library of content. I'd never have to worry about content again in my life because whatever content I want, I just search it and it's there for me.
00:54:28
Speaker
So these aggregates, so there's like a Netflix model, like all you can eat. All you can eat, yeah. And the value, it's the Spotify model. The value is tremendous because you get this buffet of titles, choose whatever you feel is relevant. And then cosplay has so much more data to also recommend because now we've got this massive library. So our recommendations become much more accurate, much more precise.
00:54:52
Speaker
And it's a win-win for everyone. So that's become a big, I think that's a big innovation that has happened in the market, is this rise of aggregators. And one aggregator will have access to this tremendous, it's either 14,000, 80,000, 200,000 title. These aggregators, do they have a B2C of that also, or they are pure B2B, like they would tie up with companies such as Coarse Play?
00:55:16
Speaker
Mostly B2B because the owners, the actual content creators, they might have a B2C model that they don't want the aggregators competing with. So mostly the aggregators come with a B2B model because they bring that scale. At the B2C level, they may not be able to bring the same kind of scale. Okay. And these I'm assuming would all be global companies. I don't think these would be Indian.
00:55:36
Speaker
I think yes, but I am optimistic and I have that I do see that there is there are these parks in India for these kinds of aggregators. But even if you look at content, content also in India, there's been tremendous growth now in the last couple of years for off the shelf content created by Indian companies.
00:55:55
Speaker
That is happening now. So I think there is lots more to see. There is lots more that we're going to experience with content. And the Indian market is very quickly catching up with the global markets. The global markets, they have all this expertise. They've been in the markets for a while, so they know what they're doing. But we're catching up. We're definitely catching up.
00:56:13
Speaker
And how much does it cost for a company to buy into that buffet of all you can eat content? It varies based on the size of the company. It could be maybe $50 a year per user. It could be less than that based on the size of the company. But there is, in many cases, there is scope for negotiation. There is scope for wiggle room because I think
00:56:35
Speaker
even these international players are very keen to enter the Indian market, right? So it's a funny thing. These international companies all want to come to India. We want to go internationally to the rest of the world. There's an interesting sort of dichotomy here when you look at global strategies.
International Market and Pricing Strategies
00:56:49
Speaker
But yeah, these international companies are very keen and they understand that India has a different kind of pricing model. We've got different rates at which which can be afforded by our companies.
00:57:00
Speaker
And we've seen so many of these international organizations say, OK, we're keen. We're bullish on the Indian market. We want to be there. We see the growth opportunities. You tell us how is it going to happen? What do we need to do to get in there? And they're giving us tremendous support. And they're really helping us in making sure that we have whatever we need from their side to close those deals. Would you look at investing in content on your own?
00:57:25
Speaker
like getting an agency to build content based on your understanding that a lot of my clients need these kind of trainings which are not really being fulfilled by the global content.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah, we've thought about it. We've definitely thought about it and it's something that we're definitely interested in. I think this year I don't have plans for that because I don't want to spread our focus too thin and for us our focus is very clear on selling cosplay, selling partner solutions and expanding internationally. So that is a very clear focus that we have this year.
00:57:56
Speaker
And maybe down the line, definitely. I think that's, that is a possibility on the cards where either we partner up and we co-create some content because we have all this data of what our employees searching for. What is the training that they have? What is the training that they don't have? So we have that very clear data that's going to reduce the risk profile of content creation because you could be the best content company in the world. You still have no clue what the client wants. We know exactly what the client wants. So it becomes very easy for us to then create that kind of content to fit those gaps.
00:58:26
Speaker
But yeah, I think this is going to be a focus for us a little bit down the line at the moment We focused on partnerships and we're focused on working with with partners to deliver the content got it. Okay, and What is your international expansion plan? Like which countries are you targeting? So we're seeing
00:58:42
Speaker
growth opportunities from the Middle East. You've got this World Cup coming up, you've got the I think there's Dubai Expo happening, you've got all of these countries that are looking to expand their portfolios outside oil and they're investing big time in all other sectors. I think the Middle East is going to be a very interesting space for the next couple of years. And we're going to see some big growth in the number of companies and the kind of things that they're doing in the economy.
00:59:08
Speaker
The diversification of sectors is going to really happen a lot and we want to be right there when that happens and we want to be the employee growth partner for these companies. The Middle East is a tremendous market that's got a growth object today and that has suddenly become an opportunity for us. Two markets that have always been very exciting and that have always been very interesting is of course Africa and Southeast Asia.
00:59:29
Speaker
But they're very different. Southeast Asia is a little more developed as a market. They know what they want and they also can spend. Africa is like India. It's still emerging. They're still not necessarily able to spend at the same rates. But the kind of impact potential that's there is probably the highest sort of all. So these are markets that we're really looking at. I guess you could say that emerging markets are sort of core focus.
00:59:52
Speaker
We do eventually look at going west. The European markets, the UK market, the US market, we're very interested in. Even South America is a tremendous space. Australia is a tremendous space. Far East is a tremendous space. We want to be everywhere. I think long term growth is definitely we want to be a global company. But like I said, for a startup, while we are still in startup mode, focus is super important. So whom do you see as your competitors?
Holistic Employee Growth and Integration
01:00:16
Speaker
I see LMS as competitors, even though I don't call cosplay an LMS, we do a lot of the same things that they do. But then our universe is so much larger than the LMS universe because we look at so many more things and we look at employee growth and coaching, mentorship, performance, behavior. We look at all of these things that an LMS will never do. So in a way, we do compete because we cannot necessarily coexist with an LMS for the same audience.
01:00:39
Speaker
but also we do a lot more. I think a really nice example of a competitor is which is still new in the market and time will still tell, but Microsoft Viva. So Microsoft has launched a product that is sort of an umbrella overarching even LinkedIn learning.
01:00:54
Speaker
That looks at the employee experience in the company and that looks at a lot of additional sort of things. And because it's Microsoft, they do things a certain way. They can plug in teams into it also. Exactly. That's the whole vision. So they realized after they purchased LinkedIn, they realized that this HR market is quite untapped.
01:01:12
Speaker
So, employee experience has become a new focus for them. But I'm excited by that because I think they are also helping the market understand that it's not just about learning. If it's just about learning, that's only 10% of the story. You need to look at 100% of the pain point. You need to look at employee growth in a holistic way, in a systemic way. All your platforms, all your systems have to talk to each other. And Microsoft is educating the customer on this.
01:01:37
Speaker
Of course, their focus is very different. They're looking at your blue chip Fortune 500 companies, but that still leaves plenty of space for us to operate in. The market is a tough market, but it's a big market. And if you know how to do this, if you know how to operate in a space like this, I think there is tremendous growth opportunity, tremendous opportunity to make an impact, to make a difference in people's lives. But it takes time and it is tough and you need to know what you're doing. And as this market matures,
01:02:04
Speaker
I can also see that it's setting up natural barriers to entry because you can't just sort of, oh yeah, I want to start an LMS, how do I do this? It's going to be harder and harder. So as the market matures, especially in this region that we're looking at, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, it's going to be harder to enter, but definitely for the players like us who are already there, it's going to be a tremendous opportunity to offer a fantastic impact to these companies.
01:02:31
Speaker
Like a full stack HRMS likes a Darwin box. They also have a performance management and an LMS inbuilt. Do companies take both? Like they would have both like a Darwin box and a course play, or if you have a Darwin box, then you would not need a course play because Darwin box offers the LMS.
01:02:48
Speaker
No, so Davenbox and all of their peers, you've got Keika, you've got GreatHR1, all of these other companies, they focus on HR and we coexist with them, we integrate with them. If they're capturing performance data, we will take that performance data into cosplay and then spin out our recommendations based on that data.
01:03:04
Speaker
So we have a very strong synergy with all of these HR companies. Davenbox does not have their own LMS. Many of these HR platforms do not have their own LMS. But they have a LMS through a collaboration, I think, Upland or something like that, I believe. Yeah, they might have partnerships. And that's exactly where this, that's another opportunity for us as well. Because I think when you're focused on
01:03:28
Speaker
HR and payroll and attendance and benefits and all of those things. It becomes very hard to then split your focus and also look at employee growth and learning, right? So it is important that there is a focus and therefore there is a very nice goal for collaboration and coexistence. We've partnered with many such companies. We're integrating with Daub & Box actually.
01:03:46
Speaker
whether it's people strong or any of these other HRMS platforms that I mentioned before. We're integrating with them. We're partnering with them. We are thriving with them. I don't see them as competition. Do most employees use cosplay on mobile or on desktop? What trend do you see? I see a very clear trend here. I see a very clear breakup. The guys who are on the field, who are more junior, who are bottom of the pyramid, who are blue collar, they are using it more on mobile.
01:04:14
Speaker
and they have that comfort to do everything on the mobile. So whether it's payments or learning or whatever it is, they do everything on the mobile and therefore they will learn and they will use cosplay on the mobile. And our mobile app has the easier interface as well, so they benefit from that also.
01:04:29
Speaker
The web browser, where you get a bigger screen, you're on your laptop or desktop, that is used more by the mid-management and senior management. Their training programs are a little more in-depth, so the junior guys have maybe a little more micro-learning, a bit more of sort of the shorter formats. The senior guys have longer formats, more complex training, stuff that requires a higher resolution, a larger display.
01:04:50
Speaker
So there's a very clear trend that companies who have more white collar guys use it more on the web browser on their laptops and desktops. And then companies who have more of the feet on street teams, the blue collar teams, they use more of the mobile. And we can very clearly see that when we speak to clients as well. The second they tell us about the audience, we know exactly what kind of product break up they need. Aggregated, like if you were to look at aggregated sessions, what is the split? Like what percentage is happening on mobile?
01:05:17
Speaker
See mobile will always be higher because the number of employees at the base of the company will always be more, right? So we're looking at maybe a 70, 30 split where 70% of our audience is on the mobile app. But just because they're larger in numbers, they have to be more. And the senior management, the administrators, the middle management where they have to learn and administrate on the web, they will by nature, because the company's a triangle, they'll always be fewer in number. And so that's how it works.
01:05:42
Speaker
So like your current user base would also skew more towards blue collar, like 70% is mobile traffic. So like 70% of the employee is using it would be like in the blue collar category. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call probably your sales force, I wouldn't necessarily call them blue collar. So for that reason, I wouldn't say that 70% is all blue collar.
01:06:03
Speaker
But if I had to split it, I'd say probably 40% is 35, 40% is blue collar employees. Roughly 30% is feet on street sales guys and just people who are distributed throughout the country with various white collar roles, but still manning the front lines. Using it on the go.
01:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, and then the remaining office goers, white collar guys. So we've got a good mix. And I think that's going to continue. I think while the product we might want to hold our product and say, OK, there's a front line variant or a blue collar variant or a white collar variant, our focus will remain on the entire company. So we want to cater to the full organization. And again, I don't want that incomplete approach. So our focus is on capturing the entire workforce in your organization, not just one audience.
01:06:49
Speaker
What are some of the emerging technologies that you're using in Courseplay?
Long-term Value and AI Innovations
01:06:54
Speaker
I think it's very easy to get into the trend of the day. Right now blockchain is hard, so we could say that we're doing blockchain XYZ. But I think if it comes back down to focus, it comes down to the long jet, it comes down to the
01:07:09
Speaker
longevity of the technology and also how can we actually add value. We're not here to just provide a fad that people will sort of get excited by because also for us as a tech company anything that we invest in that becomes a long-term investment because we have to keep maintaining that feature and we have to sort of have a workforce that has the skills to manage it.
01:07:30
Speaker
So don't foresee too much happening with blockchain or NFTs for that matter, but definitely there's a lot to do with AI when it comes to understanding the individual, understanding their individualized requirements, their recommendations. Having AI look at what are their peers who have the same role in the company, what are they doing really well, or what content are they consuming.
01:07:56
Speaker
even in terms of behaviors, right? So if I have a high performer, what are they doing really well that as a mid or low performer, I'm not doing giving those recommendations back to the employee. I definitely think that the future is in our space is where the content, the recommendations, something actually material of meaning comes from the system itself. So if cosplay is going to soon be able to then tell you
01:08:21
Speaker
not just about here's the content you need to watch, but here are the things you need to do. So we can say, look, the top 10% of your company in terms of performance is shaking the hand of the customer before they speak. And you're not doing this. Maybe this is something you want to start doing.
01:08:39
Speaker
So being able to provide that level of insight, I think is really the future of AI and the future of what we can do for our clients. Being able to sit in on client conversations, on pitches, on internal project meetings, and then give those recommendations that, look, your tone could have been improved or it could have improved in this X, Y, Z way. And not just learning, right? So it's very easy to say, okay, here's a video on communication skills or nonverbal communication.
01:09:09
Speaker
But it's a different thing entirely to then understand what the user needs today. And it's also a different thing in an educational setting. I've got a full year to explore all of these subjects and time is, there's no real urgency. When you look at
01:09:24
Speaker
a corporate setting, there is no time. The employee has no interest in getting master's degree in communication skills. They just need to know where they need to improve. In five minutes, they want the job done. They want to start applying it in the next five minutes. And they want to get better instantly. They want instant gratification and they don't have time.
01:09:40
Speaker
So providing those concise requirements and cutting out all of the extra, all of the history and just giving those guys, here are the tips, just work on this. That I
AI and Big Data Transformations
01:09:52
Speaker
think is the future of our space. And that's where I think AI is going to play a tremendous role. Big data is going to provide a tremendous role because we will need to aggregate all of this information and then bundle it in a way that makes sense for our clients and then offer it back to them.
01:10:06
Speaker
So I think that's going to be the future of the space. And that's quite exciting. We're hiring AI engineers. We're hiring big data guys. For that reason, I think we've got some very exciting updates coming ahead of us this year. This was the spotlight presented by the podium. To listen to more such interesting conversations, log on to the podium.in.