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Krishna Kumar shares how he turned a blog into a 700 cr business | Simplilearn
216 Plays6 months ago
Krishna Kumar shares his remarkable journey from a small village in Bihar to leading a company poised to achieve a turnover of almost 1500 crore. Kumar discusses the strategies for effective marketing and fighting competition in the global arena, highlighting Simplilearn's pioneering role in the Indian Edtech space since its inception in 2010.
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Read more about Simplilearn:-
1.How Simplilearn is shaping the future of workforce with digital innovation in education
3. Learn something new everyday: Rapid Fire with Simplilearn’s Krishna Kumar
4.Krishna Kumar, Founder & CEO Of Simplilearn.com Explains His Journey So Far With Simplilearn
5.How an Indian entrepreneur turned his blog into a global online training site for professionals
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Transcript
Introduction and Early Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is Krishna. I'm the founder and CEO of Simpleland. Very happy to be part of this podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
Krishna, give me a little bit of your background. So, I was born in a village, it is near, it is part of Subbihar, eastern state in India, and that's where I did my schooling till about fifth grade. We had a primary school in the village, and that's where I did my till fifth grade, and after that I moved to Patna for middle school onwards. So, you know, when I was in the village, I remember for the first many years, at least till maybe I was till ninth,
00:00:41
Speaker
a nine-year-old or so, there was no electricity in the village, there was no road. So once I went to a nearby village, one of our relatives left for some marriage, and that's when I saw electricity for the first time, and I saw, okay, what is this? Very, very fascinating to see that this is like night or look like day. But of course, eventually, things changed, and there was electricity in the village, there was road in the village. In fact, during COVID time, my brother who works for JP Morgan,
00:01:05
Speaker
He is a techie and he did entire his covid time from our same village where there was nothing and he pulled 4.7 because there is electricity, there is internet, everything has become available so of course we have made a lot of great progress over the years in the country when in the remotest part of India and we are definitely one of the less developed part of the country.
Education and Career Decisions
00:01:25
Speaker
Your parents were farmers or what was it? My grandfather was a farmer and my father eventually retired as a professor from Magadhi University. But when I was born that time, he was still on probation, doing some kind of teaching in a degree college. But as a part-time employee, he was still not a full-time government employee to afford us to stay
00:01:54
Speaker
outside with his own income. So we used to stay with our grandparents in the village. And my father used to be with college. Education is your family business in a way. Yeah, my father was like, obviously he's a PhD, so he had some influence. But I think even bigger influence on me was my grandfather. My grandfather was not that educated, but he was a very respectable person.
00:02:17
Speaker
And he always woke up pushed me to not get involved in a lot of village related issues that many of my cousins get involved that Okay, whose land gets what part and see in a in a typical big village family, there's always some kind of land dispute going on because yes, somebody had one brother to brother and
00:02:41
Speaker
and somebody has only daughters, no brothers. So it's a very, very complex time. So people will get involved. They take side. And there's always small, small things to worry about. But my grandfather was very, very clear that, OK, don't get into this. Just focus on studies and make something out of it. So that has a very good influence on me. And then my mother also pushed my father as soon as he could get a little bit economically well-off in terms of starting getting salary to move to a better place where he can get good school.
00:03:11
Speaker
So that's where we moved to Patna, and that's where I did my middle school and high school. And of course, Patna is a great place for education. It's very, very competitive. Anywhere you go, people are preparing for IITs, IAMs, IASs, all those are like part of every discussion in any typical Bihar household. So that had a great influence. I eventually did my schooling from Lola school, Patna. At that time, Lola was one of the top schools in Patna. So that had obviously had a very, very competitive environment, and that helped me
00:03:41
Speaker
become even more competitive and become
00:03:44
Speaker
better at whatever I was doing. Also ignited my interest in trying to pursue higher stuff. So after that Lawless School, I went to Patna Science College, again, a very, very iconic school in Bihar, the number one place where people do 10 plus two education. A lot of people go to IITs. A lot of people see this. IIS officers in India will have it. If they are from Bihar, it is very high chance that they are from Patna Science College, where they are done there.
00:04:13
Speaker
10 plus two studies. So all the great institutions. So after my 12th grade in Patna, I had two options to like pursue. I was personally not very interested in doing engineering, because I knew that I was always much, much interested in our social studies and history were my favorite subject during the school. Of course, I was good in maths, because obviously, if you want to score, make sure to be a top scorer in a school,
00:04:43
Speaker
you can't afford not to have 100 out of 100 in maths. Because that's like one subject where you can actually score full. Since here it was another subject in Bihar board where you can score 100 out of 100. And if you want to be at the top of your class, there is no way you can be bad in these two subjects. Because if you do 99 in these two subjects, you're already gone. You're so competitive, right? Even during those times.
00:05:06
Speaker
So I was good in maths, I was good in pretty much all the subject, but my personal liking was always history and civics. So I wanted to go to Delhi and go do my graduation there, prepare for IIS and get into that like route. But my father said that, okay, that's a very risky proposition. I know you're a good student, but I still want you to pursue engineering and
00:05:26
Speaker
And after that, you can always do anything if you don't end up doing engineering, you already, you at least have some backup option. That's where I started preparing for engineering. And eventually, when I wrote my all the entrance exams, I had two options.
College and Initial Career Experiences
00:05:39
Speaker
So I got my my J rank was 2466. In that rank, I got only a
00:05:45
Speaker
apply the geology at IIT Kharagpur. That's the only branch that I offer because that time you have to write all your options and then the letter will come, ask rewards on what branch you got. So I got applied geology in IIT Kharagpur MSc program.
00:06:01
Speaker
And then, from my state entrance, I had all the options. So finally, I selected for the United South Carolina Electronics and Communication over IIT Kharagpur, Applied Geology, and that's where I went to United South Carolina. When I went to United South Carolina, that was a great experience, again, a very different place. I had not gone out of Bihar through my schooling.
00:06:18
Speaker
throughout my schooling. So going to the United South African meeting people from all different kinds of state was again, a very, very fascinating experience. The only language that I knew, knew at that time was Hindi and Bhoj Puri. So when I went to the United South African, I saw kids talking like very fluent English that was itself also. So
00:06:36
Speaker
fascinating to see that, okay, these guys are so smart, they're speaking so well, and so on and whatnot. And obviously, we got like intimidated and also got inspired at the same time. But eventually, so it was a as one of the best place of my life made a lot of friends had a lot of good time doing doing a lot of things that I never done in school.
00:06:54
Speaker
And the trigger for that was that when I was going to college, my dad told me that if you go to engineering college and you complete your engineering with 90% marks or you complete your engineering with 70% marks, you still end up becoming an engineer. So don't stress yourself too much.
00:07:15
Speaker
explore the all aspect of your engineering college. And eventually, we have to do something else you can, again, start at that point of time. So that took off a lot of pressure for me to, like, top the class because that, that makes you very, very narrow, narrow, because anywhere you go, I think there are always very competitive people. And if you want to get into that race, there is no end to it, right? There is always be competing against time. So because I didn't have any pressure to like, do well in my
00:07:43
Speaker
a regular academic, I had a great family in the United States. It is the only college in India that's right on the beach. So people used to like
00:07:52
Speaker
go to school, attend classes once in a while, take a beer, sit on the beach whole night. Many times we would just slip on the beach and come back on the next day morning and so on. And since I was a good student in electronics and communication engineering, somehow was not a very difficult subject to a study fact to say. And in particular, the electronics and communication branch at that point of time were also a very lenient department. They're not very strict like some of the other departments were very, very strict in terms of laboratory work and whatnot.
00:08:23
Speaker
So the whole year passed really, really very well. And when I was in final year, I got a shocker because when the placement decision started, most of the companies were like really good ones. They kept 75% as a like cut off marks to sit in campus and mine was like dot 7172. So I was not eligible for most of the
00:08:48
Speaker
Though I was the placement coordinator, most of the companies invited to getting them was everything was being done by me because I was the part of that body that does all the coordination. So that was a big shortcut for me that for throughout my life, I always
00:09:02
Speaker
I never got happy even after getting 90% because I always used to get 95, 96, 97. And here I was struggling to not even qualify because I don't have 75% margin. That was a very way I'll say demotivating for me. Then finally or somehow something happened to me. And finally I said that, okay.
00:09:21
Speaker
am I really not capable of getting higher marks? So surprisingly in my final semester I started really focusing on my engineering academy and I ended up getting 85 and 87 which was like again one of the highest marks in my class so that gave me the confidence back that okay just that I was not focusing I was not getting now that I'm focusing I'm getting it again so that was a good part.
00:09:45
Speaker
And then this whole interest of becoming an IS officer again struck at the final year of engineering. So I thought that how to go about doing this because in the United States there was no such environment. Nobody used to prepare for those exams at that point of time. I think the popular career option was that either you join a company where you get a job and most people used to get job. In electronics and computer it was
00:10:06
Speaker
How soon you get a job was more of a question than whether you get a job or not. So people will get into those jobs and settle there. Or a lot of them will write GRE and go abroad for their higher studies. So that was the model. The government exam was not even remotest of anyone's agenda.
00:10:24
Speaker
So I thought that the better place will be to go to where the IIT Delhi or IIT Kanpur because there a lot of people prepare for this exam. So that's what I don't get and then got into IIT Kanpur.
00:10:37
Speaker
took microelectronics as a subject to Mtech. I also did a, and eventually through campus I got into Infosys. So I did a cost benefit analysis in Infosys salary at that point of time was about 14,000 some change per month. And if you do an Mtech from IIT, you used to get 9,500 as a monthly stipend. So I thought it's not a bad deal if you have to stay in 14,000 in a rented place in Bangalore.
00:11:02
Speaker
versus 9500 with a free hostel in IIT, it's better to do Mtek and you can also pursue your IIS preparation also. So I think it's a no brainer, just go to Kanpur. But when I went to Kanpur within a week, I didn't realize that I'm a misfit here.
00:11:21
Speaker
It was M.Tech. M.Techs in this engineering college in India are not treated in the same manner as P.Tech. You are like a second class engineering college. That you can very clearly feel that vibe. You can feel that. So that part was something that I was not liking it. And second, this micronautonist, I thought I would like it as a subject. But as I sat in some of the classes, it appeared way too boring for me.
00:11:46
Speaker
Then I said, what is that I'm doing? I'm trying to prepare for an IIS sitting here in macro electronics class, not liking this whole second class design kind of experience. So I decided to drop off and that's where I moved out of IIT Kanpur one fine day and went back to Patna. When I went back to home.
00:12:02
Speaker
My dad was very, very supportive. He said, okay, do whatever you want to do. Whatever you think is a good thing for you. There was no pressure. My younger brother at that point of time was preparing for JEE. So he was kind of very curious that, okay, why would you leave an IOTC and so many people prepare for it. But next time I decided, okay, I don't want to go that path. So I stayed in Patna for a couple of weeks, then I went to Bangalore, joined it forces because my forces joining letter was still valid.
00:12:30
Speaker
So I went back and joined Infosys, stayed in Infosys for a few months, started liking it because all your friends were there.
Entrepreneurial Journey Begins
00:12:38
Speaker
You can hang out to different pubs in Bangalore. It was a very good time. But what I noticed that within six months of people joining different companies,
00:12:47
Speaker
Everybody got very serious about their career. Knowingly, people were thinking about what next. Some were trying to go to the US for, as an onsite engagement, some still trying for a GRE, some trying to write tags to the MBA. So I realized that those friends no longer have time. Everybody has got into that race that, okay, this is not enough. I need to do more.
00:13:09
Speaker
And that's what I was thinking what to do. So an Infosys that time had no work. In fact, that was a time early 2000, late 19th, late 2000 that all these companies used to operate at 55 to 60% utilization. That means almost 40% people used to just sit on bench with no work waiting for project to be assigned. So I was on bench for six months and it's kind of started biting me that whatever it was.
00:13:34
Speaker
So I spoke to my boss. He was a very friendly guy and told him that I'm not getting any work. I'm thinking of leaving. Give me some work. I'm getting really bored coming to office and doing nothing. I'm going to gym. I'm going to 1834, spending time reading economic times, trying to understand that. But regularly, it is too boring. He said that, why don't you go to the US? I said, it's not a bad idea. I can go to the US if you want to send me. So within a week, I was in the US. That time, for the P1,
00:14:02
Speaker
Visa, you don't have to go to embassy for in person. Some of these companies like Infosys had enough cloud that they will send the application and Visa used to come stamped in your hand. So I got Visa next week. I was in the US. Infosys.
00:14:21
Speaker
Not to a client, like they didn't send you to a client. Infosys was for a startup in Boston. Infosys also was incidentally an investor in that particular startup. And those startups are also run by three IT.
00:14:37
Speaker
graduate companies to be called ECQ. And they had some project that I was supposed to go and work with. I also surprised that I never worked on anything in Infosys. So I was myself questioning what is it I'm going to work there because I don't know anything to go and what I just attended Infosys training program and I was just floating as a
00:14:56
Speaker
as a resource. By this time, you had mastered English because when you joined college, I think college itself had a lot of improvement because first year was a place where we had really struggled. But over the three, four years, I think, not mastered, but manageable. It was manageable by the time I was in final year and then went to it.
00:15:21
Speaker
And then when I went to Infosys, there was a project opportunity for which I was supposed to go there. In fact, there are two other guys, three of us were supposed to land in the US. And all of us landed pretty much on a weekend there. I think Sunday evening we landed. And the first thing that when we went to that particular customer Monday morning, we realized that the project for which we were supposedly supposed to come, the project was canceled.
00:15:44
Speaker
So we had nothing. So there was no work. So it was even more torture to spend time in the US doing nothing. But Infosys obviously had a lot of resources, even in 99 also, they are big, they are not small, they have about 700,000 employees. So they managed to create some other opportunity within the same company to do something that according to me was a complete useless time pass, just a way to be, there was no value being created. We were just getting billed because we are at onsite and somebody had to pay the fee.
00:16:14
Speaker
And then within a month, a month and a half, that company went bankrupt. That was the starting of dot com bust. The company went bankrupt and there was another opportunity to work on, but I spoke to my manager saying that I'm not liking it here, you just get me back to India. So that's how I came back to India. And then again, going back to Infosys was of no point because there was nobody, nobody cared whether you were coming to office or not because you're not working on a project.
00:16:40
Speaker
So I stopped going to Infosys. I said, okay, what is the point? I'm not going to Infosys. And that's when I started figuring it out that what are my school friends doing? Is someone doing anything different? I came across one of my friends, he was also in a similar boat and he was trying to think that he was with IBM and he was having pretty much similar experience that going to IBM and doing nothing. He said, why don't we start our own business? And that's where we started our first business called Tech Unified.
00:17:07
Speaker
in our apartment, four of us, one of my friends from Pertner Science College classmate who had gone to IIT Kanpur and working for IBM, and two of his IIT Kanpur classmates again had a similar kind of background, they were working with the pro and had no real work in those companies. So four of us started this company called Tech Unified in our apartment, with the goal that we will do something meaningful, not just go to these companies and do nothing.
00:17:34
Speaker
So, the first business came into being. There, there were a lot of challenges, but eventually, what worked for us was that we were stuck together as a group. We did everything to survive. We became complementing each other in strength.
00:17:50
Speaker
And eventually we ended up building a very successful, as soon as banking product that was used by the likes of Citibank, HSB, ABN, AMRO, and so on. It's very, very focused on Middle East as a market, Saudi Arabia in particular, and other existing countries. And that was a pretty decent building. We didn't raise any external funding.
00:18:09
Speaker
How did a bunch of 20 year olds acquire banks as customers i mean the way it happened was that we were.
00:18:23
Speaker
So we were like, when we started, ideas would do some training, some consulting, some project, and something of that nature to survive. And we did a lot of work. See, once we were in market, some things happened. For example, our first decent or significant customer was actually Prashant Prakash. He runs Excel Ventures. So he used to run an IT services company called Netcraft during those days. So we used to do a lot of work with him, like some project work with him, some training work with him, some kind of
00:18:53
Speaker
IT services work for Netcraft and Netcraft in terms of building their end customers. So it's not that we knew him, just being in the market calling, cold calling with one person and another person led him to him as an example. And Shange still continues to be somebody that we respect a lot because we learned a lot. He was the first such customer that we have.
00:19:12
Speaker
Similarly, one of my co-founders, he used to do some work for Shovar Group, the Shovar developers, and they had an IT business called Shovar in essence information technology. So he was doing some consulting of Shovar in essence. We got in touch with Shovar, started doing some work for Shovar, and that's how
00:19:33
Speaker
We got connected with Middle East as a market. So far, we have a very strong business in Middle East. So when we got connected with Middle East as a market, there was an opportunity that we got to do some work in Saudi Arabia. Now, if you look at in 2003 timeframe, starting in 2001, this opportunity of Saudi came to us in 2003.
00:19:55
Speaker
People don't want to go to Saudi. It was supposed to be a closed country, strict laws and whatnot. There was a very negative image about Saudi at that point of time. So what if we went to Saudi to explore what's happening there? And when we went there, we realized that banks in Saudi were rich.
00:20:10
Speaker
very, very tech savvy because they had ability to spend that kind of money. And that's how we started working on some banking services project for one of the large banks in Saudi. And there we identified this opportunity, they are looking for a solution like this that anybody goes to the ATM and it draws money, there should be a lot. Anybody wants to send SMS message to inquire about what's happening in their bank account, their
00:20:35
Speaker
they could get some alert and so on. So when you started working, you realized that there's no such ready-made product that exists. So while we worked on that particular customer, we understood the concept there and ended up building a product. And then somehow, we got an opportunity to deploy that in Citibank in Saudi Arabia. And that was a very, very successful implementation. And Citi is a technology leader. When they implement, other banks follow. When Citi implemented, we started getting other banks. And that's how the business
00:21:04
Speaker
because we were in the market in Saudi and these customers were looking for a solution like that. So it was just being in the right place, building a product that was required and it was really very different. I remember 2004 was when we first time launched two-factor authentication in Saudi Arabia that has now become outstanding.
00:21:20
Speaker
If you remember, in 2005-06, even I don't remember till 2013, for the two-factor authentication in India was a default standard. Only after the two-factor authentication onwards, I saw that it became a standard. We had implemented that in 2004, way back in Saudi, for some of the banking transactions that we wanted to enable. So we were at the right place, right time, trying to build this product. And the product also was built really, really, very well. One of our co-founders in the previous company,
00:21:46
Speaker
He was one of the gold medallists of IIT Kanpur, very strong techies. Obviously, he was a small group, but one guy was very strong and then around him he built a strong technology team. So that product relied on him very well. I still remember I was sitting with the IP head of Citibank in Saudi Arabia. They used to be called at that point of time Samba, Saudi American bank.
00:22:12
Speaker
They're always in this concept that, like HSBC used to be called Saudi British bank, Saudi American bank, IT chief, and a regular, regular, like a visit, and their payment of service, their service payment also be, and he was joking with me saying that, okay, here is your annual,
00:22:33
Speaker
AMC check. I'm feeling sad and happy at the same time giving this check to you. I'm sad that I'm paying this money for nothing, because I didn't call you guys even once for the entire year. And I'm paying you just this money for for nothing. I'm happy at the same time that there was absolutely no problem in the product for the entire year that there was a need for you guys to visit. And there was a need for me to call. So product was so stable and was so well worked. Wow.
00:23:03
Speaker
So, this was like a license on-premise. It was on-premise license that were done and the product was like a gateway.
00:23:14
Speaker
through which we had integrated core banking, internet banking, ATM system, and it will just see the transaction and relay the transaction. So that was the product that relay the transaction and also receive any input and relay it back. So it was just, think about it, it was a gateway. It was that it was sitting between the end user device of the user and all the different enterprise applications at the bank side.
00:23:37
Speaker
So very good. And you were doing sales or what were you doing? My role was operations. So deploying project, hiring, training, making sure that all the projects are getting deployed at the right time. So sales was done by my other guy, technology was done by somebody else.
00:23:55
Speaker
Okay. So in 2000, this was like 2005 2006 timeframe. And that's where we started thinking about what more than we also were like, we all got married and staying in Saudi Arabia and nobody was very keen to stay in Saudi Arabia was not a very great place to leave family wise. Frankly, I always liked Saudi Arabia now also like the country.
00:24:15
Speaker
But it's not a very place that any women want to stay, especially during those times. There are a lot of restrictions now that publicly promoting. I saw a video of Missy a couple of days back saying, OK, Saudi has restrictions and whatnot. And he's striking those preconceived notions with his football kick. It was a really great campaign to see. But at that time, it was not a great place to be. So we thought, OK, enough of Saudi. Let's figure out what else
Success with Tech Unified
00:24:42
Speaker
we want to do. And that's where we started thinking about this model
00:24:45
Speaker
can we exit this company by selling it to someone else? So we engaged a banker, we identified a banker from our friend circle and gave him the mandate that I find a buyer and that's where ORG informatics limited listed company in India, they were looking for a acquire some kind of product IP, they had a large services business, but no real IP, so they acquired us. And that transition happened in February 2007. I think February 2007 was a great time to sell anything because market was again,
00:25:15
Speaker
very, very bullish. Yeah. We live it a pretty good time to sell anything. So we sell in 2007. How much did you sell it for? So that time we sold it as a small business, we sold it for 49 crore. But that time, and there are no investors, four of us, I think it was decent money for us at that point of time.
00:25:32
Speaker
Yes, it would have been more than what you would have earned in a job throughout your entire career. Each one of us made $12,000. So that time, I think the dollar to rupee was maybe $42,000, $43,000, $45,000. So each one of us had made roughly about $3.5 million, $4 million. So it was pretty good money. Amazing. And all of us were still $28,000, $29,000 a year old. So pretty good place.
00:25:57
Speaker
and then i worked at vargi for about a year and was trying to figure out what to do next and that's where i started simplilin as a blog so my goal that time was to learn internet because simply taken if i was a pure play enterprise play and we had a solution for banking we had done somewhat for telco also but mostly banking
The Birth and Growth of Simplilearn
00:26:18
Speaker
and simply learn how to learn blog. I also always used to love writing, so on your blog you can write anything, you can talk anything and learn internet optimization at the same time. So I started as a blogger, ran as a blog for about close to almost, I'll say one and a half years and through my writing I used to write a lot of project management, quality training and so on. So it started resonating with the followers.
00:26:42
Speaker
With that, I said why not put some training material on project management because some of the users want to suggest that we write so much on project management, why don't you help us prepare for PMP exam. That's where I put some content related to PMP and it resonated very well. I started offering doubt classification session on top of my PMP. Again, everything was happening
00:27:05
Speaker
as in hobby while I was trying to still figure it out what should I do next. And after some time, I think somehow somebody gave me an idea that why don't you put a donate button on your website so that you can create more such content around other programs and it can become a very good social vision. Other option was that put a PayPal button and start collecting payment.
00:27:23
Speaker
for the offering that you are giving it for free. So one Saturday evening, I put a PayPal button and then next day morning, I got seven payments. Out of that, two payments are from Middle East and five payment was from US. So I realized that, okay, it's a great business. I can maybe just double click on this concept, add more courses, add more offerings and become a viable business. You were selling study material.
00:27:48
Speaker
study material. So video content study material and doubt clarification session. So that doubt clarification session means like you can so that time I used to use a platform called dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim dim
00:28:14
Speaker
Okay, okay. So that was the place. And then within a year, that business was doing very well. In 2011, I used to do a monthly business of $100,000. My total cost, everything put together was not even $20,000. Because by the time I'd had a couple of support staff, it was making $80,000 monthly profit. I'm very excited that this is a great business. Why should I do anything?
00:28:42
Speaker
too much money that I can ever use. So one of my previous co-founder, he became an investment banker after exiting was simply learned. He teamed up with the same guy who sold Tekkenify to Wargi. They partnered together to sell their affiliates, build their business together for future. He's also doing extremely well. So he suggested that this business become $80,000 monthly profit.
00:29:04
Speaker
And you spend only two-year writing, blogging and whatnot. What if somebody has a lot of money and they build those faster than you and displace you from your own business? So before anybody else does it, why don't you only raise money and build inventory barriers and scale the business and so on. So that was a convincing argument. That's where we started talking to venture funds to see something can be done. And in the process, spoke to Vani Kalari and couple of other venture funds also. I liked Vani interaction and
00:29:31
Speaker
the whole experience of dealing with her and signed up with her to raise our series in 2012. And after that, it became a lot of new experiments to run the business. Some worked, some didn't work. From a profit making company, it became a loss making company. So we raised more money in 2013. What was your pitch to running? Sitting in Bangalore, we are running training people all across the globe.
00:30:00
Speaker
So, there is something that we are doing and it's sustainable. It's not that I'm training 5-10 people, I'm training like hundreds of them every month. So, there is a market and we have a model to train those people remotely. So, that's what is resonated with money. So, there is something there. It's another kind of services business or a product business that we can think of.
00:30:20
Speaker
And you essentially were looking at self-based learning, not like a cohort-based learning. No, no, we had, so we had doubt clarification session, right? That you, by the self, when then we will conduct sessions where people can ask any question. Of course, that got evolved into cohort-based training very soon, like within a year or so, we started doing classes which you, which are all completely taught live.
00:30:42
Speaker
you also ventured into offline. That's what I started losing money also. So what we decided was that, why to do early training online? There are people most of the classes we should do on weekends, why don't get people in a hotel room on weekends, and do this training live. In 2014, we used to run only on project manual PMP certification training every month in US, almost 50 unique classes every month in US, 50 physical classes in US.
00:31:09
Speaker
in 50 different cities. So imagine if you identify top 50 cities in US, you pretty much covered every city that you can think of a name or not even have thought of our name, right? And with not even a single employee in the US.
00:31:24
Speaker
So entire business was run from Bangalore, not even a single employee. Trainers will send trainers to those respective places. Somebody in Bangalore will coordinate and send those trainers. We'll upload our study material on some platforms. Those platforms will print and do overnight shipping to those locations. We try with Marriott to build the classroom as per our requirement or just to design the classroom. And we had a corporate arrangement with them which used to pay. So not even a single employee.
00:31:52
Speaker
So when you raise series, yes, series, very quickly. The business was largely US focused, like your revenue? Yes, the business was largely US focused, still about, I'll say 13, 14, 15, in fact 16 out. That means it was mostly US focused.
00:32:07
Speaker
And largely PMP, project management professional. PMP is Scrum, Six Sigma, ITIL, cybersecurity. So mostly certification related program. There was no data, clouds, and programming, those kind of things were not popular till about that time. How were you acquiring users?
00:32:28
Speaker
All internet. So internet marketing, email. Like organic or paid? Yes, organic. Organic and paid both. Organic, paid, email, list building, multiple kinds of things. What was working for you, like in terms of user acquisition? I think for us that time email marketing was the one that worked for us a lot. So what we'll do is build a list of people who might be interested and just email them, ask for references and leading from one person to another and so on.
00:32:57
Speaker
Okay. And the sales was like a human-led sales? Human-led. We always have human-led sales. Okay. People will inquire, then somebody will clarify and provide them all clarifications. And what was the average sales price? So in US, our average PMP sales price used to be about 15 to $1,700, of course. Okay. Okay. For the physical run. So what had also happened that over time started offering three different models.
00:33:25
Speaker
You can only take self-pace in $200 as an example. Live virtual in about $1,000 and physical live in $1,700. So it becomes a three different price point. Now we started getting some kind of discomfort in our own head sometime in 2015. Let's say a prospective learner comes to our sales guide asking for that. I'm looking for a PMP training or a Scrum training or any training for that matter.
00:33:54
Speaker
What should that person sell? The person should sell self-paced video content or live virtual or live in-person.
00:34:05
Speaker
I believe you should sell what suits for that particular learner profile, probing the learner on what kind of learner he is, what is his budget, is he a self-discipline or not. And based on that, you should have suggested one of the three options. That's a long-term thinking on the business side. But our sales guys are always selling the $1700 business because of the highest AST. And the commission would be based on...
00:34:28
Speaker
So, and by saying that, okay, this product is $1,700, live virtual is $900 and self-paced is $200. We are in a way also signaling the quality that maybe the physical is the best quality followed by the middle one followed by this one. We are not very comfortable with that thought in our mind. So in 2015, we decided to make a bold call that we will only do live virtual. So come when interactive cohorts will not be any other model.
00:34:52
Speaker
So we exited the physical classroom business completely and that was 75% of our business. So that time our revenue was roughly about 75 crore. 75 crore was physical classroom led and 25 was completely online. So we let go 75 crore business and we funded all the alumni who were not attending the classes and so on. We started building the business again from
00:35:12
Speaker
2016 onwards from 25 crores, again, we built it till 2021 when we exited all our investors, business in 2016 grew from 25 crore to roughly about 300 crore in 2021 when we sold to so exited all the investors. So what was the we're also very, very focused always took old dates and focus on what is the right thing to do and think thought of always disrupting ourselves rather than somebody else coming and disrupting our business.
00:35:42
Speaker
Though this model of hybrid, this was like the hybrid model, right? In person there would be classes and then maybe some study material and videos additionally online. This was a completely accepted model till COVID hit, right? And the fact that it costs more was also something which intuitive understanding is there that you are paying for location costs, et cetera. That's why it's costing more, not because of quality.
00:36:10
Speaker
Why let go of 75% of your revenue? So for us, what do I stand for is very important. We stand for what? We are standing in what direction we optimize our product. For example, if you want to build a physical classroom delivery business, then optimizing for logistic is what your product direction will move. How do I get my product?
00:36:38
Speaker
material to the best place in the best time. Where do I find my location? We can get more number of students. Whereas if I'm optimizing for online cohort based delivery, then my whole product experience will focus on how do I increase engagement in my class? How do I know which learners are engaged, which learners are not engaged? So, Padekavi has a big impact on what all the different underlying things that you do. We're not a marketplace.
00:37:00
Speaker
So you're not just listing that, OK, these are classrooms, training provider, these are online training provider, the video learning provider. And so up to them, how they manage class experience, I'm only helping them in discovering the option. We are always a full stack provider. So for us, sticking to the pedagogy was very important. What is the best way to engage learners? And how do we provide them the best experience? And hence, my product starts optimizing on that. If you want to say tomorrow, Coursera wants to go to the live. It's easier said than done.
00:37:28
Speaker
So they have optimized their business for video delivery and video learning, right? If they want to do live, it will require a different thought process in them. It's not so easy for companies to suddenly say, I'll do this model also and
Innovations and Partnerships
00:37:40
Speaker
do that model. So we could call it, we want to become a tech platform, online delivery, online fulfillment, but giving them a classroom life experience or maybe better. So that's what we decided to let go of that. Tell me the product Jenny, what was your product?
00:37:57
Speaker
So our problem was that, so you always optimize for outcome. People when they're coming to us for PMP, why are they coming? They want to pass the exam. For them, the outcome was that, I want to write this PMP certification exam. Can this training help me pass in the first time?
00:38:12
Speaker
So we always kept that as a goal, that people are coming to us for what? So passing your certification exam is a goal, getting a new job is a goal, getting a promotion is a goal. So we always optimize that. And how do we make that happen for the learner? How can we enable them? So that has always been our thought process in anything that we do on our platform.
00:38:33
Speaker
But, you know, like the technology product part of it, like it was a blog first and then it was blog plus dim dim for doubt sessions. How did that, you know, the technology product of it evolve?
00:38:47
Speaker
So actually, in my view, technology is enabling us to provide the outcome. For me, the real product is giving them the desired outcome. And the technology platform also, we have like, from the product side, there is a very clear, what we call it, the content management system, the website, through which you discover different options, you can browse for different options.
00:39:09
Speaker
through which we are constantly communicating our value proposition to the learner. So that's a very, very important component of our product. And that's where we do all kinds of organic optimization so that you always appear on such a chart and so on. So that's one big part of our product. That's for lead generation. Lead generation and just showing that we exist, right?
00:39:29
Speaker
And then the other big part of our product is the platform where the actual learning happens. Learner comes to the class. How do they see the different courses that appear? Where do they sequence? Where do they get into actual hands-on labs so that they can do practice? Where can they do assessment? How does your certificate look like? It's an actual real learning experience. That's a big part of our product.
00:39:50
Speaker
And the third big part of the product is the back end. How do our internal teams use which learners are at what stage of learning, who is falling behind, who is ahead of the class, and so on. So the entire management of the class. So these are the three big components. And then, like a couple of years back, we launched this SkillUp as a product. In SkillUp, what we said that, see, cohort classes are costly.
00:40:11
Speaker
So if you want to come to our cohort, since I have instructor cost, I have a teaching assistant cost, I have lab cost, our courses are priced at a certain price point. Now not everybody can afford that price point.
00:40:21
Speaker
But we have a lot of curriculums that we have built over a period of time and we continue to build. So we decided that is there a way in which we can give our curriculum to learners who can't afford or create courses for free. We created this skill of offering and that's the big product at our end, where if you can learn from a Simpleland curriculum on your own, it's absolutely free. And that's again a very massively popular product from Simpleland. The current metrics is that we onboard about 150,000 learners on that platform every month.
00:40:50
Speaker
30,000 to complete the program every month. So on any given day on limited, if you just go and search for simple and a skill, you will see on an average 300 people tagging simple and every day, saying that thank you. And I did the Excel course, I did Power BI course, or I did that course and whatnot every day.
00:41:08
Speaker
So that's the impact that we're creating that if you can't afford us start with our three offerings at some point of time if you want a paid offering which is stamped by university or industry you can migrate to our paid platform. So that itself has become a big product called skill up. How do you make your paid offering more compelling then because
00:41:26
Speaker
See, in the early days, what you were offering is today, something which you're offering free, right? Your course of 2012 or something would be something that is free for learners today. So how do you make the paid course compelling? How do you? It is a cohort model. So you get a complete you get hand. So there are multiple differences. See, one is that our free offering is like giving somebody a book.
00:41:51
Speaker
Here is a book, just take this book and read on the other one. And paid offering is that you are coming to a class, which is taught by a professor, which is already vetted. And you also get a certificate, which is much more valuable, because the paid certificates are always imposed by university or an industry player. Our free certificate that you get by reading on your own is a single-line skill of certificate. So I acknowledge that here I'm giving you a book, here I'm teaching you the book through an instructor.
00:42:18
Speaker
Okay. And these university tie-ups, how did you track those university tie-ups? What is in it for university? At some point in time, when the ITEC platform started, universities were not willing to talk because they always looked at, as I said, second-class cities and they were like, you guys are doing something that is not good, they are not active here and whatnot.
00:42:37
Speaker
But at some point of time, universities also realized that not everybody can afford nor have time to go for a one year, two year, three year, five year course. So they need to have some play there. So I think technology companies
00:42:51
Speaker
travel some distance in talking to university, they also travel some distance. And somewhere we met in between where we said that instead of like competing, we can actually collaborate and do something that is good for the end user. So that's how is now, I think now pretty much every university has some kind of online play, either they are doing on their own or they're doing with one such company like simply
00:43:11
Speaker
Okay, okay. By offering all kinds of short courses in various different models. Sometimes they just do only a lend their brand, sometimes they actually teach, sometimes they build curriculum, sometimes they do assessment. So all kinds of models exist.
00:43:26
Speaker
Okay, okay. And the partners that you are with, you have all types of interactions? I have global partners like Watan, MIT, Caltech, Purdue in the US, India work with IIT Kanapur, IIT Roorkee, IIT Madras, with IAM Indore. So a lot of IITs, IAM in India and a lot of universities in the US. In a cohort-based learning system, there is always a problem that all learners are not the same.
00:43:57
Speaker
And it could be in terms of scale, it could be in terms of motivation levels. So how do you solve for that? You know, I mean, that's the fundamental problem with college also, like when you're. Yeah. So I think this is a problem that this is a problem that we can talk about it. And people say that there's a lot of adaptive learning technology platform and whatnot. But reality, this is a problem. But there's no there's no better solution also. See, one is that you can give adaptive learning. What is adaptive learning?
00:44:23
Speaker
like you start learning on a system and you let's say you start on a certain topic and you start with somewhere and then after some time the platform asks you certain questions and based on how much of the questions you answered right versus wrong it will take you on a different path if you're answering everything right then the next incremental topic will come up if you're answering that right the next incremental topic will come up but not answering it right then it will again go back to the basics and start teaching you but there are again
00:44:53
Speaker
self-learning system. The biggest challenge that people face is that they want somebody to guide them through the journey. So in our cohort, we try our best to do it and the way the courses are designed that it does a self-service. For example, let me give you an example of data as an example. Data is getting very popular, right? So if you are an early
00:45:11
Speaker
not very advanced user, you want to make some career in data, you select a data analytics course that doesn't require a lot of depth, doesn't require a lot of programming, it's easy for anybody to understand to start with a data analytics. Well, little advanced users both go for a data science course, which expects you to know certain concepts already, and then you are looking for a next level of course. So the way courses are designed that it attracts a certain kind of audience is also related to business analytics.
00:45:38
Speaker
that you don't want to do to learn data for the sake of it. You are a sales guy, you are a marketing guy, just want to see how to how to analyze my business using data. So for you, there's a business analytics course. And that's where all this inside sales counselors that they have, they understand who you are. And based on that, they recommend the course.
00:45:55
Speaker
Based on your profile, this is a better course of that is a better course. So they're trying to do, but is it 100% accurate? No, it's not 100% accurate. There's a disadvantage of running a public cohort that we can have all kinds of audience. Now that's where the role of instruction and teaching assistant come into play. They try to see how can they maybe group this users into some of the, so within the cohort also we have a study groups, right? Within that we have different groups. How can the group and still make them follow if they want to follow?
00:46:23
Speaker
teaching assistants are the ones who are all along with the instructor is the main instructor teaching the concept explaining and whatnot teaching assistant help the students who are falling behind not able to complete the assignment they want some one-on-one help other than the life class schedule time they want some separate help to do some project and so on
00:46:45
Speaker
Okay, okay, so like doubt clarifications, that's it. What is it? Doubt clarifications are constant being on the job, saying that, okay, we're falling behind, here is what I can help you with that and guide you to complete so that next class you complete it. See, our goal is that if a learner wants to learn, he would have no reason of saying that, okay, I'm not getting the required support from sitting here. And that's our internal goal.
00:47:05
Speaker
that if the learner is saying that I'm not able to follow because instructor is not helping me or not getting the required support from outside, at least that should not happen is the goal for our delivery. Anybody wants to learn, we need to provide every kind of support to make sure that the learner does. But if somebody doesn't want to learn, it's a very difficult problem to solve. I don't think anybody can solve it. We can try motivating them, showing them the case studies of other people who have done the course and become successful. But beyond the time, beyond the point, that is a very difficult problem to solve.
00:47:33
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, you took the revenue from 25 crores to you said about three, 400 crores in about I think five years, which is like a eight X growth or even more than in fact, this is like, yeah, about an eight X. So what were the, what were the ways in which you made that happen? Like you would have needed to build sales, you would have needed to make the course more appealing, you would have
00:48:00
Speaker
needed to build marketing. Just tell me about that. So what would the first thing that we took our team into confidence that the team that was there that while we are thrashing the business.
00:48:10
Speaker
we still have a chance to become a successful business. So the team bought this idea that we are crashing the business of the right reason. So they also hired Svet in the decision. And once people are aligned, then see, business gets if everybody's working with a goal that we can bring in. So we did everything. We added more programs. We added more
00:48:31
Speaker
a variety of the programs, the same program in different kinds of model. We also didn't have any external capital at that point of time. We started cleaning it out, free growth in the world. So we started optimizing a lot of organic search, started focusing a lot on repeat and referral.
00:48:50
Speaker
So all, so combination of everything like innovation on organic search that we did on the marketing side, repeat and referral again on the marketing side. Organic search should be like putting content out there on different. Yeah, put everything in our domain, I think you tell me you have the highest strategy, followed by Coursera, followed by SimpliL.
00:49:11
Speaker
We are the third most visited tech platform globally because of the organic search. Because we have so much of content, so much of curriculum and over the years we have optimized. It's not like one day of it. And we continue to focus on SEO. Like if someone is searching for project management or something within project management. Anything that we offer will always appear. The question is whether we appear in the first third season or third third season.
00:49:34
Speaker
But we'll always be there on the first place for Sia. And plus the skill of offering even further help because we are offering so much of free courses that you see us everywhere. Yeah, people put it as a badge on LinkedIn. So again, 300 people tag every day, right? So then it's a good volume. Right, right, right. OK. And I saw your YouTube channel also has like some three, three and a half million followers. How did you build that?
00:50:03
Speaker
So that also organically, over a period of time, we continue to put a lot of free content on the YouTube. So it's part of an organic strategy that you keep on talking about topic concept. And that's how you build a footprint, right? Do you also need to work towards providing replacements, like jobs? A lot of people come for jobs. We do some. But again, you can't become a full-fledged placement company. But yes, we have a pretty strong placement angle wherein health learners connect with opportunities. How do you do that?
00:50:32
Speaker
So we have a lot of companies also contact us and then you are training so many people and looking to hire. Can you correct? So that's one challenge. We also do an outreach about when we hear about hiring event happening across companies. We help our learners build their resume. So we provide tools for that so that they can represent their resume in the right manner. We conduct some sessions on how to correct interviews and so on. So that part of some of our courses, some of our offerings have more stronger placement angle. Some of them has very little. For example,
00:51:01
Speaker
courses that are offered for senior professional, anybody who's like 10 year plus. We don't offer any Java system to those programs because those guys don't really need a Java system from us. You offer Java systems kind of offering more on programs where most of the audience is less than five years of experience. So you had a series C of about $6 million. This was after you left. No, series C we had up for $15 million.
00:51:29
Speaker
So we've done 4 million, our series here was 3 million, series 3 was 10 million, series 3 was 15 million. After series 3, after series 3, we had done the let go of them as well.
00:51:39
Speaker
That's why we had also had some money to afford to do that. Otherwise, you would not have survived if you didn't have money and you also crashed the business. And from the CDC, next six years, you didn't raise any funds. We couldn't raise. When the business went down from 100 to 20 to 25 crore, we are not able to sell the story to investors saying that, okay, now the business is down and we can build the business again. Nobody believed that. So we thought that, okay,
00:52:05
Speaker
It's already gone. They have grown from 100 to 25. So there's no future in this company. People were writing it off. But we are internally always bullish. We will stop because we are doing all the right thing.
00:52:21
Speaker
But you felt doubt? In the current market also, you see there are so many companies who raise so much of money and most of the companies I've signed there. You always believe that they are the biggest companies, they are just making noise. I was always pretty those investors. Are these guys blind? If something appears too good to be true, there is something fishy going on here.
00:52:41
Speaker
So why are people not solving the basic instinct that if things are so good to be true, it can only happen in the next cell. Put a certain number and put some variable and say, okay, this is how the future is going to look like with some mind. Don't follow everybody just because everybody else is saying that this is good. We already saw that it happened in most of the companies. There's no future. There's no way that people can make money. And this is what we're telling to our investors and to our team also.
00:53:06
Speaker
At the way from 2016, we grew everybody with it. So if you look at our exit in 2021, it was the biggest exit for Kalari, the biggest exit for Alien, the biggest exit for different.
00:53:21
Speaker
For our employees, we had given them 10 rupees shares. We bought back those shares at 63,500. So everybody got 6,300, that's 650 times multiple of the stock menu, right? Exactly same story we're telling to our employees now also that, again, we'll make an exit in next two to three years.
00:53:43
Speaker
And again, we'll make a bumper exit. If we continue to do the same principle of doing the right thing, for example, the last financial year, we closed $700 business, we lost money. If from $700, we moved to $200 and make $250, $200 profit, we are a $15,000, $20,000 valued market if you go from IPO.
00:54:02
Speaker
So just just focus on the right thing, do right thing for the customer, generate money and the return will fall. Don't get carried away in the hive cycle. A lot of people do hive. There are very few companies who always get lucky that they don't make money, but investors are happy, employees are happy, customers are happy. There's only one company that I can think of. There's only one company that has Flipkart. They don't make money still.
00:54:29
Speaker
Their valuation is going up and up. So investors are happy. Employees love working for Flipkart. No doubt about it. They are very well-paid, very good quality of work. And as a customer also, we are loving it. They do a great job in terms of giving discount, offer time and delivery. But when I look at Flipkart, I think of a company that defies gravity. Not making money, but everybody's happy. So that's a great place to be. But I don't know how to replicate that magic.
00:54:56
Speaker
Right, right, right. Okay, amazing. Didn't you go through doubt and despair in those six years after 2015 when nobody was willing to fund you further? You had conviction that this would be off. No, no. See, we are doing the right thing, right? We always thought that we are doing the right thing. We're adding value to the customer. So why should we be in doubt?
00:55:15
Speaker
I mean, but yes, you know, it creates a lot of pressure. I'm sure a lot of our team members who left us are thinking that, okay, this company has been there for ages and look at those companies making so much noise, but I'm sure.
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I must be thinking that there are companies, there are companies in education, they said talked about it take it take it take and now they're only talking about offline center. What the hell are you talking? Yeah, there's all this hope saying that I'm going to be online education. Now we are just copying your like offline center that also pushing trainers from other established layer and trying to see that I have this part of my business is going what the business what kind of business is that?
00:55:53
Speaker
There is no business. It's just a matter of time that the business will go. It's not easy to replicate core competency of another company just because you have money and you are paying somebody double, triple the salary. Why did you decide in 21 to sell to private equity? You had a private equity by 60%. No, I had venture investors. They had to get an exit rate.
00:56:14
Speaker
Okay. So look at the venture investment. So we are waiting for us. So over these years, we always had offers. We always used to get incoming offers, saying that, okay, we want to buy this company and whatnot. But 21 of ours is a great time to sell. So then the process was at the highest. I will not say tech was at the technology high. Content was also at high. It was not at high. Everybody was at high.
00:56:38
Speaker
Amazing. Your timing is so amazing in the sense, even the time you sold the first business was also just before Lehman. Amazing.
00:56:51
Speaker
And how has business changed now? Like after the 60% owner, Blackstone is a 60% owner. Yeah, so earlier also, we had 60% shareholding by investors. It's just that the 60% was between three different investors. So Blackstone bought all the three investors. So that's why they got 60%. Plus, they have more than 60%, but they have 65%. And they put additional money into the company also. That's how we have 60%. So now we have two investors. Blackstone and we
00:57:20
Speaker
After a year, we also added GSB as an investor. GSB also is a very recruited education investor. They are behind most of the education companies. So that's how we're up to investors. And we are going to prepare for an IPO within two, three years. That's our goal. And for that profitability is a must. Sustainable business is a must. So we are again focused on same journey that we did from 16 to 21. Now from 24 to 26, we want to replicate that journey, grow profitably, become sustainable business.
00:57:49
Speaker
do what is right for the customers, then we are now a big global brand. That's how I moved from Bangalore to Dallas because 65% of my business is in the US today. So I want to be in the market where my business is, be more closer to the learner's partners and see if any quitting is required in the product and so on. A large part of my management is also not based out of the universe. If I look at my C-level executive, I think you have about seven, eight C-level executive. Five of them are based out of the US. Now three of them are in the US.
00:58:17
Speaker
Okay, okay. Were you profitable when Blackstone bought you in 21? Yes. Okay. So they lost money in 23 and 22. Yeah, why did you reverse course? I mean, why did you... Yeah, so I think that in 21, if you look at the market was all time high and growth was getting way more premium than profitability. But I will say that we also got carried away.
00:58:38
Speaker
Though it worked for us anyway, that's how if you look at after Blackstone came, we raised money from GSB at a higher valuation than Blackstone. Almost 50% premium over the last valuation within
Current Focus and Strategies
00:58:48
Speaker
a year. Because we used that money to grow very rapidly. So growth was getting premium, but now suddenly the profitability has become a very big focus and I think that's the right thing in my view.
00:59:01
Speaker
In hindsight, had we not changed our course, maybe we would have a much stronger business today in terms of strength than where we are. But good news is that we are still very well capitalized. And I think last month we were profitable and we're looking forward to get to profitability henceforth. Amazing. And you want to list in India or US? India. You're an Indian company. India had one company.
00:59:24
Speaker
We never did this fancy thing of having the business in India and listing in Singapore and all that. I don't know why people are doing that time. This is all the stupidity of all these big four advising them to do so. Your entire business is in India and you are listing in Singapore for what? So we were also given this kind of advice, 3G advice in the past, but we never saw for that advice.
00:59:48
Speaker
Now, there's a big tax implication if they want to come back and listen. Not everybody has the deep pocket like Walmart to do what they did with their phone pay. Being 8000 crore upfront tax, everybody do it? I have my old doubt.
01:00:08
Speaker
Right, right, right, right. Okay. And so you said about 65% revenue is US. The remaining 35 is like across the world. 25 is India. Okay. And 10% is the rest of the world.
01:00:22
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So what's your growth path to you want to hit 1200 crores? What's the path to reach there? Like it's all organic. I think you can easily hit that. Even if you're growing at 30% year over year, it's from 700 to 30% into three years is going to be a 1400 to 1500.
01:00:41
Speaker
Wow, amazing. And it's going to be the same geographies or do you want to open new markets? No, I think we don't want to open it. We don't want to open a lot of geographies. I think the US and India both are capable enough to give that kind of revenue. Even the US alone is a pretty big market, right? So I think adding a geography adds a complexity. But having said that, we are seeing a lot of interest in the Middle East as a market because most of the Middle East governments are spending a bit of time on skilling their divisions. They want to diversify their dependence on clouds.
01:01:10
Speaker
The good news is that we are already part of many of those initiatives by some of these large governments. So we continue to be focused on that as a market. And opportunistically, it's an online platform. We have traffic and webinars from all across the world. So we keep getting a lot of inbound. So I'll say that commercial business, which is working with the enterprise companies, government, will do wherever we get opportunities. But primary focus is going to be number one US market followed by India market. How much of your business is B2C and how much is B2B?
01:01:40
Speaker
Right now my B2C business is almost 85% of my... 85 to 90% of business is B2C. 10% is B2C. Okay. And do you see it's remaining the same? This split? See, ideally for us to hit our profitability goal, our B2B business should be at least 30%. So that's what we are aiming in. How can the business hit on 30%?
01:02:00
Speaker
And this would be like, say, software companies, tech startups, training there. All kinds of companies, like banks have large teams. So we don't do any technology training. We have data, we have cybersecurity, we have project management, we have Six Sigma. So we look at ourselves as a digital skill. Skills required to be successful in a digital economy. Every company is a digital company today. So if you want to become a digital company, you need to understand all different aspects of digital and we help them achieve that.
01:02:31
Speaker
And you would largely be competing with a great learning and upgrade. I'm guessing like those would be the great learning and upgrade. Both are Indian players. So the upgrade is only India. 1995% of their business is India. India is only 25% of our business. Great learning has some outside India business, but not on that.
01:02:49
Speaker
Okay. But great learning would be like, or who else are you competing with, like, in the US? In the US of the market, there are a lot of smaller players that we compete with. But if you look at from the individual perspective, we are even competing with Korseran, because if the person is looking to do a program, sure, he or she is considering Korseran, Udemy simply learn all kinds of learning. But for cohort based, Korseran is not cohort based, right? Yeah. So I think cohort based learning, I don't think great learning is cohort based, frankly.
01:03:17
Speaker
They also are mostly video learning plus plus. They're not true cohort style, they were simply in depth. Okay. True cohort style is mostly small players. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Understood. Because it's harder to scale that you need high quality trainers for that. And projects require the entire technology infrastructure to like plan and see who is joining which class and so on. So that's what we have built over a period of time is a competition.
01:03:43
Speaker
How did you build the team? What is the way in which you think about organization building? Do you have advice? From the team, one of the things that you will see again on LinkedIn is that most people who move out of Simplyland, they write X Simplyland on their title. So we have focused a lot in terms of building a team. Fortunately, we also had a very strong track record of hiring and retaining very, very strong talent.
01:04:10
Speaker
And that has happened because you always believe that you hire people you need to give them in their space and let them build their own character and let them build their own team. As long as everybody is following certain core principles that we believe in. So simply we have four core principles that we are running our organization in a very entrepreneurial manner. So entrepreneurship is a core value. Data driven is a core value that all decision has to be data driven not because of hierarchy that I am saying so everybody should do it.
01:04:39
Speaker
You should do it only when the data supports it. Teamwork is very important. If you are a great individual contributor, but you are not a very good team player, we don't want you as part of the team. And fourth is transparency. The good, bad, or the needless, transparently communicates from top to bottom.
01:04:54
Speaker
So as long as you are aligning to this four core principles, you pretty much run the art of the way you want to run. So for example, Karshav joined me in 2013. Very, very strong. He was an entrepreneur. He built one of the first few e-commerce platforms in the country that he sold to staff. And then he joined me in 2013 and still working with Simple Learn for the last 10 years. Now he's a co-founder also, IAD and IAM background.
01:05:19
Speaker
all kinds of tick mark to do. We could have done many other startups. He could have done many other things, but he found a great place to work. I got Anand to relocate from US to India because I wanted somebody who was an US product leader operating out of India. So he relocated from India to US, US region operating out from India. So that way I've been very, very like lucky to attract strong talent and also make the work. Mark is our CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. He was CMO for six years.
01:05:45
Speaker
2016 to 2022 then 23 you went out to start to again do a startup and 24 is again back again a Stanford graduate and has been part of multiple billion dollar exists in a career been part of civilian so that so since we hire very strong profile at the top it like flows down to the bottom
01:06:07
Speaker
Like your immediate report is you pay a lot of attention, you invest a lot in hiring the right people and then they further. Because not only with your attention, I get involved even at two levels down also in the hiring. Anybody who's a director and above, I get involved and I expect all my leaders also to get involved three levels in the hiring. Because if you're a leader of a team, what do you do? You're not doing hands-on work on your own. So what do you do?
01:06:33
Speaker
You're managing people. You need to hire on managing people. So the first step is that you get the right kind of talent and nurture them and make sure that they're getting the skills, they're getting the clarity, they're getting all the help, support and in development to make them successful. Recruitment development is very, very, very powerful. If you talk to my recruitment team, you'll appear as if you're talking to a C-level executive.
01:06:57
Speaker
because we spend so much time with the recruitment team and making them understand a big picture on what we're hiring, why we're hiring, what are the skills and traits that we're looking at in the person, you can pretty much engage legacy. So without some of our top recruiters. So that again has happened by I spent a lot of time with HR. We also expect all my direct reports to spend a lot of time with HR in terms of
01:07:18
Speaker
team motivation, giving them leisure and whatnot, right? We don't we didn't lose a lot of people during this whole attack, high grant, some of the companies outside crazy amount of money, many of our team members were offered to x to three x or the salary, many of them we don't we didn't lose, but we lost them. I'm sure the people who lost, they left us at that point of time, they're not very happy about because they might have got higher cash component, but I don't think that the overall profile wise, it was a good decision for them to move.
01:07:47
Speaker
But as we take pride in what the team that you're building will continue to focus on building a team. I'll say that I spend as much as 50% of my time on team. You must have built some frameworks around hiring, what you look for in a candidate. What are those? How do you form an opinion? For example, see, first of all, if I'm looking for somebody for a role, and I see that the person is jumping from one company to another company every year, whoever he or she is, I don't want to even go engage in a discussion.
01:08:18
Speaker
So I need to see, to make a good contribution in an organization, you need to spend some time to understand culture and context. And then we started. I see a lot of people, they claim big things by working eight months, nine months, one and a half year in different companies. And they have always a reason or other to say why I left this company, why I went to another company. For me, it's a strict normal. A lot of people will say, OK, you are judging without understanding the context. I'm judging. This is my business. I decide how I want to run my business.
01:08:45
Speaker
If you have a different view, build your own business and work for another company who doesn't think that we are perfectly fine. At my business, I decide how to how I run my business. So that's a stick no no. And then I look at that person achievement on those roles that okay, what are one or two things that you really achieve, don't talk to me about a lot of
01:09:10
Speaker
or like different things that you just talked to me about one or two things that you really made a difference and why you think that one or two things was was a really a big achievement in your own experience. There's a second thing that I look at another thing that I generally look at is and I ask how do you that just their answer like if someone gives you an answer this was my achievement what's the lens with which you evaluate what business a particular company was and why do you think this particular achievement was critical to companies and so on.
01:09:37
Speaker
Obviously, it is like a lot of nuances, but if somebody can very clearly articulate that this was my company vision, this is the goal that they wanted to achieve, this is how I did it that contributed to that vision.
01:09:49
Speaker
you can get a good sense of that way. If they were to link their work with big pictures, basically. Yeah, companies. Because when I'm hiring senior people, they should have that linking clear in their data. Some people also try to understand that their company versus their competitor, can they clearly articulate how was their company's strategy or
01:10:07
Speaker
or execution different than the competition, what, where was the combination playing strongly compared to them and so on to understand whether they were only in inward focus or they always they also had a good sense of what was happening in and around the business.
01:10:24
Speaker
Another thing that we at least check very, very closely and we ask a lot of question is on if somebody is considering a role at Simply Learn and the same person gets a role at, let's say another company, let's say Flipkart as an example, very successful company in our technology space, why would they select Simply Learn and not see? Like, is there a particular reason? Do you like company? Do you like the domain? Do you like the world? Why would you consider that? That's also a very important
01:10:52
Speaker
part of the consideration. Because for us, mission alignment is also important. There are not many businesses where you can work and make an impact at the same time. Education, health care, government, these are sectors where, while you're working, you are also making an impact in someone else's life. So that impact angle is also important. That is like working in this particular domain. Like in 2021, a lot of people wanted to work in a tech, because a tech was in use. If that is the reason why you want to join, definitely this is not a great place to be.
01:11:23
Speaker
And we get a lot of reference because people who have come to simple and they are stuck for years and years, they look at some companies historically have done a great job. For example, look at banks, people who join banks, they work for 20 years.
01:11:35
Speaker
Yes, it's not only good money, we will also look at HSBC and ICIC bank also people have done because process, system, clarity, everything is also clear. So we always got inspired by those institutions. For that matter, look at Infosys before a TCS combination, these companies have not got built by chance. There are others also started at the same time that this company started, they ended up ended up becoming a 50 million hundred million dollar kind of services business. In the same period of time, these companies become multi billion dollar. Why?
01:12:05
Speaker
The difference was people, they hired great people, they gave them a space and people did surprise them with
01:12:12
Speaker
like become producing like one after the other milestone in terms of result. So that's what we really aim at, right? That how do we become an institution where people love working and they think about it a long term that okay, this is the place that I like the same thing. I had a very similar person. His question was that why your retirement age is only 60? What if I want to work after 60?
Leadership and Company Culture
01:12:33
Speaker
We like those kind of answers if we're thinking of working for a real long term. Wow, amazing.
01:12:39
Speaker
How did you learn to delegate? Because it's not something which comes naturally to learn to trust other people and delegate and let go and give them space. As a founder, you always have more context, more information, and you're always going to be better at decision-making. How do you let go of decision-making? So actually, Aashay, I don't agree that as a founder, you're always going to be better at decision-making. See, a lot of founders, including me, work on a lot of gut feeling and instinct, which is not necessarily always going to help you make the right decision.
01:13:08
Speaker
Whereas people who are like professionals, and they have only one job, which is their current job, they look at all aspects of a problem, and then they make the right decision by looking at the data. I don't think I ever have a presence of some of my colleagues who go so deep to analyze the last one. Most of my decisions are always gut feeling and at a very superficial level, thinking that, OK, correlating and working because I want to just move on to something else. So I think that's why we've always
01:13:37
Speaker
Focus on delegating and plus if we are higher senior people to trust them, I don't think delegating is so easy, right? So it's so difficult. How do you decide? I have not signed a simply length check ever since 2013.
01:13:51
Speaker
Wow. Amazing. So we always had that belief that, okay, there's always a clear financial aid, they'll take care of it, right? And there is auditors to make sure that finance is in good shape and so on. So that's a, it starts from the high level, right? I always delegated full authority to my team members. They have delegated further to their team members. So that's part of the culture, right? We trust people.
01:14:10
Speaker
Like that's also or in entrepreneurship as a core value that it's okay to make mistake, but it's not okay to make same mistake again. So we call this out in our training session that we have onboarding that we do for everybody who joins simply. Okay. How do you decide what decisions you will make and what decisions you will delegate? I think I'm making very few decisions is what I can say.
01:14:39
Speaker
And that also, when I make those decisions, we try to always take everybody on board. So finally, I spent a lot of time scanning the market, which direction the market is going, who is doing better, who is doing, where are we doing better, where is competition doing better, what I hear from different industry reports, what do I see happening on the LinkedIn. So a lot of those kind of things is what I'm doing, that where are opportunities that
01:15:03
Speaker
we are not in an is there any play for us to get into those areas. So mostly doing some of those newer stuff, finding newer opportunity for growth, newer go to market, newer product lines is what I'm spending more time on. New people that I can talk to, who gives me, who gives me a new insight that I'm not aware. So most of my work time goes there. Whereas for day to day business, incremental improvement is all mostly done by our team.
01:15:28
Speaker
How do you make sure that you are still adding value to simply learn? How do you keep yourself sharp and be the best person? I think spending more time in the market. I'm a very good networker. By nature, I'm a very people person. So I always try to see how many new people that I'm always getting exposed to, somebody that I don't know.
01:15:47
Speaker
and learn a different perspective from that particular person. Because if any new environment that you go, any new set of people that you meet, you end up getting a very different perspective that you don't have. So that has been my way of always keeping me updated. And those people are not necessarily from the same industry. They are also from a different industry because you can always draw a lot of panels. Okay, okay. So essentially, you're the one who's
01:16:13
Speaker
helping grow the organization through. I'm not saying I'm the only person who's helping grow. I'm sure all leaders are also contributing. But as I spent a lot of time scanning the market, being in the market, talking to different players, getting new perspective, sharing with the team, challenging them, saying that why are we doing this, why are we not doing that, and so on. And in general, we have always been a very, I will say,
01:16:34
Speaker
open to challenges. For example, I was based in Bangalore for the longest time, and staying in India is a very different lifestyle. We had so much support at home. For example, I used to have to stay with us full-time in our house, with people coming and going from there to nobody in the US. We decided to make this decision, and pretty much the moment we made this decision, coming here in the US was all done in 30 days.
01:17:03
Speaker
right from applying Visa to finding where you're going to move on all 30 days. So that was also for us to find a challenge also that if our bigger business is US and that's where we see growth also, what am I doing sitting in Bangalore? So my last question to you, what's your next adventure? You know, once Simply Learn has an IPO and you would probably, I'm guessing, be looking for your next adventure. I think maybe
01:17:31
Speaker
That is the time to think about and plant right now. There's just one goal that how do we create a big outcome of Sabrina? That's the only goal that I'm right now focused on. Once we get to that, then we'll figure it out working extra good. I think we'll see what has so many good avenues opportunity to contribute, right?
01:17:47
Speaker
So I'm not somebody who plans two steps at a time. I want to just very, very focus on one single goal. Once we achieve that goal, of course, we'll think about what more can be done. But yeah, running a billionaire is a great experience because I always feel that I'm adding value by being instrumental to someone's career success. Career success leads to a better life. A better life leads to a better community. So it has a lot of multiplier impact. So I love doing what I'm doing.
01:18:15
Speaker
But of course, this is not the only thing that I will do in life. So for sure, there will be a next chapter. But I think the right time to talk about the chapter is when this chapter comes to that logical end.