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Never back down | Tanay Pratap @ Invact
311 Plays2 years ago
Tanay talks about his amazing journey of overcoming odds multiple times - be it in getting a job with Microsoft and building the Microsoft Teams product or in the way Invact is disrupting how we are preparing the next generation for meaningful employment. Invact is a truly original edtech platform that aims to help millions of young Indians who live in tier 2,3 and 4 towns and have almost no access to affordable quality education.
Additional links:-
1. In conversation with Tanay Pratap, Founder and CEO, Invact Metaversity
2.I’m a teacher at heart and will always be one: Invact Metaversity’s Pratap
3.Exclusive: Metaverse is not our soul. That’s where the disagreements started: Tanay Pratap
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Transcript
Introduction to InVact and Metaverse Education
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Pane. I am founder of InVact. InVact is a company which is building meta-word city, bringing meta-words and education together to make sure that the masses have college experience at lowest cost possible.
00:00:27
Speaker
This is the story of the near-death experience of a startup and a founder who never gave
Challenges and Founder's Journey
00:00:33
Speaker
up. When the edtech startup Invact first got funded, it was in the news for all the right reasons. Tech geek and social influencer Tane Pratap had got the former head of Twitter India as his co-founder at Invact.
00:00:46
Speaker
But soon the headlines turned negative as the founders did not agree on the way forward and there were rumours about the startup shutting down. But Tanai is not a quitter and in this conversation with Akshay Dutt, he talks about his amazing journey of overcoming odds multiple times, be it getting a job with Microsoft and building the Microsoft Teams product or in the way in fact is disrupting how we are preparing the next generation of meaningful employment.
00:01:11
Speaker
In fact, it's a truly original edtech platform that aims to help millions of young Indians who live in tier 2, 3 and 4 towns and have almost no access to affordable quality education. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast and any audio streaming platform to learn from founders who have overcome adversity to thrive.
Teaching Experiences and Social Media Impact
00:01:39
Speaker
So when I was in college, my sister was my first student. Then when I went to college, first year again, I saw teachers are not teaching really well. There's a long gap between what's being taught in the industry and what's being taught in the college and what's there in the industry, right?
00:01:57
Speaker
I figured out, you think to myself, let's learn Photoshop, let's learn Java or I have this since my young age, I have this tendency to self-learn and then teach. So Jesse self-learned, I feel like, I did, I don't worry, no, come to my class. So I would take classes in the evening, right? So there itself that, that whenever your thing had happened. And then when I came to, came into my job, I started going back to colleges, different colleges, not just my college, I have toured
00:02:25
Speaker
I think all the South India, you name a top college, I have been there, I have taught kids there. So, you researched them and the students would invite you. How did that happen?
00:02:38
Speaker
So both ways, but I was not famous on social media at that time. So what I used to do is I would just call any college and I say, Hey, I'm this person. I'm working at Cisco. I'm running a Cypress, Microsoft, whichever company I am at. And generally these are like really good brand names. And I say, Hey, I want to come and talk to your students because I did not get a lot of senior induction when, guidance when I was at college. So I think this is lacking.
00:03:03
Speaker
And they would give very nice cups and mementos and all. These are the same HODs I would not even get to sit across. But when you are giving back, you are a celebrity at that moment. So that happened. And this is 2014 when people didn't have internet today. Today, everyone has internet.
00:03:29
Speaker
Then in 2019, I decided enough offline to get online. So I created a video and I posted it on Instagram and I said, Hey, if you're genuinely interested, I'm here to help. And that just went viral. Even now, one of my videos just went viral and I'm getting like thousands of followers every day. And that time was what happened. And I got like thousands of followers. I got 27,000 followers in three to four days. And then the video was just a...
00:03:56
Speaker
like a statement that I'm here for you. That's it. You were not giving any gap in that. No, that video was, I showed the video to you. That video just said that, Hey, and this is a genuine problem, which I had, right? That I came from a lower middle-class family and I had huge expectations from my college. And I went to a great college with a good brand name and with lack of fees. And my parents had to take loans for it. Every moment I spend there, I was regretting this decision that
00:04:24
Speaker
My brain is hard and money is getting wasted. And this is the exact thing I just said that I know this pain because I have been through it. And I have taught myself how to get into weight companies or how to succeed in life. And I'm going to teach that to you. And don't worry about anything. I'll just come to the page and we'll talk. And we used to do these live sessions, Instagram lives, and people would come and they just connected. I think they just worked with everyone very nicely.
00:04:51
Speaker
And what were those Instagram live sessions about? Was it technical stuff or was it general career guidance? All sorts of stuff, technical stuff, general career guidance. People would come on live, they would play guitar, everyone would listen. So he's chilling out with an elder brother, wherein he was not getting judged, but he will be made fun of. So I had a very strong persona.
00:05:18
Speaker
I'll make fun of you. So that's what we used to do. Even now, my wife went for a family trip a few days back and I was free. So I went live after a very long time because entrepreneurial journey and things which we just went through, it was not letting me do that. So I went live and I
Career Insights and Philosophical Growth
00:05:37
Speaker
was singing just songs. And they started then they went to Twitter and they tagged my wife and then they told you,
00:05:47
Speaker
I think that just connects to a lot of students that I came from the same background, didn't go to the top tier colleges, still made a decent enough lives. And I have the mantras of repeatable classes. And when someone talks to me, I can give them that, I didn't give them the advice, which would suit them instead of just saying, wake up at 5 AM, 5 PM club. So that's.
00:06:13
Speaker
That's what works. Amazing. On the personal side, you were building your skills as a content creator or an influencer. On the job side, what kind of skills were you building there?
00:06:24
Speaker
Actually, I was not building any skill. I was just being myself on the internet and the internet loved my persona. Because if you see my videos on YouTube or older videos on Instagram, those are the worst videos. All the tips and tricks for shooting a video, I didn't follow. Now the light is on my face, so you can see me light. But there was no light earlier, there was no mic, there was no AirPod. I just talked to people with my phone or my MacBook.
00:06:51
Speaker
laptop. So there was no learning. It was just being on the professional side. I was very serious about it. And I have been very serious about my profession for a very long time. This chip on the shoulder that I've come from a background where I did not get the best of the opportunity. So I have to make my own luck. So being there and also the other responsibility which I feel very strongly.
00:07:13
Speaker
being Maya, you know, when you are an enter, rather you have to be a role model in every sense possible. You need to look fit. You need to behave well. You need to eat right. You need to take care of your wellbeing and your personal financial goals and everything else. So I've been, I went to Microsoft price 17.
00:07:31
Speaker
Then I keep climbing the ladder there as well. Got two promotions, got multiple awards. So I think all in all... Microsoft Teams, if you use Microsoft Teams, I think most of it is like code is written by me actually. The framework is my India.
00:07:51
Speaker
So I know tech really well. I don't want to say it with myself, but I'm like a tech genius. It sounds very wrong, but it is true that the metaversity also with building is a tech masterpiece. And when I show it to people in Valley and Europe and they say, Oh my God, I can't believe in India, in Bangalore, this type of product is being built and this level of sophisticated engineering is happening. But that's who I have been all my life. Even during growing years, I was that person who would
00:08:19
Speaker
who would code a lot. Like when I was 13 year old, 12 year old, I was winning the Olympiads, those championships and things like that. So being a programmer, then figured out balance in life as well.
00:08:34
Speaker
So what made you want to quit your Microsoft job? I'm sure it must have been a very well-paying job. Tell me that the trigger to entrepreneurship. Very well-paying job. Yeah, that was the job that Microsoft shares and everything. When you get so much, so much of promotions and everything, you get a lot of money.
00:08:51
Speaker
So it was a hard decision. And also I loved my job. People who know me from before, they know how hard the decision was because I just love being at Microsoft. And many times I got offers from Google and Facebook and I was like, no, no, no. I just love Microsoft and the culture there. But then also I measured my life. At one point of time, I think when the COVID came, I started reading a lot about karma yoga, about purpose of life, meaning of life, and sanked darshan and whatnot. So I read a lot about sanked darshan.
00:09:22
Speaker
Sankidarshan is basically talking about it's a philosophical thought as in why you have come into being and what's the purpose of life so there are different school of thoughts even in Hindu like when you say Hindu it's a very broad thing even in Hindu you have God meet your God you have
00:09:38
Speaker
I can play this game forever. I can keep climbing up the stairs and I can keep making more money.
00:09:53
Speaker
And when I came from now, when I was in school, my dream job would be that if I get 50,000 rupees per month, I would be the happiest person in the world. That was tax and fortune. My first job was 12 lakh rupees a year. Incidentally, how did you crack that 12 lakh rupees job from a year to college?
00:10:14
Speaker
I was very good. There were only two people who got selected. I was one of them. So I have been really good actually. Their other story is also like, Microsoft hires only people who do data structures and algorithms very well, the competitive coding piece. And I told Microsoft that I'm really good and I will not give a DSA intent.
00:10:36
Speaker
And they said, if you are really good and if you prove that we will not take a DSA interview, they will not take a DSA interview for me. So I still don't know DSA, which is like bread and butter for these big companies. So it was that good. So then when I went into Microsoft, I realized, boss, Boha Thi, repeatable game. And after every level you kill, the boss is basically a promotion. You realize it's not hard anymore. And then I started reading all of this Darshan and this philosophy. And I realized that this,
00:11:06
Speaker
It's not just the promotion game, the life is also a game which you're playing at different levels and the end game is to get out of the game, not to play the game.
00:11:15
Speaker
And that's my understanding of life. People have different interpretations. So then if you have to play the game, what would you maximize your life for, right? And by God's grace, you are intelligent, you are smart. At that point of time, what had happened was
00:11:42
Speaker
I was teaching students, so I built a 300 people cohort, right? And these 300 people were from the worst background. Some of them did not even have laptop. Most of them were not from computer science background. And the overconfident me very nicely said, you know, like Krishna saying, take care of you. And I basically told everyone, just come to my course and I'll take care of you. I'll get your job.
00:12:09
Speaker
And this was during COVID, when students were losing offers. Yes, exactly that time, 2020. And I said, come to me and I'll solve all your problems. And they all came and we started a course and 300 people came in. And I was, I didn't get a photos of this. I was so adamant in proving myself, I shaved off my hair. And I said, I will not grow my hair back until I get all of you placed.
00:12:36
Speaker
Right. So for all the COVID, I don't have hair. Like all my photos, all my videos, I am not hairless. Right. So then I worked very hard. I got all of them placed. What were you like, what was happening in the cohort? Were you taking classes or was it a support group? And this was proper classes. These are students who said, yeah, I can't code. I'm like, there is no such thing as you can't code. Okay. Okay.
00:13:02
Speaker
Let me make you a super programmer. So I made them really good programmers. They are now in Indian Unicorns. I very proudly say this. India has a unicorn. One of my kids is in every Indian unicorn today. So they went in and that basically put me on the
Entrepreneurial Transition and InVact's Early Days
00:13:20
Speaker
map. Earlier, students knew who Tanebhaya was.
00:13:45
Speaker
It's unbelievable for that person. And I have been through that feeding myself.
00:13:53
Speaker
I called my father and he said, I have got 12 rupees per job and my father was like, are you joking with me?
00:14:01
Speaker
I mean, TCS was good enough, right? And my dad would not sleep for a very few days. If the market is like that, someone would give me that. So I know that. But I got to reinvent that feeling again and again, 100 times with my students. Everyone got placed because they cried. I cried. We cried together. Their parents came on phone. They said such nice things.
00:14:29
Speaker
We had birthday cakes in our birthday. The birthday cake was really good.
00:14:35
Speaker
When someone had a bird, he had a t-shirt. He had a t-shirt gift. He had a t-shirt and there is Hanuman. And then Hanuman is staring at his chest and he is inside. That was the level of devotion which people had and the kind of change they had in the mechanical world.
00:15:01
Speaker
So I realized that these two happened badly. This outcome and the other way I was searching for a meaning of life. So I realized that I can make a lot more impact as a teacher than as an engineer here at Microsoft. And then I left my job. When did this covert get over?
00:15:20
Speaker
This got started in 2021 February and it got over in June and then July placement started. And first 15-20 call, I knew that this is the high I want in my life more and more. And this is the game I want to play next because this is an infinite game. And by the time August came, there were a few girls also got placed.
00:15:57
Speaker
Now she's working in Resorport. Five weeks of what type of previous salary we use. But it's not about salary. It's also about you changing someone's course life. You put a course in your data when you change from place A to place B. So I realized I like this small and this is more challenging. And then I found the challenge key. If I can do it for 300, maybe I can do it for 1000. But can I do it for everyone out there? Can I create enough for everyone?
00:16:10
Speaker
They called. I remember Anita. She called. She started crying. I cried with her.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I think this was a good challenge to challenge my genius and also energy. And I think that's why I just left my job and thought of doing something. And there were no plans to do, in fact, at that point of time. We talked that story, but that is the answer. Those two things basically coincided. And I decided Microsoft is not the place to be anymore.
00:16:46
Speaker
And that moment when I left my job, lots of VCs reached out, then what are you doing next? And we want to talk. And this was first for me. I have never thought about VC funding or anything. I figured it out. Things work out generally for me and it just worked out again. So when VC reached out, I talked to her and after talking to her, I said, Kich, tell me, how did I do?
00:17:08
Speaker
Okay, how did I do? And she said, you are okay, but you should add more of these things. And I didn't even have a pitch deck. So I said, I don't have before in the DM inside that I don't have pitch deck. No, no problem. We just have a chat. And then I asked, okay, how should I talk to PC?
00:17:23
Speaker
What should I ask you as a founder? And she gave me points. I was going through those notes a few days back. How to talk to VCs was told to me by a VC. I said, so that happened. So I started talking to a few VCs and then they asked me, can you, what do you want to build? How do you think this technical problem would be solved? So I took some time I spent.
00:17:45
Speaker
few days to think about the whole metaversity concept that at that time i called it in vap was actually so i came up with the plan but it was really hard to explain to people what it would look like how it would work i created some diagrams didn't come out really well so i took another few days and created a prototype
00:18:05
Speaker
And in that prototype, there was a meta work, there was people running around each other in all of it. So I coded that out. And then I went to the same VC and I should see, this is the product, this is how it looked. Like, it was like, did you have this lady? I'm like, no, this is like two, two, three nights of coding a job. It's not like that big a deal. And they were like, yeah, now we are. So these VCs basically saw it and they're like, wow, this is great. And the speed also is good.
00:18:31
Speaker
vision looks fine. And that is when I was also talking to my ex co founder Manish. We had chats before that. And I told him, we got interested. And do you want to come in now? And said, yeah, I can come in when the term sheets are being signed.
00:18:50
Speaker
Me leaving a Peter job without a term sheet doesn't look good. I'm like, find that network for me. I don't mind. So I kept talking to a few world VCs, few earlier talks I would do. And then the final talks, may I would also have Manish come in saying that he would be the co-founder for this venture. And people would be like, are you going to leave your job? They would ask Manish and like, as soon as we signed the term sheet, I would leave my job. So I think this was 15. What was the energy?
00:19:18
Speaker
Get Manish on as a co-founder. Did you see the value in closing a VC deal or did you see skill sets or did you see network? VC deal, I didn't see a lot of value because VC already had happened before that. And I had caught these VCs already. So that was not a lot of value there. But I saw a lot of value in experience, because he had a great experience of running corporates, big businesses.
00:19:47
Speaker
And I considered myself more of a teacher slash engineer, right? So, first of all, I like to teach. Second, I like to build, right? So, I was not keen on driving all of the business, the marketing, the day-to-day of things. And I thought execution-wise, money should be a great hand. It would help them. You can focus on the products. Yeah. You can focus on things which I like, and money you can focus on things which money does really well, right? So, that was a thought process.
00:20:16
Speaker
So that just happened. There was no plan to get funding. There was not a gonna pick stick. I remember reading secrets of the Sandhill Road. So my thing is, if I don't know something, I'll read a book overnight and become an expert tomorrow. So I read secrets of Sandhill Road. I understood how funding works, how to create a pitch tag, things like that. And did all of it, created a video, vision, video, and all, because it was very hard to explain to people without a video. How would you explain metaverse in words?
00:20:43
Speaker
So that happened and then we gross funding on 15 December, like we got the term sheet and then another, I feel, another three or four days money she's signed, I think 18th or sometime his speed came up that I'm designing.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then we started building because we had the term sheet already. Funding came in February. It takes some time to get the whole paperwork done. But we were going full throttle because also we had multiple term sheets. So we knew if one person backs out, we'll have other people backing us anyway. So that was it.
00:21:17
Speaker
I want to understand what the product did you
Metaverse Education Rationale
00:21:20
Speaker
envisage? Why did you choose a metaverse form factor for essentially it's a it take product and you choose the form factor of metaverse. So why did you choose the metaverse form factor? And this is an audio podcast. So, you know, we can't show your demo video to people who are listening in, but just help people understand what was it that you were pitching to VCs? What was the vision? So first I'll explain why metaverse? Okay.
00:21:46
Speaker
Two reasons. One was a very personal reason when I was teaching students and I've been teaching them for a very long time.
00:21:54
Speaker
I wanted that I would have my own college. And then when I walk on the roads of this college, people will say, good morning, sir. Good evening, sir. Very childish dream, but a very honest dream I'm sharing on your podcast. So that was the dream, right? Over time, I did realize that one college will not solve problems for people. And then it would be more exclusive than inclusive. Just another problem. Don't want to get into that. And then
00:22:20
Speaker
The second thing which happened was when I was getting active on return and people would ask, what's your unpopular opinion? What's the ill you would die on for? And I would say colleges are a waste of time. And because I have not just time and more than time, I think it's money as well for a middle class student. And then people would come and say, but no, we got so much of networking done. We made lifetime friends. We had all the good memories. And I'm like, dude.
00:22:45
Speaker
You're paying for education, you're paying for your degree, you're not paying for all of this. It's like going to buy a soap and being happy with the packet of soap. Soap is not doing its job of cleaning. But also I realized another thing is that not everybody is a very
00:23:02
Speaker
transactional person. People make judgments based on their emotions and how they feel rather than what's value they're getting in. The ROI thinking is not very strong with everyone. I got okay. So people do need that community experience to feel included and to feel, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the community
00:23:22
Speaker
works in education really well. We have been a community educational piece for a very long time. So you can't just sit out and read a book overnight and become a genius. Not everybody can do it. And it's okay. And then I started reading a lot of research papers on it. Read, by the way, a lot of research papers.
00:23:39
Speaker
or research book incident. I even published my research in Springer and got published. I got the best paper award there. That helped a lot, by the way, during the fundraising process. Like I would say I have a published research.
00:24:20
Speaker
Here's the paper as well. As the author, I have the rights to distribute the paper. The copyright is between me and the springer. Anyway, what is this springer thing? So, I trip on the springer. These are like really good forums where if you, these are like great scientists published paper.
00:24:33
Speaker
So I had to send paper to a lot of my VCs actually.
00:24:37
Speaker
And if you publish a paper there, it holds a lot of value in everyone's eyes. It's not as good as holding a patent, but it's really good. And then if you win the Best Paper Award there, then it's like next door. You're among the best kind of person. There's like the digital avatar of the journals. Yeah, it's journal only. So journal is a research paper. I think both have interchangeable words on you.
00:25:04
Speaker
There was this old thought of having your own college. Then there was this forced thought of, or you can call feedback in a nicer way, of creating a community space or a college life. And then there was this research which was backing it. All three came together and I thought, if you have to create a college, how will we create a college online? And it was not metaverse. See, people have embodied experience.
00:25:29
Speaker
in video games for a very long time. If you play a video game, you start feeding that person. You start moving like that person and you reach hurt, you feel hurt. So you have that embodied experience through an avatar. High engagement. High engagement, right? So that happens. So why don't we take the same, I know I read the amazing research, by the way, I want to share this. People are spending more time on Roblox and Fortnite.
00:25:53
Speaker
just socially bonding versus a time spent on Twitter and Instagram. Like people are just hanging out on Fortnite. And so obviously during COVID, but it's still amazing, right? That you are hanging out in the 3D avatar while phone, video chat, these are much more easier to do. But so basically you want your in-body experience there, right?
00:26:13
Speaker
So think of this metaverse as nothing but a game with your avatars moving around, but instead of shooting each other and slapping each other and knifing each other, you are basically helping each other study and complete your homework and running into these awesome conversations which you run into college. You have this samosa stall, you have a place where you sit and watch every other people going and judging them.
00:26:37
Speaker
So all of that you have in this whole Metaverse in a 3D virtual space.
Team Building and Product Development
00:26:42
Speaker
And as a game, you can access it through your phone, through your laptop, and we made it accessible through VR devices as well. Basically picturing something like the Metaverse that was described in SnowPress.
00:26:55
Speaker
So how would the education happen in this? So it's a virtual space where people can walk around bumping to other people and exchange messages. It could be maybe text or voice or whatever. How does the education happen?
00:27:09
Speaker
Similar to anything else, you have a 3D classroom and we have come up with some amazing concepts wherein if you start typing on your machine to take notes, I would start taking notes in the 3D world as well. So if you see everybody in your classroom,
00:27:27
Speaker
taking notes, you would realize, hey, maybe this is a noteworthy moment, right? And all those exhibitions, things did not be just on voice, you can have things like raising hand, clapping, questioning, all of those things. So I think those are the pieces. So education will happen again, similar to a classroom. But I think more than the classroom experience, the key is in the
00:27:53
Speaker
outside classroom experience now after classroom experience because that's what people go to college for. Nobody remembers this classroom from college, sure nobody does, but people remember what they did after the classroom and that's where Metaverse shines more.
00:28:08
Speaker
And would you need like those 3D glasses or something like that? So this is very much 5G, Fortnite, Vlogs. You can play it on any device. You can use it on any device. But if you have the VR device, obviously the experience would be much better.
00:28:23
Speaker
were immersive. Okay. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. So then you were at the stage where the deal got signed when he's resigned. Tell me from there what happened. So then we started visiting the team. One of my friend left his job at Microsoft. He was going to Google and I called him I
00:28:40
Speaker
basically convinced him to join us. So he joined as the head of product. And then we started building the product devs. I had my own devs, like an army of devs. If everyone is hiding from me, then who will I hide from? Obviously from me. So we got devs very quickly. So we started building. We got a design person and we got good response.
Course Delivery and Accessibility
00:29:03
Speaker
So students were also very excited about the whole alt MBA route.
00:29:07
Speaker
And that's how things were progressing until a few things happened. So the initial idea was that we would just start this as a cohort, not get any funding or anything. Like first time I talked to Manish, that was the idea. We just started as a cohort because you're taking money off track.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah. So we'll just do that and we'll get going and see whether there's PMF or not. All of this funding happened. This basically was, as I said, it was unplanned, but also you should raise funds and you don't need the funds. It's always a good advice. So we raised funds then.
00:29:40
Speaker
So then that happened and then the conflict went on for a little longer than I expected. It was not getting resolved. So then I suggested that we don't do the course because this is not just, I have been there, right? I have paid money for a high paid course and then got a shoddy delivery. So I was not able to bring myself to do that to someone. Someone has paid two lakh rupees. They are putting their four months on the line and we don't know whether the company will survive this conflict or not because it's been based.
00:30:10
Speaker
So I wrote to everyone all the stakeholders and luckily after some discussions, everyone agreed on the same point that at this point of time, doing the course will only and only harm the students and not. So we cancelled the course. Obviously there was outrage. I called all the students. I talked to them. I couldn't tell them all of this was happening because this was not resolved yet. So we did all of it. Although this was out in the news. No, that came out in 12 days later.
00:30:38
Speaker
Once you started writing to the students, that would have triggered. Once I wrote to all the investors, we were talking to all the named investors. When I wrote to all the angel pastors, that caught it out in the news. The day I took the charge, the first thing I did was reinstate the patch, which was not.
00:31:00
Speaker
We have heard you enough, give us a chance to mend it. And you're in Japan right now, right? You know what Kintsubi is. So, name the batch Kintsubi. I told them that I know. I don't know Kintsubi, sorry. So, Kintsubi is a Japanese tradition which talks about
00:31:19
Speaker
broken pieces. When you mend broken pieces with gold, it becomes even beautiful. So I talked to all the students. I said, hey, this was what was going on. You heard it all on news. You saw it all on news. So I don't need to lie to you anymore. And I'm really sorry that you put your trust in the wrong person and give me a chance to correct it. I think students and your elder brother and younger brothers and sisters are always the kindest.
00:31:50
Speaker
It's okay. So they said, we were all very emotional. I'm like, sorry. It's fine. Let's study. So the batch is still going on. We are teaching them. They're creating proof of what one of that is on.
00:32:10
Speaker
Meanwhile, this batch is in the Metaverse environment or that Metaverse environment is still under development. This batch is not in the Metaverse environment. The next batch, which we started yesterday, is in the Metaverse environment. So, even this batch will get Metaverse environment because, as I'm coming to the next point, we also have to figure out what we want to do from here.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Yes. Starting the batch was one thing, but do we go back to two lakh rupees, 60 students a batch again. And, and this time it was me who has to make those decisions, right? Because I'm in the drying seat now. So I did a lot of soul searching and some of my angels and VCs, they really helped. And what came up was that I left my job to make education more accessible for more people. Right. So two lakh rupees and 60,000.
00:33:00
Speaker
It's definitely something which is not working out. So why go down the same path? You have got it asked to reset, maybe reset. So I then talked to my VCs and I told them that we are going to be more accessible in pricing. And after a little bit of discussions, they also agreed. They're like, yeah, it's your company and it's your vision. And we can only advise you, you are the right person to take the call.
00:33:29
Speaker
Where is magic over, right? Where your heart and magic will happen. So that's what I thought about to make it much more accessible. They were also on board to making it more accessible. So that this batch, the batch, which we started yesterday, not started basically open admissions yesterday. This batch is completely free, an eight month course in finance specialization. But I'll come to how this height up. So I talked to my VCs, I told them,
00:33:54
Speaker
Okay. Bossy, we want to solve this problem. And until, and still with also rumors, you would do other fundraising or what, or you would do more marketing. There is a brand brand has got damage. So you should do more marketing and things like that. And I told everyone very clearly. Okay.
00:34:12
Speaker
We, I left my job too, because I love my job again. So I left my job to solve a problem, not to become a unicorn, not to raise funds, all of this. So my fundraising philosophy is, fundraising is like getting petrol in your vehicle, right? That is needed to go to the next destination, but the next destination should not be the next petrol bulk. It should be where you want to go.
00:34:40
Speaker
Right. So I told him clearly that, boss, there's no fundraising and I'm not going to do anything. We have enough money right now. We have 24 months plus runway. So let's solve the problem. How much have we raised till now? We raised 5 million.
00:34:52
Speaker
Right. And out of that, some money came here, some money came there. So it's still in the mix, but we raised significant amount. We have significant amount in our bank as well. Right. So I told them that we don't need to raise any, any more any soon. And let's, let me focus only and only on solving the problem that whether the course and the metaversity is solving this problem at
Strategic Pivot and Team Restructuring
00:35:15
Speaker
scale.
00:35:15
Speaker
right? So everyone agreed and then we talked more and came up that hey, if you want to find PMFs, we should do more batches and more quickly so that we get early feedback on how the sessions are happening. Also, we decided that we won't go the alt MBA route. Alt MBA is a very
00:35:35
Speaker
generalist routes, and generalist routes work good for top-tier colleges. Because you're getting into a Google, you're getting into Microsoft, you can be a programmer and you can then learn whether you want to be a web developer or something else, or data analyst. Same way in IAM, you can decide later whether you want to be a product person or salesperson or marketing person or anything else. But the lower-level jobs, they need specialists. And what we see is that
00:36:04
Speaker
There are tons of lower level jobs, but there are very few these higher level generalist jobs. Like one person jobs are like generalist jobs, but because those make the news, we hear a lot about it. One crore package, 10 crore package. So those make the news. But if you see, if you talk to people who are getting these outsourcing jobs from US to India or Europe to India,
00:36:27
Speaker
We are getting a lot of business analyst roles. We're getting a lot of finance analyst roles. We're getting a lot of marketing roles, product management roles. So we said we will focus only on these roles. We don't want to teach HR and operations and strategy.
00:36:43
Speaker
He's like a 21-year-old kid. So we said, we'll do only one, but we'll do it really well. We'll go deep versus going wide, and then we'll place them in the right places. So our whole strategy basically took a 180, and we said, T will not do generalist. B will be more inclusive than exclusive. And C, we'll do more batches to get more feedback rather than doing one batch perfect.
00:37:06
Speaker
So more like a software engineer approach to things. Agile methodology, send the code there, let people do the bug bash. And let them report bugs. So that's what we did. And also another thing which I did was we grew to 50 people company very soon. We closed funding in February, that's when we were in the news. And by April, we had 50 people, right? And I said, and that was another thing which we were becoming too corporate, too early, right? A seed-stage company should feel like a seed-stage company.
00:37:35
Speaker
Right. And I would say, luckily or unluckily, by the time I assumed command due to the cost-cutting which was happening, already 40 folks, 35 folks were asked to leave. So I got a 15 people team and I said, this team looks good to me. I don't need to hire anymore, which basically gives me even bigger runway to run and figure out the problem. So these are some of the core changes which has happened in the past 60 days since I took command and CEO. So it's been a daunting journey.
00:38:06
Speaker
Okay. So this batch one was originally supposed to be alt MBA, but what did you run it as? No, that we ran it as like alt MBA on it. So that we had teachers, you were not really comfortable in that. Okay. So initially, when I thought initiality each that time, we didn't have all the funds and all the pump and show. So we were like, like I thought the whole web or the programming, God, I should be stuck.
00:38:31
Speaker
code, right? But then when we got the funding and everything, we signed up other teachers as well for every specific topic. So those teachers were in contract with, with in back. And then these were really nice teachers also. So when I reached out to them after taking over, I said,
00:38:46
Speaker
students are still there, company is still there, your course is prepared, you want to teach, right? And they're like, yeah, why not? Let's teach. And that's what they did teach. It's more like a generalist, all the MVPs, etc. Because again, this was the first day I took command, I said,
00:39:02
Speaker
Let's not wait on this. They will figure itself out. And investors will figure themselves out. But students have lost a month because of my mistake. In 18 days, we picked up my mistake. And the agony which they went to, it was just unneeded, right? So I said, they have already lost enough. Let's get them in and let's start teaching them. Before I assumed command, I'd already talked to these students. I told them,
00:39:23
Speaker
When things went into news, they realized things were not hunky-dory. So I talked to them and I said, I told them very clearly. I don't know whether I'll get to run the company or not at this point of time. But if I get to run this company, your batch will run. And if I don't get to run this company, your batch will still run.
00:39:42
Speaker
I will hire the teacher, I will ask the teachers, I have my own contacts and friends, but your batch will run. So irrespective of that, so Kinsubi server, which where we teach, Kinsubi server was made, I think five, six years before I assumed command. It's just that I made it official the moment, the moment I became a CEO and then teachers joined them quickly. That's what.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, okay. But what kind of jobs would these would batch one cohort one get? Because they're not doing any specific specialization. That's like a generalist introduction to management. And they would get the generalist jobs. There is enough chief of staff, founder of this. These kind of jobs are enough there. And this is also a very small batch, so I wouldn't have problem.
00:40:25
Speaker
But these are also, as I say, when we think about scale, these are very less, very few. You don't have a lot of founder office jobs. This batch I can place easily because I have those connects. But the next batch, yeah, but the next batch of tens of thousands of people, it would be hard to place. That's why we shifted, we pivoted on your strategy.
00:40:43
Speaker
And this is what you taught for free. You didn't take anything from there. And this covert too, which is in 8 months. This is what we are calling freedom battle. It's starting on 15th August. And I have been, as I've been telling about my story, I strongly believe that good education should not be dependent on whether you have money, whether you have access to TR1, CTE colleges, because a lot of people, they don't do really good in 10th or 12th or in IIDG preparation and they don't get into the best of the quantities.
00:41:13
Speaker
Why this? That's a very strong theory. So I'm saying should be removed. Education should be freed from these shackles. And this batch is again free of cost for the next eight months. People can come in and they do. And good thing is that this time, very interesting. I don't know if it's interesting for the listeners. A lot of people said, those were the kids who were dependent on you. They just came. But there is a lot of
00:41:39
Speaker
PR damage which has happened when people have lost trust in you and I said, no, if you solve the right problem and if you are genuine, people can sense that intent, right? So this time,
00:41:51
Speaker
I did not do any marketing on LinkedIn. I have a lot of followers on LinkedIn, a lot of followers on Twitter and everywhere else. Only we have one in fact community channel on Telegram, which had 2500 people. And only on that, I said 7 PM, we will open the admissions and we have only 300 limited seats. So be ready tonight. Okay.
00:42:13
Speaker
At 7 PM, we opened the admission and in one minute, we crashed the server, we got 100 people in. So we had to create a new link to get another 100 people. Then we crashed it in five minutes. Then we have to open another link. So within 28 minutes, we had about 300 students paid and admissions were closed for everyone.
00:42:32
Speaker
This is for any entrepreneur who is listening. I just want to say what was told to me. There were a lot of people who told me that he lives in Vectasis. There's enough PR damage done. It's really hard to rebuild something which has lost, you know, trust and PR. And then there was one person who told me that if you care about the problem enough, people care about your solution. They don't care about anything else. They can sense the intent. Just go through it.
00:43:02
Speaker
And you will do it. And I'm happy that I took that advice. And that's why the first and the second batch could happen very well. Perseverance wins. What was that? What are you teaching in the second batch? What is it on? This is finance specialization.
00:43:18
Speaker
This is for equity research field. So there's a lot of work coming in India for equity research, actually. And during COVID, people showed that everything can be done online. So I have this very strong theory, I want to share this with you, is that India was the BPO capital at one point of time.
00:43:34
Speaker
It has become BPO capital, because we were English speaking country. Then we became IT services hub. We are IT services hub right now. Then now in the previous past five agencies, we have also become product capital. So a lot of companies have opened their huge product building, like Microsoft, Google, they have huge offices here. Earlier this used to be a satellite office. You would get some people, whoever does when they go to US.
00:44:00
Speaker
Now people are moving from US to India to launch products. I have built teams here in India. I have built Outlook here in India. It became a product hub as well and we definitely need more programmers for that. What I feel is you will also become knowledge worker hub in the coming 5 to 10 years time. All your business analytics job, all your product job, all your marketing job, all your rich job, all your finance job, everything will come to India.
00:44:27
Speaker
We will, the next revolution, which is going to happen, is going to happen of these knowledge tokens. And I strongly feel that in WAC will play a big role in creating that revolution. So this would be like a CFA equivalent kind of a course. Course, yes.
00:44:44
Speaker
And this is more on equity reasons. CFA is a little bit on accounting as well. This is more on criticism. And no, this is not full time. I have made that mistake. Never want to do that again. You can't leave your job for anyone telling you on the internet to quit your job. I learned that. You see, when you make mistakes,
00:45:11
Speaker
People have taken a bet on me. Most of the followers came to me. So I kept thinking when this was all going down, I kept thinking, how can I make such a mistake? And the mistake I made was people took a bet on me, but I did not take a bet on myself. I took a bet on another person. I should have taken the bet on myself. Never again.
00:45:32
Speaker
Anything else than CEO. I used to tell this to the CEO of that company. I will not take better on other people. People take better on me, I take better on myself. If everybody is taking better on Taneprita, it's good. The Taneprita should not take better on a different person. So that was the learning in full time. It's a heart.
00:45:52
Speaker
for students, right? When things fall, it just falls really bad. So we are not doing full-time. This is a part-time course. I was just concluding the thought that when you fail, if you learn something from it, it's got an experience. If you don't learn anything from it, you are doomed to fail again. So those were my learnings. Don't do full-time courses again. Don't ask people to risk so much on just one bit of thing which you are producing. How will you make money
00:46:19
Speaker
You're doing a free course. Money is easy to make. But you've enrolled 300 kids, there will be an 8 month investment in teaching them. How will you make money?
00:46:32
Speaker
We will not make money out of this batch for sure. We want to perfect the product first. We will not charge for the course. I think there will be newer business models coming in. I think it will surface with time. There could be different kinds of business models in this as well. There could be more access to more mentors or access to more interview preps where you have
00:46:56
Speaker
a different cost, right? This course will form a diverse and things will work automatically. We will have a community management, which will cost something, but not too much compared to what the industry can pay. I think we can, the vision is to keep it accessible, right? And the genius is to solve it for that. So I think business models will emerge, but from what I'm thinking right now is access to more
00:47:20
Speaker
premium, I would say, or value-added services would be the business model at scale. But right now, what we are focused on is solving the problem first. Can an eight-month course land people into an equity research job? That's the bigger question to solve right now. And this course would be, would you have live classes and all of that, or it would be like a prepared curriculum they go through and like a
00:47:46
Speaker
complete journey which is mapped out for them with very little live inputs. There are a lot of live inputs. We will have live classes for Discord because again we are figuring it out but at scale we will not have live classes. That's to keep the cost low overall. But there would be a lot of live input. There would be proof of work which we call craft.
00:48:12
Speaker
All of that, your community engagement sessions, which community managers would run, live interactions with mentors, all of that will happen even in this course and even in future courses.
00:48:23
Speaker
But that would be marginal cost. The bigger cost which I figured out was in life teaching. If we reduce that cost, we can make the course virtually free, if not cheap, virtually free. And we can figure out a business model in value-added services if you like being an interview prep.
00:48:42
Speaker
service and we are providing you two to each, you can buy five more and that would be helpful. If you want an accountability partner, you can have a personal accountability partner as well, which would cost something to the company and adding some sort of charge, it would make some revenue there. So I think at scale, these things are easier to figure out. In India, I feel, and this is my understanding of this market is that
00:49:09
Speaker
students know, they don't shy away from pain. They don't have, like most of the ethics have a stack problem. The stack problem is because you have not established trust, right? If you establish trust, and I have seen this myself, right? People pay 2 lakh rupees just on my name.
00:49:24
Speaker
60 people, 1.2 crore revenue we made without showing the product, without having all of it. So the trust needs to be built. And I think once the product comes up, people realize, hey, this is a great product. This is a great part. There's one problem I see in offering a free course, which is the student doesn't have skin in the game. So you would get frivolous enrollment and that enrollment would be at the cost of a more serious student. So money is one way to weed out
00:49:54
Speaker
So two things here actually, I think students are not frivolous or enrollments are not frivolous. It's just that the promise and delivery do not match. So keeping someone in the class because they have paid money, I don't think that's the right thing. Netflix doesn't pay
00:50:12
Speaker
You to watch content, you paid to watch Netflix content because it's entertaining. It's interesting. So the key here is, and I have taught six hours. I tweeted this long time back that my biggest competitor is Netflix. I have taught six hour long classes and students have done those six hour long classes. It's your job as a teacher, as an educator to deliver things which grasp the student's attention and also deliver value, not just attention. Like a joker can also do that, but a teacher has an even bigger job.
00:50:42
Speaker
So just with the money, I think this is a skill in the game thing. That kid is coming to get a job. How much more skill in the game can that be? Someone is depending their career on your course.
00:50:55
Speaker
That is the biggest skill in the game. And if they can't do it because of some genuine reason something has happened or some exam has come, something has happened, they should be able to drop off and join another cohort. Why not? So this is the first part of the question. Second question was that it's taking someone's seat only now. Only now we have 300 limited seats. But at scale, this won't be seat limited. At scale, anybody can come anytime. Think of what's a better analogy. Think of government exam.
00:51:23
Speaker
aspirants in this country. Three, four core people are preparing for government exams at any point of time. They fail one year, they fail two years, they fail three years. Fine. Fourth year, they will try to fail again. The problem, the only problem with this model, the government exam model is that even if you fail four years, you have nothing to show for it. But if at in fact you fail for fourth cohort, you will have proof of what to show for it. You're like, Hey, I was not able to do complete, but I have done so much and see my marketing plan, see my SWOT analysis, see my best, see my dad, right?
00:51:53
Speaker
So my thinking is that why penalize the students for teachers in competency? This is what I have faced. And if I am revitalizing education, if I'm doing the same thing again with the students to get it's what Einstein says, right? If you do the same thing and expect different results, you are nothing but a fool, right?
00:52:22
Speaker
I don't want to be that fool. I'm calling myself a genius of this world. So why do the same thing? I think if people drop off, it's very natural. You shouldn't be worried about it. Our win, our not star metric as a company since I've taken over, I've defined this is how many proofs of works, how many crafts have been created. I don't care if the student is watching my video, if they're coming to my class, why would I care? If someone is writing an excellent business plan, I can recommend that person to someone as a founder of his job. My job is done.
00:52:52
Speaker
I don't care. So my thing is, drop if you want to drop. I don't mind. Come to the next class because this is the road. If you want to walk from other parts, maybe he may be dangling. But in this way, I am ensuring that there is enough done for you and you can come anytime. We are always open. You are always welcome.
00:53:13
Speaker
And what do you think about the income share agreement? There are a couple of startups like Sunstone and a couple of these who do the income share agreement. They give you the education for free and take a share from your salary. Like that could be one way. I have very strong opinions on this. And this was asked through VCs also. So I have two opinions very strong on this. One is that why I think ISA is unfair is because it's unfair to the student.
00:53:41
Speaker
If a student is doing a better job, then the student sitting next to that student, if A is doing a better job, B, the teacher has not put more effort on A than B, right? Teacher is still the same effort has been put, but A has to pay more than B because he's getting better salary. Okay. So we are.
00:54:01
Speaker
You should not penalize people for being passionate about something. You should not penalize passion. So I think that's my bigger problem with it. The second problem, which I told many of the tech founders in this, I keep talking to people about these things, like I have strong opinions around education, so people also want to listen. So the second problem is that if you want to do income share every month, you have to figure out the input.
00:54:31
Speaker
If you fail to earn the input, your CAC will always go high. Okay. Because you need 1000 applications so that you can choose her words. Exactly. Because you're underwriting their success. Your success is dependent on their success. So you will get very few people. Now, these few people already have the intent. These few people already had hardworking capacity. Why would I pay 5 lakh rupees to someone? I'll succeed myself.
00:54:57
Speaker
The only thing ISA supports, it's not education, it's access asymmetry. ISA has access to these companies which would shortlist their resumes. So this access asymmetry is what they are capitalizing on. And the moment students understand this, they're like, why would I give my money to some? I'll try from outside there anyway.
00:55:17
Speaker
But the problem is also the CAC. So you have to always charge very high to sustain your company. And the more you charge high because of your CAC, the more students would want to walk away from that. So I think as a business model, yes, it's working, but it's working in the top 1% part.
00:55:36
Speaker
And the rest 99% C is nobody sitting there, I think. And I think that's a great business opportunity for anyone because in this top 1% there are like 10 ISA models putting their hook and it's a very small font so you will exhaust it very quickly. And also people would realize very soon that there's nothing special there for the cost and they are realizing that it's not like people are not and then they would move away from these pieces.
00:56:02
Speaker
Okay. So what's on your roadmap? You lost this course on finance. What else is there on the roadmap?
00:56:09
Speaker
So next is the business analytics course is what we are going to launch. And then the focus is completely on PMF right now. What I have done previously as well is I obsessed with student success. If up in every class, I will call everyone in a virtual meeting. I'll ask them what went wrong, take all of their feedback, note it down, say, okay, next time these are the things we have agreed we will not do.
00:56:33
Speaker
Why are you not doing group of work? Where are you getting stuck? Break those through work into smaller pieces. Create help sessions. So you have to basically get very involved. People think, and I'm typing this today, that people think that product is software. But product is not software. Product is the pain which you are solving.
00:56:51
Speaker
It's a painkiller. Product is a painkiller. And that is what students should want. Someone who would take their feedback very regularly and then improve products. I think for the next three to six months, that's my exact focus is on figuring out the product really well and little bits on how to do the messaging piece, how to do the people piece.
00:57:12
Speaker
Those are parts of running a company and stealing it later. But I think until we have strong early signs of PMS, there's nothing in the roadmap. That's all. And I talked to a few of the investors. They called me after this exit, which happened. What are your funding plans? And when is that in the roadmap? And I said, see, until I solve the problem, I'm not going to come for the fundraise. Because if the problem is not solved, more money is not going to solve the problem. And if the problem is getting solved, it's easier to then get the money.
00:57:40
Speaker
It makes no sense. So they were taking them back. Will you still have cohorts? Say one year down the line, will it still be a cohort based program? Because you want to have unlimited access. Like anybody who wants to join can join. Will you still have to join on specific dates or will it be like you just join and start your journey?
00:57:59
Speaker
I think this will be at scale again, we are talking about it. This will be very much like a PUBG or a Fortnite. So, you would wait till 100 people join in and then 100 people play on the same map. Similarly, you will wait till 25 people join in. Those 25 people will become a cohort. And now when the 10 people do the exercises and then the 50 people for some very right reasons are left behind, these 10 and the other 10 will become the next level cohort and then this cohort keeps
00:58:27
Speaker
moving after every module. So at any point of time, you have a community, you have people to help you out, and you have more and more people who are moving towards higher modules, higher levels. And also, you are not waiting for a fixed date or your seats to be filled to get started. As a company, I don't have the pressure because we don't need to worry about that.
00:58:53
Speaker
So you're really like doing proper gamification of education, even from your revenue model, you can just join in and then there is in-game purchases the way you have. So similar. See, all my life I have felt that education is a bad word for this, but learning is like a game, right? It's so rewarding when you learn something, any small thing you learn.
00:59:16
Speaker
But the way to show that I feel that learning has been like the most rewarding experience. This is why programming feels so rewarding because it's like a game. You get bugs and you solve the bugs and you get the result. I think the good thing about learning is when you create something, you have something to show off it.
00:59:38
Speaker
We have built this. You go through my vision statement. We have not published it on the website. But the vision is that when a student wakes up, she shouldn't feel, hurry up.
00:59:52
Speaker
need to go to school, need to go to college, need to go to Nail, want to go. Oh my God, this is another day. The joy of learning is just so much more than anything else. And I strongly feel that that's missing. So that's why the whole gamification piece of learning. But the idea is that people should have fun learning. And why games work? There is a lot of learning in my games. But why games work is at one point of time, you have to only learn
01:00:18
Speaker
to deal with few variables. And then they keep increasing the levels very slowly, the numbers of variables increase. But if it's easier, then it feels like a game. It feels like a walk. It feels like learning is joyful. I think that's what it's missing in learning and education. And that's what we want to bring back overall.
01:00:35
Speaker
Okay, so then we are catching up after a couple of months since the conversation which the listeners just heard. You know, you spoke of a certain direction you wanted to go and build a product which is free for most users and there are certain paid elements of it with a metaverse kind of an experience. So then there is that feeling of a virtual campus and building relationships.
01:00:58
Speaker
You know, tell me how things have panned out since we last spoke. What direction have you gone in? What have you learned so far? What has worked? What has not worked?
01:01:09
Speaker
So, one thing which mostly is the same, we still have metaverse, we still have that serendipity angle, we have the community feature. I think when we talked to us, we talked about that, in fact, needs to be standing on two pieces, craft and community. We still have both. Craft is our application-based learning, you know, create and learn.
01:01:31
Speaker
and community is our metaverse piece. So, both the things are there. How does metaverse work? Does it need like a VR headset? No, it works on VR devices as well, but what we have built it for India.
01:01:48
Speaker
people are not going to buy a 30,000 rupees VR device but on laptops even on 30k laptops it works beautifully well and it works on web based browser based so you don't have to download like 1 GB files and all of that so and the whole metaverse is like 10 MB so you don't have to download a lot of stuff
01:02:07
Speaker
So it's like a Zoom meeting, but in 3D metaverse space, so people who play games, they relate to it a lot. Like every time we, so we have done like multiple batches now and every batch when they get metaversity access, they're like, wow. And yesterday also the same thing was happening on Twitter. Like this is something which we haven't thought about before. This is so new in education. So that's how metaverse is going right now.
01:02:34
Speaker
My kid is a big fan of Roblox. I'm assuming this experience would be something like that. Yeah, it is something like Roblox, a little bit more high definition than Roblox, but secondary to that. Okay, got it. Okay, so that remains as what we discussed. You had also said that you will take in students with a free enrollment. So has that remained as the
01:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, we have done around, we have processed around 700 students by now. All of them came through a rigorous admission process.
01:03:13
Speaker
All the batches which we did are free because we are in product development phase right now. We have complete the phase one of it. The phase two is going on, I think, for the next four to six months. That development will happen. Since we have a lot of runway, we can do all of this without worrying too much. And once that's done, then we'll start thinking about the monetization phases. But right now, all the batches are running free.
01:03:36
Speaker
Amazing, amazing. What is the difference between phase one and phase two? What are you going to do in phase two? Yeah, sounds very much like Kevin Feige, phase one, phase two, like there's an MCU plan.
01:03:56
Speaker
So what we are doing is, what we are trying to do is we identified a niche. So last we talked, we were talking still about MBA, but then we identified a niche. We also realized that, you know, specialist demand is higher than generalist demand at the bottom of the pyramid. At the top of the pyramid, the McKinsey's and the MBB's needs generalist more, but
01:04:18
Speaker
at 25,000 rupees per month at 5 lakh rupees a year you need
01:04:25
Speaker
specialist more, like you need people who can do financial analysis, credit research, banking, corporate finance, all these people need to be specialists first. So we identified a niche, a very big niche of finance, which is unserved because you see all the courses that are on digital marketing mostly and there's this new trend on product management. But these job openings are much less compared to these KPO job openings of, I mean, the number of jobs
01:04:53
Speaker
KPOs offer in the analyst region, the financial research analyst, research analyst, business analyst, all those pieces.
01:05:01
Speaker
So we identified that and we doubled down on it and that's where we defined the course into three phases. So the first phase was can we take a complete beginner and make them understand financial concepts, make them do a little bit of financial modeling, make them understand what an income statement is, can they do forecasting and all of that. So that first phase took multiple iterations because
01:05:27
Speaker
When you take a complete noob and also not the smartest, the one person, the two person crowd, then you start realizing that, you know, it's not that obvious. And there's a real test in time because they have to apply and create like 10 Excel sheets, right? So they can't just watch a video and say, yeah, I think I know, like you have to apply it and then we will know whether you know or not.
01:05:52
Speaker
So that took like three to four months. So it took three iterations, three batches. But then we started getting good results there. Then we created the phase two wherein, hey, now you know finance. Can you now become an expert of professional in finance? And that could be something similar to doing a master's in finance only, where you
01:06:14
Speaker
Now understand balance sheet, now you understand, you already understood income statement, now you understand cash flow, cogs, how all of these things work together and then create, you know,
01:06:26
Speaker
bigger models. Once that is done, which is phase two, in phase three, we start training them, and that would be a six-week phase three. We would start training them for specific, very niche requirements, like if you want to go into equity research here, learn DCF and other valuation techniques. If you want to go into credit, if you want to go into banking, all of these pieces, we'll start getting into those pieces later. But before that, for this six-week, which was the initial one,
01:06:52
Speaker
and the 24 week which is phase 2, you will just do a lot of excel, a lot of finance, a lot of business environment because people like when you get into business, you don't know a lot of terms and this, that, you know, what's a board, what's an IPO. Even I learned a lot in the past few months. So you understand all those terms, you understand how companies perform, how their performances are evaluated.
01:07:16
Speaker
And then you also have to learn how to communicate because English is medium of instruction, but also you need to prepare PPTs and then docs and reports, all of those pieces. So that's the comprehensive piece. We are in our phase two of product development right now.
01:07:34
Speaker
Amazing. So far, people have gone through phase one, which is like, say, a finance 101. And now these batches will enroll into the phase two, which is like a specialization where they will choose which specific area they want to... So far, these are not yet employable, the people who've come out of phase one.
01:07:55
Speaker
No, so that's just to clarify that specialization would be phase three. Phase two is just becoming much better in finance. And so phase two is already started. It started in January, we are eight weeks into it. And we are seeing great results for that batch as well. So once phase two completes, they would be employable, but we would want them to go through phase three as well. And
01:08:18
Speaker
Because one thing which we realize is a lot of people get their first job in finance, but then they struggle once they want to grow in that role. Because if you're doing the same road thing every day, you'll be good in five months, three to five months time. But then how will you grow in that role? So we don't want to get students just their foot in the door. We also want them to succeed two years, three years down the line. So for that, I think the last 10 week stretch would be immensely useful. We showed our
01:08:47
Speaker
We showed our work to some of our hiring partners, and they were quite amazed. Even with the first 15, 16 weeks of work which our students have done, they're like, this is more than what we hire for. One great insight which I got is that I usually used to think that engineering colleges don't teach. I realized that no colleges in India teach.
01:09:15
Speaker
Even commerce graduates have the same story. We don't know anything, we just pass exams, we just go for mom, MBA, something. Even M.com, I talked to, like, past 8 months, I've talked to so many students, everyone has the same story. But yeah, M.com is the same story.
01:09:39
Speaker
So all of those stories, what I realized is like it's the same story as engineering. You go to a college, you get a degree, but you don't get skills. And for the skills, you need something like in fact, and that's where we are positioning ourselves.
01:09:52
Speaker
And do 100% of students who complete phase one move on to phase two or do some people drop out or do you ask some people to drop out? We don't ask anyone to drop out. We actually want people like people who came for the first batch and then couldn't complete the first batch. We ask them to come to second batch and then third batch.
01:10:12
Speaker
This is something which in our culture, in our company also we want to inculcate is that there's no such thing as failures. This is pre-try and it's okay if it takes more than one trial for you because you don't have to be the smartest person. You just need to have enough trials left in you.
01:10:29
Speaker
So, if you drop, it's fine, come back again. Sometimes you say, I was not able to understand it previously or I was busy with something. It's a 40 year career. My thing is, it's a 40 year career. 4 months here, 6 months there, 1 year here, 2 years there. It doesn't matter at all.
01:10:50
Speaker
But until I feel it, until the team feels it, until the teachers feel it, students won't feel it because even if you are losing 10 marks, you are losing something.
01:11:01
Speaker
But there's no voluntary dropout, like people lose interest and dropout. That also happens. Few people, I remember this second phase two, around five people didn't join the phase two. They were like, we learned a lot, but now we are into a different career path. And that's why we want to not go deep into finance right now. Like, yeah, fine.
01:11:24
Speaker
Go ahead. So that's like a single digit percentage, very low number. Single digit percentage, yeah, very low, very low. Okay, got it.
01:11:32
Speaker
You know, this monetization is still something I'm curious about on how will you do that. And, you know, so when we spoke six months back, there was no such concept of a funding winter. And where for someone, for a founder to say, I will figure out monetization later was completely acceptable. Today, in today's environment, you know, this is the question which everyone is asking, how will you monetize? How will you become sustaining? How will you be profitable?
01:12:00
Speaker
I think let's analyze why this question is coming or where this question is coming from in this funding vendor. Every business which was built before was built on a very high cap model.
01:12:13
Speaker
and a very high burn model. So if you see the edtech giants of today, why they're struggling is because they had a very high CAC and a very high burn model and inside sales team and all of that. We have processed 600 students. We are going to grow to 5,000 students in the next six months. Our CAC is virtually zero right now.
01:12:36
Speaker
Wow, okay. And this 600 you've processed would have been out of a certain bigger number which would have shown interest. Yeah, it was around 3000 people who showed interest, like who actually signed the form, did one POW, did two POW,
01:12:53
Speaker
then some people dropped off, then some people couldn't come in. It's very huge number which came. Your selection process is like they need to show proof of work, they need to submit some assignment. No, we basically give them five videos, three Excel and two PPTs, and they have to create those Excels and PPTs. These are very basic ones, but one other thing which we keep saying here is,
01:13:19
Speaker
intent is not creativity. We want to test for intent and not for creativity because our TG doesn't have creativity. Creativity comes with time and with confidence and my TG doesn't have it and I am not going to penalize them for not having it. So intent, so you need to spend around 20 hours to complete those five exercises but that shows very high degree of intent. Some people come then
01:13:43
Speaker
And so zero CAC there. And then our team is very small. So we are a 10 plus two people team. Our burn is very low. So we have around 18, 20 months of burn still left, right? And so if you are a low CAC, low burn model, and the next thing is we also, when we talk about scale, we should also talk about will the CAC increase five years down the line? Because a VC is not buying into today. It's buying into a five year
01:14:13
Speaker
valuation, right? So let me just touch upon that. The other problem with current edtech companies have is A, their CAC is high, B, their burn is high, C, the bigger problem is even the delivery costs are high, right? So if you put a live teacher and if you have to teach live every batch and you have to fill at least 100 people batch to go to the next batch, then your costs increase suddenly, right?
01:14:39
Speaker
You need so many teachers. What we also did and that's what I was saying that some leap of faith assumptions are now validated and I'm so happy about it. The past two batches of 200 plus people are now running totally automated on recorded lectures and still have amazing completion numbers. Like the numbers will just blow your mind.
01:15:00
Speaker
right?
EdTech Scalability and Trust-based Models
01:15:01
Speaker
So now that the cost is low, the cack is low, the burn is low, we can scale and we can figure out monetization when we want to figure it out, right? So this is a different story than what story EdTech has been telling for a very long time. Like, no, you have to have live classes, you have to have high cacks, you have to have high burn, you need an
01:15:26
Speaker
400 people inside sales team too and this all happened and I want to just take one more minute actually this all happened because we don't miss sell and we always always always double down on product you don't know how many hours countless hours and sleepless nights me and my team have spent to create this product which
01:15:46
Speaker
which generates this trust. Education is a game of trust. And people forget about that and they think, some celebrity, some Shahrukh Khan, some Dhoni, someone will come and you will just borrow that trust. It does not work like that. The trust model is, see physics wallah. Physics wallah does not need any celebrity.
01:16:04
Speaker
There's high degree of trust, there's high degree of distribution built in. And then that's why when you see physics while a model, you will see similarities between PW's model and my model because they're also economies of scale kick in because one person teaching live is teaching 10,000 students. You don't have like 50, 50 or 100 people batch.
01:16:23
Speaker
So that's that's where I think and because physics is doing great I think my prospects as a seed stage startup is also going to be great. Amazing, amazing. I just wanted to comment on the enrollment process and I absolutely love it because I always found you know I did an MBA myself from one of the premier B schools and
01:16:47
Speaker
that whole process of performing in a group discussion and performing in an interview is so superficial you know it in no way I mean it doesn't really test what you have inside you how much do you know how intelligent are you how analytical are you none of those things get tested in that kind of a process whereas the process which you've built where you tell them learn this apply this show me proof with such a
01:17:13
Speaker
significantly improved way to enroll students. So I love that. I, you know, traditional wisdom is that these self-based courses, Udemy style courses have very poor completion rates. How did you crack this problem where your self-based learning course has such a high completion rate?
01:17:33
Speaker
I think multiple things, there is no easy answer to this. One thing is when we double down on what is our product, I think our product is a promise of an option that, hey, you have been learning horizontally all your life and things haven't worked out. You know a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and you don't have confidence. A 60% student is also passed, a 90% student is also passed, so you don't know who's competent, who's not.
01:17:58
Speaker
So we took a different model, right? We went vertically. We said, you need to create a stack. So until you know income statement, you won't be graduated to balance sheet until you know balance sheet, you won't be graduated to revenue. You won't be graduated and you won't be able to build your stack. And until you know all of this, you won't know analysis, forecasting, all of this, right?
01:18:16
Speaker
So I think that approach helped a lot because students also started enjoying, because this now becomes craft instead of knowledge. When you start creating, you start enjoying it, and this is very much like painting or anything else. Programming is nearest to me. So the more you start programming and you start creating stuff, start modeling stuff, you start realizing, oh, there's another
Engagement and Completion Strategies
01:18:37
Speaker
superpower here. If I learn this, I can do more. So I think going deep is something so
01:18:44
Speaker
So natural to us humans that we start enjoying this and I think deep work talks a lot about it and that's where I took the inspiration from of craftsmanship. And that worked. The other thing which worked was messaging. People realize that we are not miss selling. We tell them, if you complete this, then you get a job. Then we take you to the hiring partner. There's no magic bullet here. So people realize this is a serious game.
01:19:11
Speaker
not here to miss out. A third thing which worked was the community angle. So I always said craft plus community. Even though courses are self-paced, there is a sense of a batch, a sense of a movement. If you have doubts, you have doubting sessions every week. If you have
01:19:29
Speaker
you have community fun sessions every week. So there is a sense of movement together and there's a positive form happening with it, right? And this craft plus community plus I would say the whole approach of going deep in your craft, going along with the community and having that serious messaging. I think that people discount messaging a lot, but
01:19:54
Speaker
As I said before, education is a game of trust. Until you build trust, your student will not perform. It's very much like gym, right? You can say anything, but until the person goes and does 10 burpees and 20 push-ups, the muscles will not form. And the only way to do that is you build that trust and you motivate them to do. I think that has worked tremendously well for us in the past few months. Amazing. Okay.
01:20:17
Speaker
So like when they are doing like watching the video and then attempting the assignments and you know building the craft this is done like they are connected on a platform where they can interact with other students and ask each other that did you understand this or I got stuck here and so this happens like at the same time like this is like a concurrent
01:20:39
Speaker
or concurrent thing and you can always get onto the metaversity and then you will see people are studying there there are study groups there so you join those study groups as well so all of those pieces and sometimes you know you find teacher roaming around in metaverse and then like sir Prashant sir is Prashant sir so even though medium of instruction is English people talk in Hindi people talk on chats all the time and then when you complete your proof of work you share it so once you complete proof of work you share it
01:21:07
Speaker
I have done this. I got my this evaluated and other people start doing it. Bhai Muja Bhattadeh, tell me as well, you know, can you jump on a call? I am struggling with this. So all of that, I think that movement together gives you a sense of a live class. Because in general, in a live class, you are just listening to what teacher is saying. And I think live is also buggy for my teaching. I'll spend like two minutes time.
01:21:33
Speaker
Live is a problem. Live, you cannot go back, right? If you did not understand what was said previously, you cannot go back. And that's why then you have to raise hands and you have to ask in front of everyone, right? So I think doubts are also bug. Sorry, I'm just breaking this like a programmer because that's how I think in my mind. But I think doubts are also like bugs and
01:21:55
Speaker
What we did is, first class we taught life, second class we taught life. First batch, the whole batch we taught life. Second, the whole batch we taught life. And we collected all the doubts. And every doubt we collected, we then incorporated into the course itself, so that people don't ask that. By third batch, we saw there were no doubts. And then people themselves stopped coming to the live class. They said, sir, what do you think? What do you think? So they realized that
01:22:23
Speaker
raising your hand is an interruption. It's a bug and that bug-free software is there. I don't need to raise bug requests anymore. And so we saw this happening. In the third batch, we saw that more people are watching the recording and still completing the course. And that's when we decided, hey, finally now we can turn over and we can say, let's do a whole recorded class this time. So we did two recorded batches after that. Both had good numbers because
01:22:49
Speaker
There was no doubt. The session took a lot of time. Our sessions are three, five hour long sessions, takes a lot of time. It builds slowly, slowly. But our first three months after our first four months, our first few iterations helped us to write this bug free lecture, bug free software.
01:23:08
Speaker
Do you have some insights? You would have been closely studying the data. What is the ideal length of a video that helps people to learn better?
Entertainment in Education
01:23:19
Speaker
Any interesting insights to share around building an education stack?
01:23:26
Speaker
Before getting into in-vact, I did a lot of research around this. What is the ideal size of video? This and that and there has been a lot of research. I published my own research paper on this. What I realized building in-vact and especially for my TG, I keep stressing that this is a different TG.
01:23:42
Speaker
is that there is no such rule as long as you're engaging you're giving breaks in between so we have some very strong specs which we follow that every 25 minutes you have to give a break every 30 minutes you have to crack a joke so it is in the script that you have to crack a joke that it shouldn't be funny but
01:24:02
Speaker
The teacher needs to be funny. And we crack very lame jokes, like some memes we put in our courses. But that gives you a mental relief. So those pieces we did, some piece of interaction should happen, some piece of class work kind of thing where you also open an Excel sheet and you also do a few stuff. You see, you match your question and answers.
01:24:24
Speaker
So some of those things we identified which can engage you. I keep saying this again and again that my rivalry is not with education. It's with Netflix. We have to be as good as Netflix and better. So if a student can watch six hours of Netflix, they should feel like, hey, I'm in a flow.
01:24:46
Speaker
I'll just take two more minutes because flow is a very interesting concept. You will be in a flow when things are progressively tougher and not too tough and not too easy. But that's something you have to design in your course. It just can't happen out of nowhere. Just covering something won't happen. So that's how we design the course and that's why you enjoy craftsmanship so much because
01:25:08
Speaker
it gets progressively difficult first you take a wood there's a wood you just cut out the bigger pieces then while you are making the nose and the eyes it becomes difficult and difficult and by that time you're in the flow so you're enjoying every subsequent challenge
01:25:23
Speaker
This sounds very superficial, but when you start designing a course with this in mind and you do it every step, again, our course is also our craft, right? We have designed that with so much love. We know that these things work and that's why three hours, five hours, six hours, it doesn't matter. The courses are actually three hours long sometimes, even five hours long sometimes, but students enjoy it. If they feel tired, there's some...
01:25:47
Speaker
They pause it, they went back, they come back, and they complete it. So that's why the completion numbers, the application numbers are so high, because I see a lot of re-watch also. I was going through the data. So wherever the application piece comes in, like you are putting something in Excel and you're putting a formula in Excel, people re-watch those pieces a lot. Okay, interesting. You said that, like, Physicsvala has built distribution, which I believe for them is through YouTube.
Growth and Expansion Plans
01:26:14
Speaker
What is the way in which you are building distribution?
01:26:17
Speaker
I have good distribution on every platform. I have 100k plus followers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, everywhere. So that's where we are doubling down. And now the word of mouth is also getting stronger and stronger.
01:26:35
Speaker
One student who did this course, the first batch, they went ahead and they talked about it in their college, in their, you know, stock. These people have these stock learning groups, sharing tips groups. So they are also the shared that, hey, there is a financial analyst course going on. So a lot of people we got from there.
01:26:54
Speaker
Again, this is the power of good messaging. If you do good messaging, people realize this is serious shit, product is good, and these guys are keen on working through the kinks of the product. And that comes in, the violin starts kicking in. I wouldn't say it has kicked in a lot, but since we are doing 200 people batch over a month, we right now have 150 people already in waitlist for the next month.
01:27:21
Speaker
And these are 150 people who have completed five projects as of today, which is, I think, 14, 16 February and the batch starting on 3rd March. So we are also not aggressively marketing. Like if you go to my social media channels, I don't like talk about in fact a lot, but even have little bit of past years. Yeah, I don't have to like, I don't have to fire the guns yet, but like at the meantime, I have like big four guns, which I can fire at scale when time comes. When time comes, what will be your monthly intake?
01:27:50
Speaker
So the plan is to gradually increase month by month and somewhere down the line, two years down the line, I'm planning to be the biggest institution in India. So today, the biggest institution in India is Amity University. It has 40 cities and 175,000 students across multiple programs. My plan is to be bigger than that in the next 24 months. Wow, amazing.
01:28:17
Speaker
And would you need to raise more funds to hit that kind of scale? Definitely. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then, you know, the question will come up. What is your monetization plan? We'll tell them. See, monetization is a very simple, like, just like I answered you, montage is a very simple thing. Is there a propensity to pay in education? Yes. People pay. Is my course quality good? Yes.
01:28:45
Speaker
are all other variables like acquisition cost, operation cost, delivery cost, minimal. Do we have a high margin here? Yes. Do we have a big time here? Yes. Then monetization will happen when it will happen. I mean suddenly venture cannot overturn and say no, now we are not venture, we are public markets because then the whole
01:29:08
Speaker
Construction of venture will break, right? That's not what venture is. What venture is doing right now is it's going back to fundamentals and fundamental questions like this. Hey, can you operate at margin down the line? Is there a path to monetization? Is there a path to profitability? Those are the questions which venture is asking, not show me the money. It's not that. It's show me the money in future.
01:29:33
Speaker
I'm not asking you to show me the money, but what's your thinking on how you could monetize? There are multiple ways, actually. There are multiple streams which we can do. Either we can do the upsell piece, which we talked about previously. I have also started thinking about just putting a very low cost on the course. Say the course can go ahead for 5,000 rupees.
01:29:59
Speaker
once it is done. And 5000 rupees, I remember me buying in 2008 when I was preparing for IIT J, a Resning Khaleda book for just 3000 rupees. And I just solved like 5 or 10 questions out of it. So if you become big enough and if you become a cultural phenomena, people, every finance student, every commerce student, everyone will have like your book and that book is basically this course. Why not keep an option open?
01:30:25
Speaker
So that at scale would be so powerful in a country like India because again, we started solving for a bigger time from day zero. So that is one piece. The other piece which we have talked to is hiring managers. They have told us, we take three months to train someone, find someone. If you can reduce that, we are happy to pay one month salary per person to you. So there are multiple monetization pieces which we can explore and we can finalize.
01:30:52
Speaker
And again, as this propensity to pay both from industry and from students, I'm least worried about that right now. Amazing. Do you plan to launch more courses beyond finance? And what's the timeline? What next in the product roadmap? So product roadmap is first we complete phase two, then in phase three, we will have multiple properties. Right now we are doing equity research and we'll do credit, we'll do banking. So I think in finance itself, we have
01:31:22
Speaker
more than 10,000, 20,000 jobs to unlock first. And for 20,000 jobs, you would need at least two lakh people coming into your course every year, which is my target to beat Amity, right? So I think that is, once that is done, and again, focus is important. What we tell our students, go deep versus going horizontal. So you want to go deep in finance first. And then I think some of the pieces which we are building, we are building it
01:31:50
Speaker
thinking that we'll get into business analytics, data analytics, other pieces as well down the line so that you have the same Excel modeling, same business environment, modules being taken over, and some pieces we need to build. But for now, for the next few months, finance is the only thing which we are doing. We are going deep. What we tell our students, we do that ourselves as well. Amazing. Do you think I should ask something else?
01:32:19
Speaker
I mean, we can talk about a lot of things. I have been talking about a lot of things. I think we can talk about this vertical learning piece. We can talk about how this is a big time overall. We can also talk about how, in fact, we'll be positioned in students' minds, how a student will think about it.
Corporate Partnerships and Feedback Encouragement
01:32:41
Speaker
On the careers part, the corporate connect or the recruitment part of it, how are you scaling that up, like to build that out?
01:32:51
Speaker
So one thing is we don't need to scale a lot, right? We need the first 100. Like this year, we would be placing, if we are doing a great job, we'll be placing 1000 students. 1000 is a very small number. Any KBO hires 1000 in one go. So when we talk to, we talk to some firms, I don't want to take the names right now because the deals are not finalized. When we talk to these firms, they're like 100,000.
01:33:19
Speaker
They are so desperate, they are saying, we don't find right people, we have to hire them, train them. I just showed them their work, the current work which they have done. It just teach them a little bit of DCF, a little bit of valuation, we will take them.
01:33:38
Speaker
Every month we talk to them, we show them, hey this is the progress and they will say, you know, this is good, just a little bit of this, little bit of that and they are promising in numbers like not tens and twenties, hundreds and two hundreds and five hundreds. We'll be lucky to be able to get those when we will graduate. I think that's the bigger problem on the hiring side.
01:33:58
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at ad at the podium dot in. That's ad at t h e p o d i u m dot in.