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What VCs Miss About Edtech, Lessons from LEAD School
140 Plays5 years ago
How did Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah turn LEAD School into one of India’s most impactful edtech unicorns transforming affordable private schools? In this episode, they reveal how their mission-driven journey is reshaping the future of K12 education in India.
Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, co-founders of LEAD School, share their journey from corporate careers at Procter & Gamble to building India’s largest school-first edtech platform. LEAD School began as a single school experiment and scaled into a nationwide network serving millions of students through its school-in-a-box model. In this candid conversation with Akshay Datt, they discuss their motivations, early failures, the pivot from running schools to partnering with them, and why they believe equity in education is India’s biggest opportunity. This episode is timely as India’s K12 market undergoes massive change with NEP 2020, funding winter pressures, and edtech consolidation. Listeners will gain unique insights into sustainable scaling, contrarian business models, and the future of affordable education in emerging markets.
- How LEAD School grew from 1 school to an edtech unicorn
- Lessons from building during India’s edtech funding winter
- Why a school-first model beats B2C in K12 education
- Macro trends like NEP 2020 reshaping India’s education sector
- Founder insights on teacher training, student outcomes and sustainable growth
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00:00 - Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah’s early influences
04:30 - From P&G careers to finding purpose in education
13:10 - Sabbatical experiments that led to LEAD School
22:00 - Running Zee Learn and lessons in K12 education
31:50 - Founding LEAD School and the first village school
44:15 - Cracking English learning with the ELGA program
57:20 - Scaling from own schools to school-in-a-box model
1:10:00 - Surviving funding winter and finding mission-aligned VCs
1:18:30 - Competing in India’s fragmented K12 edtech market
1:26:50 - Vision to reach 10 million students
#SumeetMehta #SmitaDeorah #LEADSchool #LEADGroup #EdtechUnicorn #K12EducationIndia #AffordablePrivateSchools #NEP2020 #SchoolInABox #EdtechFundingIndia #FutureOfEducationIndia #EducationTechnologyStartups #FoundersInFocus #FounderThesis #AkshayDatt #FundingWinter #IndianStartups #EducationEquity #TeacherTrainingIndia #StudentOutcomes
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Transcript
Introduction to Founder Thesis Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
H T Smartcast You are listening to an H T Smartcast original
00:00:23
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay.
Goals of the Podcast
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi, this is Aurob and you are listening to the Founder Thesis Podcast. We meet some of the most celebrated sort of founders in the country. And we want to learn how to build a unicorn.
Lead School's Mission in Education
00:00:40
Speaker
The idea was to make a difference. Now I am in education, but I'm still serving those guys who already have a lot of options. And I think Smita was doing this not-for-profit amongst Aang and Baris. So it wasn't like a one event, but I think it was a series of self-reflections and conversation to say that if we have to commit the next 10-15 years of our life,
00:01:09
Speaker
then let's do it in a place where there is an intersection of point of need and point of opportunity. Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world.
Sumit's Educational Influences
00:01:22
Speaker
In this episode of Founder Thesis, Akshay Dutt talks to the husband-wife duo of Sumit and Smita, who are revolutionizing affordable education in India through their venture Lead School. Greetly influenced by his father, who was passionate about teaching,
00:01:38
Speaker
Sumit quit a lucrative career abroad and dived into the field of education. His passion to create an impact is perfectly complemented by Smita's deep insight into early learning that she learned as a mom herself who managed to teach her one year old to read. Listen to this fascinating conversation as Sumit and Smita talk about their journey and endeavors to transform education one school at a time. Hi, I'm Sumit.
00:02:08
Speaker
Hi, I'm Switha. And we are co-founders of Lead School. So, Sumit, let me start with you first. And there was a lot of influence of your father on what you have built today in Lead School. So can you tell me about your growing up years, your early childhood and your father and how that influenced you?
00:02:32
Speaker
See, I grew up in this small town called Pathankot in Punjab. And to be honest, when I was growing up, it wasn't apparent to me that there was something missing or there was something wrong because I seem to be going to one of the best schools in Pathankot. My father was a professor in English in a college and my mother was the teacher in the same school that I went to.
00:02:58
Speaker
But my father was fairly atypical for his times and teaching and learning used to be a dinner table conversation at our house almost every day. So he would come back and narrate what happened in his classroom. And I was a young child and I could see that for him his classroom was like a theatre where he would perform.
00:03:22
Speaker
When I would go with him to different places, like to a post office or a bank, I would see random people stand up, come and touch his feet. He seemed to have a lot of people who used to regard him very highly.
00:03:36
Speaker
And then at the dinner table, you know, he will pick up random things like something would stick with me still are, you know, we would be having a roti and he would kind of tear it in half and say, I don't know why they teach fractions in schools by writing one above two. They should show that how one becomes half. And this half is what is one by two. He would cut an apple in three pieces and ask us whether it is one third or one half or one fourth.
Smita's Educational Background
00:04:04
Speaker
So a lot of, you know,
00:04:06
Speaker
I think my learning during my childhood actually happened more at home than in my school. And because he was very passionate about education and there was a lot of conversation about education, it became an important part of my life. I still remember, I think we must have been the only household in Patanko to have a library in our home.
00:04:30
Speaker
Uh, and I ended up reading Shakespeare when I was in class five, six, seven, I don't know how much I understood, but I would just, I think my habit of reading actually came from him. Uh, and my understanding of what happened in the classroom actually came from him much before I, uh, began to truly understand
Meeting at P&G and Building Friendship
00:04:49
Speaker
it. So, uh, Smitha, uh, I'd like to hear about your early childhood influences also. What kind of family do you come from? Tell me about your parents.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, so you know, it's as I was hearing Sumit, I realized that actually there were a lot of early influences as far as education is concerned. I hadn't really reflected on it earlier. But yeah, my parents basically come from UP, my father particularly comes from a very, very small village.
00:05:21
Speaker
in UP. He was the 10th child amongst 11 children, so pretty much raised by his siblings actually and then studied in BHU. So, he was the one, I think amongst all the siblings who sort of made his way out to a bigger city.
00:05:41
Speaker
And my mother came from actually a fairly wealthy family in Gorakpur. But for that time, her father was very progressive and she was the only girl child actually, I think, in the family who went and did master's and studied. So I think for both my parents, by the time they had me and I have a younger brother,
00:06:11
Speaker
When they had us, I think education was a very, it was a very important thing for them. Was your mother educated as well? Yeah, so my mother was like an MA in English and she in fact did her MA after marriage. So for her, it was a matter of pride that she was the only girl child who was so educated and Marwadi families, girls were not that educated at that time.
00:06:41
Speaker
And the reason why my grandfather chose my father was more than money for him. It was about an educated guy who was living in the city because that's a better life for my daughter.
00:06:56
Speaker
And I think that was when I think back, I actually had a great relationship with my grandfather till the time he was alive, because I always felt that he was very progressive for that time, to have thought like that about his daughter. So for both my parents, it was their life's mission to provide the best education to me and my brother.
00:07:18
Speaker
And I think that's the context in which I grew up. Let's go to the, you know, moving from PwC to PNG, where you met Sumit. Well, my day one of PNG, I met Sumit. Wow. So let me bring you into
Transition to Education Sector
00:07:34
Speaker
the conversation. Do you also recall meeting Smita on her day one? Like, had you already joined when she joined?
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I joined in the May of 2019. I think Smita joined in December. We were in the laundry business and the finance partner who was working in our team, he had decided to move on and I recall he mentioned, K, you know, I'm going to move and there's another person who is joining, so I'm going to hand over to her. So why don't you also come because the marketing sections you can take?
00:08:07
Speaker
And this was on a weekend, so gradually I went to office on a weekend. It was a Sunday. My first day was a Sunday. I remember it was a week. Yeah, so I went there and then, yeah, I think very, it's very mauvish, you know, I recall her walking into the door and walking across my cubicle and I was like, hmm, this is interesting.
00:08:32
Speaker
So, I did not mind him leaving because the replacement was more interesting. So, this is interesting, she is interesting but she will be a better way to put it.
00:08:47
Speaker
And did you also like find Sumit interesting in that first meeting? No, I'm sorry, no. I don't think, no, I was, it was, for me, it was, you know, PNG was like my first job. It's a big company. And this guy calls me on a Sunday. And, you know, you expect the offices to be like really nice and fancy. And, you know, I used to go to a lot of client offices, which were actually really good.
00:09:14
Speaker
and I entered office on Sunday in any case it was damn gloomy plus this particular office was terribly messy. It felt like a you know slightly cleaner version of a government dafthar.
00:09:27
Speaker
And I was like, what am I walking into? But my only solace then was that all of these guys are from the various IAMs. So I'm sure it's a place with smart people, and I learned something. But that said, I was focused on learning that day. I don't think I paid attention to anyone else for that matter. I knew there were two, three people in office, and that's about it. Yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
So maybe you could both like, weave in and out and tell me about your journey with PNG.
Vision and Challenges of Lead School
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think it'll be good for me to talk about Smith and she to talk about meeting. But anyway, so I was super focused. I think she is used or was used to being really good at work. And we used to goof around because we had just come out of campus and, you know, didn't have a very strong work ethic. But Smith was used to be super focused. So it was great to have her in the team as the finance person, because, you know,
00:10:28
Speaker
She would be very kind of focused and get the outcomes. And I remember we work together only for a short period of time. But in that short period of time, see in P&G, marketing or brand kind of believes that they are the core function everybody is supporting.
00:10:47
Speaker
whether it is true or not doesn't matter. So and then for a finance person to basically stand up and drive strategy was not normal. But Smitha used to do that. So we used to both dislike her guts, but also respect her ability.
00:11:06
Speaker
So that was the time when we used to work together. I think after that I moved to another stint and another office and she continued. And I was in PNG, India for a very short period of time. I moved to Singapore after about six to nine months, I think, or maybe nine months to a year. And I think it was six to nine months. Had you made enough of an impression for the relationship to continue once you moved on?
00:11:35
Speaker
I think before I moved to Singapore, we at least had yeah, we had figured that we liked each other. Okay. Yeah, so you could say, I did well.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think to, you know, to tell a bit about Sumit of that time and I think the Sumit of that time was very different from the person I eventually landed up sort of seriously dating and then getting married to. But I think that that phase as Sumit was saying, you know, so, see, I came from, I had already worked for three, three and a half years in a fair, in a very professional environment.
00:12:17
Speaker
You know, I had an impression of people who come from the IIMs, and somehow Sumit and a few of the others who were there didn't fit into what were impressions that were, I mean, that were assumptions, honestly, in my head, because I didn't have any friends from there. But yeah, these guys were a lot more chilled out and casual.
00:12:34
Speaker
And I think some of the early friendship, not only with Sumit, but a few common friends that we had was that it's OK to chill also a little bit. It's OK to take a bit of a break because I was just very serious, very focused. So I think they used to find me boring. I'm sure there were jokes behind my back.
00:12:56
Speaker
But yeah, so I think, to me, that that time was not as focused, I would say. I often used to feel that, hey, there's a lot of caliber which is not getting used. Why would you do that to yourself? Because whatever work you're showcasing here, you're definitely far better than this.
00:13:19
Speaker
We became friends. I mean, we had some common friends. And, you know, once we stopped working together in laundry business, as Sumit was talking about, he moved on. I think you moved to healthcare, right? Yeah, I moved to healthcare. He moved to healthcare and I was working across a portfolio of brands because finance teams are smaller. So I was working across a portfolio and I was no longer working with healthcare. So we were not working together.
00:13:46
Speaker
And so we would just meet because we had common friends. And my early impressions were that here is a really smart guy and a good guy, like a nice human being.
00:14:02
Speaker
I felt there was unrealized potential or I felt that he, why are you spending so much time just goofing around? You know, why not work a little harder? So I think we were very, we were, we were poles apart in this. I think then Sumit had a interesting crucible event. I think I will let Sumit talk about it. Things changed after that. Things dramatically changed. But one quick question before Sumit. So what made you like him?
00:14:29
Speaker
Okay, that is a very tough question to answer. I think it was not thought through at all. We were good friends and the conversations were
00:14:44
Speaker
Yeah, you know, the conversations were intellectual. He's a, I also felt that he was very, he's a very principled kind of person. So there was, you know, there was, there was a very strong belief system and heart to everything that he was doing or not doing. So while there was this casual approach on the surface deep, deeper inside is very, very
00:15:16
Speaker
serious and wanting to make a difference to the world. I think I admired that and that stood out. Once I got to know him a little better, it looked like, okay, this faffing around is more on the surface. It's not real. And that's where I started realizing that, hey, listen, why are you wasting your time doing this?
00:15:40
Speaker
Okay, so with what happened that transformed you from casual to focused? See, I think that the reason I was casual, honestly, and I've now now realized is that very often, basically, this shield that we put in front of ourselves, you know, of not wanting to get hurt, so you basically act as if you don't care. But broadly from right from
00:16:06
Speaker
Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and in Mumbai because I had experienced that people either had better exposure, I had a chip on my shoulder about
00:16:20
Speaker
coming from a small town, not having had the same pedigree or background and stuff. So one way was to kind of work hard, and second way was to just basically show that you don't care. And fundamentally, I think there was a basic level of smarts and capability which would get you by, so whether it is getting into PNG or working through PNG. So I was getting by without having to work very hard.
00:16:46
Speaker
So we moved to Singapore and when we moved to Singapore, people from different countries had moved to what was called the Global Business Unit. And when everyone went there, then they realized there was a lot of kind of duplication and there was an opportunity to kind of reduce some amount of headcount.
00:17:05
Speaker
So, I recall there was like a period when the managing directors or the marketing directors got together and they went through all the, we were assistant band managers at that time to look at who stays and who goes.
00:17:20
Speaker
Uh, and it's, it's almost like shark tank, you know, so I, I remember every day, one of our ABMs would be called inside this room. He would be spoken to. And when they come out, uh, you know, we had this hand signal, thumbs up means I'm in and thumbs down means I'm, I'm not in. And then we would go down the elevator quietly because we didn't know who was around us. And then there was this coffee shop. We would go either celebrate or commiserate. And this happened for like two, three weeks because they were those many to go by. So when my chance came, I went in and, uh,
00:17:51
Speaker
I think that's been one of the, one of my life changing conversations. So Shireesh, who was our marketing director, sat me down and said, Sumit, we had a conversation about you and, you know, X person had some good things to say about you. There were some questions. On balance, we realized that you've done well, so we would like you to continue.
00:18:14
Speaker
So I was hearing my sigh of relief. OK, OK, you know, it's it's cool. And then he said, but I want you to be a person about whom there is never a conversation. It should always be a yes. And it just struck me like a bolt of lightning that this is the kind of person I want to be.
00:18:38
Speaker
And I think since then, basically, I just made a decision that whatever I do, I'm going to excel and not have anyone the chance to ever question. So I think that was the turning point in my life. And I still, every year during Teacher's Day, during Guru Purnima, thank Sri Rish for that one conversation.
00:19:00
Speaker
So both of you did quite well at PNG in terms of the portfolios that you were handling. Tell me about that journey and, you know, till Sumit decided to quit first. I think to be honest, Mehta did far better in PNG than I did.
00:19:17
Speaker
And, you know, even if I leave aside the first two years where I was kind of coasting. But the one thing that I feel, you know, I did really, really well was this healthcare stint, you know, when I was handling healthcare for Asia Pacific.
00:19:33
Speaker
I think what I realized about myself was that doing things differently and things which were not done kind of gave me the kicks and that's where I thrived. Normal assignments I didn't have a lot of fun. So what made you want to leave the world of FMCG and enter education?
00:19:55
Speaker
You know, the best way to capture this is my father used to say that there is something wrong with you. You know, you carry a sense of, he used to call it divine discontentment. He said you never satisfied with status quo. You always want to change things. Why is it? Honestly, for me, I always had this thing about, okay, we've got to do something meaningful.
00:20:23
Speaker
And there are a couple of things which actually came together. I remember I had come back from Singapore to Patahankot and my niece by that time was in grade 8, I think. And she was studying. And as an indulgent uncle, I basically asked her to give her book and I started asking her questions. And one of the questions he said,
00:20:49
Speaker
I said yeah, the syllabus is okay, but life is not about syllabus. She said no, in our school, basically, if it is not in the syllabus, it's not important.
00:20:59
Speaker
And it got me thinking, she's in this small well in Patankot, doesn't have any idea about what's going to hit her when she goes out. And things haven't changed in the last 20 years since I left school. So it kind of brought back all the old memories of I could see her repeating the same journey.
00:21:23
Speaker
At the same time, around the same time, my father had retired and he had taken up this role with this chain of schools called Sarvitkari. So his role was to, he was the secretary, so he would go around school from school to school doing inspections and then giving them some ideas on how to improve and stuff. So when I would visit, I would... This was like a private chain. Private chain, yeah. So I would accompany him. And you know, again,
00:21:50
Speaker
he would be talking to the principal, I would sit in the classroom and see what was happening. And same thing, you know, teacher is basically with her back to the students, writing on the wall, students are copying. By that time, we were in Singapore, so we were also exposed to better kind of learning. I was, like I told you, always interested. So I was reading a lot in terms of, you know, Howard Gardner or Piaget or the schools that learn to really figure out what was happening around the world.
00:22:18
Speaker
So I would tell my father, these guys are still teaching the way teaching used to be 20 years back and stuff. I think one day he kind of snapped and said, and I think a lot of these kind of came together and I told PNGK, I'm not having fun. I want to basically want to do and go and figure out.
00:22:39
Speaker
So, and P&G is a, I mean, if you're doing well, P&G is a tough company to leave. And they're very, very, very, very, it's a really good place to work. So my manager said, don't leave, take a break and go figure out. So I took a sabbatical and came back to India.
00:22:56
Speaker
And the idea was to try out different things to see what do I really want to do. So that's where we did some experiments in education. So we ran this program called Beyond Books. The idea was, can we take learning outside of the traditional books and see if it can be more engaging. When you say V, what does V mean here? So when I was in Singapore thinking about the sabbatical, me and Smita put together this curriculum.
00:23:21
Speaker
Then I came early and then Smita also took a couple of months off. So when we ran this program, we ran this program together. In addition to this program, I also was teaching marketing in symbiosis. I took a visiting faculty assignment and I was teaching both SEMHID and SIBM. And then I was also helping another friend set up. So I was trying my hands at different things to really figure out what do I want to do.
00:23:51
Speaker
And a couple of things actually helped me make my decision. I think one was the Beyond Books camp was a great success. I mean, we had these, was it 18 kids or 12 kids?
00:24:03
Speaker
I forget. Yeah, even I forget. I think 15, 18 kids. So we took them to this place called Halauzi near Patankot. And they had come from four or five different schools. And I think what I at least experienced was that I had a lot of fun working with these kids. They had a lot of fun. They learned a lot. They didn't want to go back. And I could see that, OK, there is something here, which I really enjoy.
00:24:30
Speaker
And then I was teaching and I love teaching, but in symbiosis I remember I gave them a case study and after a week when we went back for their presentations, Spita had joined me for that presentation. Midway through those presentations I turned to her and said, K.R., this problem is not now. This is basically poor plumbing from school days.
00:24:50
Speaker
So if we have to make a difference, you've got to go back to school. Higher Ed may, we should not. So it made my decision clear. I want to basically commit to schooling within education, not higher ed or something else.
00:25:04
Speaker
So that sabbatical was helpful in figuring out what I wanted to do. But we didn't have enough money at that time and I hadn't really figured out. So Mohit called me and said, it's been five, six months. I have a great assignment. You come back.
00:25:21
Speaker
So I went back to PNG and took up this beauty care Asia-Pacific role. But I think in my heart, I was done. So after about a year in PNG, then I said, it's not going to be possible for me to figure out while being in PNG because we are high achievement orientation. If I'm in PNG, I'm going to really be working 12, 13 hours here. I will not have time to figure out. So I quit and then was very keen to do something in education.
Founding and Educational Model of Lead School
00:25:46
Speaker
Yeah, so I was actually in two minds to start on my own or do something and then a common friend, same Manish Chacha, you know, the Manish Shokhani, who Smitha spoke about. He said, you know, why don't you meet Subhash Chandra? He has something in education. And I had no clue that they had anything in education. So I flew down from Singapore, met Subhash G and he said,
00:26:10
Speaker
Why don't you go and look what we're doing? So I went looked at Zealand, met the people there, saw what they were doing. And then I wrote back to him saying, I think this is what you're doing and this is what more can be done because they were only in early childhood. And I realized that early childhood is really important from an education perspective, very low penetration in India, very low awareness on the importance of early childhood. So there's a lot to be done.
00:26:34
Speaker
But beyond early childhood, you know, you got to give the students a path to really go towards kind of college. So the whole K-12 path has to be added. So I wrote back to him and then I went to Singapore. We were kind of wrapping up. And then after about 20, 25 days, he called and said, you know, I saw what you send. Why don't you come and run the company?
00:26:59
Speaker
To my mind, I think it was it was good because it would have given me a good chance to understand India education. I mean, I had read about the theory, I was self taught, but it was a good opportunity for me to now put it into practice at a scale which will be impactful. So so that's what got us to move back to India. And I took up the role. Had you become a father by then? No.
00:27:25
Speaker
No, no, no. So, Zoya was born in India. We came back to India and then Zoya was born. Yeah, so I think that's when the five years sent in Zealand started.
00:27:36
Speaker
In fact, there is an interesting story there Akshay with Sumit quitting and was expecting our first child. So Sumit spoke about his desire to move back and so he left PNG. I was still with PNG and we were in Singapore and he was figuring out what to do.
00:27:59
Speaker
And he was connecting with people. And one of the people he connected with, in that context, I got him connected with Manish Chacha. And we used to talk a lot with Manish Chacha about education every time he visited Singapore. And that's how he was exploring that. I think the day he left, he put in his papers, maybe two weeks later, we found out that I'm expecting.
00:28:25
Speaker
And I remember this very stressed period that we went through. It was an evening. We used to live close to the bay in Singapore, and we were walking. So it was like, hey, we're expecting a kid, and you think it's a bad time for me to leave.
00:28:43
Speaker
leave PNG because we don't have responsibilities and this and that. And we spoke and I said, I think we need to enjoy having our baby and the child cannot come in the way of either one of us feeling that what we really wanted to pursue we couldn't.
00:29:04
Speaker
we have enough savings and we'll figure this out because we're in this together. And because he was almost considering going back and speaking to Mohit saying that, hey, I'm taking back my resignation.
00:29:17
Speaker
But yeah, he decided to still leave P&G. And yeah, and we worked that out and I worked out a transfer with P&G. Though my boss was super, super pissed with me, because I had just been promoted. And when I told him that, hey, Sumit has left, he went and spoke to Sumit's boss and told him that you have to ask this guy to stay.
00:29:40
Speaker
because I can't let Switha go to India. And I have not promoted her for this. And he was really, really upset. And I think it was coming from a place of care, but I can totally imagine. I mean, if I was in this place, I would be super upset too, that, hey, I put so much of effort. You know, AD promotions were not a small thing. It required regional approvals and
00:30:00
Speaker
He got me. I was promoted to ADN. I was made the region treasury associate director. It was a pretty big role. And now suddenly I said, my husband is leaving. I'm having a baby and I want to move back to India. And they were like, what are you telling us? But they actually made it work for me. And I think that's how great the company is that they said, if that's your
00:30:27
Speaker
need, you know, you relocate and you work out of India and we'll figure out a transition, you know, let you hand over this role to someone else while we find another role for you in India. And that's that's when we moved back October 2007. Okay, okay. And so, like, I think within a year of moving back, you decided to quit PNG. So why was that? Yeah, so you know, what happened was that
00:30:57
Speaker
Sumit's passion for education was always there and hence it was a fairly normal topic of discussion between us, you know, always. And whenever we went back to Patankur, it was a very, you know, it was a very deep topic of discussion between him and his father and hence, you know, he would share a lot with me. And when he took a sabbatical to experiment and figure out how he can contribute in education, I supported him and I
00:31:26
Speaker
worked with him on that Beyond Books program. I think that was my first time interacting with kids and actually thinking about education. And I had fun. I had a lot of fun. I still didn't think of it as something that I want to commit my life to. Then the second thing, the next instance, which was a few years later, was when he wanted to move back. As he was evaluating options, of course, we were discussing. And I was also reading quite a bit.
00:31:55
Speaker
And he decided to take up the Z opportunity. Part of it also was that it would be a role based out of Mumbai. And we were expecting Zoya and my parents are in Mumbai. So even I felt more comfortable moving here. Our parents felt much more comfortable because they were like at least one set of parents are close by.
00:32:22
Speaker
Around that time, Sumit gave me a set of books written by Glenn Doman, which I think one of his friends recommended, which talks about how does brain development happen in young babies and what can parents do and mothers do to
00:32:43
Speaker
provide them a very engaging learning environment. And I think for me, that book basically just completely opened my eyes to all that's possible with a young child.
00:32:59
Speaker
and how a brain develops. And I think ever since I've had a fascination for reading about and researching on brain development, and how does the human brain respond to things? And if you want the human brain to learn something, then how do you go about it? And so I think I finished that series before Zoya was born, and I started a reading program with Zoya when she was six months old.
00:33:27
Speaker
And she became an independent reader by the time she was three years. No one has ever read a book for her after that. That was my interest in education. So when I came back over here, I think two things happened. One was, of course, that I was reading about all this and I wanted to spend a lot of time with Zoya.
00:33:47
Speaker
I think a few years earlier when we used to talk as a couple about kids, whether we want to have kids, both of us had this, there was some consensus between the two of us that when we have kids, one of us will leave our job and really spend time in raising them.
00:34:08
Speaker
And then we'll take turns. It just made sense for me to do it. So that was playing on my mind. And P&G, I didn't see a career anymore in P&G India. And I knew that now this is a life choice we've made. We're going to be here in India because he was very passionate about being here. And if I'm not going back, if I'm not moving to any other country,
00:34:31
Speaker
Then, you know, why should I spend time with PNG? I might as well take the time and spend it with my daughter. And that's when I left. And so like there was like three years of being a full time stay at home mom. Yeah. And it was, you know, it was tough because I am just used to doing a lot of work.
00:34:51
Speaker
So, but I think the first time I saw an early sign that she actually can read, even though she was just a 10 month old baby at that time, 10 or 11 months old. So that's how young she was. She was still crawling, right? Or maybe a year.
00:35:08
Speaker
So it's just about the year. And it's basically, I just needed this for myself. I needed to know whether what I'm doing is working out. And I thought if I tell Sumit that he'll be super pissed with me because he'll be like, how does it matter? She's a kid and you're doing what you're doing. And just be happy with that. So I, in fact, didn't tell him that I'm going to do this experiment. And I actually put out a lot of word cards on the floor
00:35:39
Speaker
They didn't have pictures and they had big words like elephant and pigeon and penguin and all of that, which I had taught her over a period of time. And I just sat in one corner of the room and I would say the word and she would crawl to that word cut, she would pull it out and give it to me. And the first time she did it, I was like, oh, this is like a fluke, you know, I mean, come on. And she just did that with some 30 words.
00:36:03
Speaker
And I think I've never felt so successful in my life, honestly, Akshay. I think that was true success. I was like, hey, this works. And that evening when he came home, I told him about it and he saw it and it worked. And I think that's when I started thinking about, hey, listen, these things work and this is not about
00:36:24
Speaker
Any child being special or any child being gifted, it is essentially we really underestimate the ability of a young brain and we are not giving them enough simulation and not the right sort of simulation. And there is this belief that children can read only after a certain age and well, I have evidence in front of me that that's not true.
00:36:47
Speaker
Okay, okay. So Swamit, you had a pretty successful stint at Z-Learn, heading that business for Subhash Chandra. So, you know, what made you want to move on? And, you know, what did you learn in that stint, which you wanted to apply in the next thing?
00:37:04
Speaker
See, I think my big learning during that stint, Akshay, was that I think what I became aware of is that in Indian education, there are really three strata that we're talking about. The government school system is really different.
00:37:23
Speaker
And then the high fee school system is different. And then there is in the middle, this affordable fee segment. And all these three, their drivers, the reason for the outcomes, the reason why they are, the way they are, they're all so different. And I was really working on the higher segment, the high fee segment. Kitzi and both Mount Litra, they serve upper middle class and rich parents.
00:37:52
Speaker
I think for me what happened was that I lost my dad in 2009 and that's when basically I started to really you know my sense is during these deep moments you start to question a lot of your assumptions and
00:38:07
Speaker
take a pause. So through 2010, I was pensive thinking about what am I doing and stuff. And also started to realize that the reason I had moved back to India, you know, I might have taken Zealand because it seemed like the right thing, but I think I have kind of lost my way because the idea was to make a difference. Now I am in education, but I'm still serving those guys who already have a lot of options.
00:38:36
Speaker
And I think Smita was doing this not-for-profit amongst Aangan bodies. So it wasn't like a one event, but I think it was a series of self-reflections and conversation to say that if we have to commit the next 10-15 years of our life, then let's do it in a place where there is
00:38:59
Speaker
there is an intersection of point of need and point of opportunity. I mean, these terms now are clear. At that time, we were thinking, let's do something which is more meaningful and which actually makes impact versus just growing a business which on the surface is in education. But I mean, we're not really serving those who really need it. So I think the genesis for us from this deep desire to make a difference. And then, you know,
00:39:28
Speaker
a couple of kind of events where I felt that my personal principles were kind of beginning to clash with the corporate groups. I thought it's a good time to kind of chart my own path. And then when I did, I think Smita was ready to kind of join and then we both came together to set up lead school. So what was the nonprofit like, what were you doing in that, Smita?
00:39:54
Speaker
I think I was in the space where I was wanting to now do more and just not you know work with Zoya Nane. It was also getting quite
00:40:04
Speaker
I was basically itching to get back to work. I was not happy just staying at home. There was a lot more time also that I had. And I had by then read and experimented a lot with early childhood development stuff, mostly with Zoya. And also because Sumit was setting up preschools, it was something that both of us used to read about.
00:40:30
Speaker
At least in education there should be equity. It should not be that you have, you know, one child has access to some form of education because they come from a well-off family and another child doesn't because otherwise how do you uplift people and how do you really, you know, bring a common
00:40:51
Speaker
level playing field for all children. And I think that was a thought process that sort of started emerging in my head around 2010, 2011. Combination of stuff I was reading, what I was seeing.
00:41:06
Speaker
There were one or two instances in which I actually just decided to go inside these municipal communities, these slums, and see Anganbaddis. And I think what I saw really, really shook me.
00:41:23
Speaker
three-year-old kids, three-year-old babies were cleaning and there were no teaching learning aids. They were just there with this basic midday meal. The older kids were taking care of the younger kids. I think that sort of pinched and hurt quite a bit.
00:41:39
Speaker
And I felt that, hey, listen, what I know and what I can do with my kids, it needs to be taken to more children. And I can't let my learning and my life be about just raising two great kids. It has to be a lot more great kids. And that's what got me into setting up this nonprofit. So what I did essentially was
00:42:04
Speaker
an early version of a school in a box solution. So essentially started like, you know, these Anganwadi centers. So these were existing Anganwadi and where I provided like a school in the box solution to the teacher, which was pretty much like this metal box in which they were teaching learning aids, which I'd put together in a research manner as a kit. And there was like a curriculum with scripted plans, lesson plans. They were written in Marathi, but
00:42:32
Speaker
essentially it would help the teacher teach English. How does foundational learning happen was something that I was fairly well-versed with by then. And I was able to implement this in around
00:42:50
Speaker
in two clusters in Gorigao and in Chembur, mostly through friends and just my personal time and a couple of friends who were also sort of passionate about this, you know, giving some of their time while they had other day jobs.
00:43:07
Speaker
So I did that and those one and a half, two years of doing this, both I think made me realize two things very deeply. One is that this gave me a lot of meaning in my life and I was fairly convinced that this is what I want to commit myself to.
00:43:25
Speaker
But it also made me realize that I had working with the government and the speed there and the bureaucracy there was really testing my patience and my commitment to the space.
00:43:41
Speaker
And so I was just, I was myself now thinking of starting up a school or doing something on my own, which was more in the private sector, but working with low income communities. And around that time, Sumit also decided to leave Z. So
00:43:58
Speaker
I basically told him that, hey, listen, I think it's time for us to do this together. And we have all the family support. The kids are no longer that young. I think I had already spent four years staying out of work.
00:44:13
Speaker
Sumit, in fact, offered that, you know, we had a five year, five year deal. You've already done your five years with the kids. Why don't you take this forward and I'll stay at home and I'll take care of the kids. Was that a genuine offer, Sumit?
00:44:29
Speaker
I think it was a very genuine offer. You know, I think in hindsight, I wish she had taken it. Because you know, it's not easy for him to work with me because I drive people a lot. Because I work hard and he sees that there's no slack time for him. But jokes apart, it was a very genuine offer. So tell me about the lead school journey. See, I think when we began,
00:45:00
Speaker
In hindsight, a lot of these ideas look very crystal clear and stuff. I think when we began, we were clear that we wanted to be in the school space and we wanted to set up our own school or schools. But there was also this whole thing that setting up a school is like a project. Till the project gets off the ground, you can't be sitting and twiddling your thumbs. And we are both very, I think, by now I also had become a person who needs to do something.
00:45:29
Speaker
So, in 2012 we began, the two theses that we had was one, traditional learning, if it is just restricted to curriculum is not enough, because ultimately what we had seen in life was that if we are able to, if we can enable a child to become a leader of his life, which basically means we self-directed, self-motivated, intrinsic motivation, then a lot of things the children themselves can figure it out.
00:45:55
Speaker
We're working on developing like a leadership model for education for children. And at the same time, we were scouting for opportunities to set up a school. So one of our friends, you know, who had reached out to me when I was in Z for us to open a school at her property. And we had said no, because it was in a village and Z for Z, it would not have made sense.
00:46:17
Speaker
Now said, you know, now that you're not working with Zee, would you still consider? So in December 2012, I think we traveled to this village called Aaree near Namdabad, which is about 35 kilometers from Ahmedabad. And her father had this property, which is a piece of land where they were living adjacent to it. And we went around.
00:46:41
Speaker
like a 10, 20 kilometer radius of that place and visited all the schools. And what we saw convinced us was that here is where the point of need kind of meets the point of opportunity, because all these schools, even though some of them are English medium, really poor education, some were what they call semi English medium, where half the class was Gujarati, half the class was English, but it was pretty much Gujarati.
00:47:08
Speaker
So we said, okay, why don't we start from there? So our first school ended up being Shantiniketan English School in this village called Arari. We started, we decided to go ahead in Jan.
00:47:20
Speaker
And then we had to refurbish the dilapidated building into some form. Did you relocate there? I think we decided to be based in Bombay and I think that is again one of the good decisions we made because it forced us to design from a distance so that it could be replicable. If we had been in the school in hindsight again, we would have created an island of excellence but we so deeply embedded that it would have been solely dependent on us.
00:47:48
Speaker
So we hired staff, we designed the curriculum from Bombay, and then I and Sveta both used to travel very often. I would travel almost every week or every fortnight. Sveta would travel a little less frequently. So in 2012, April is when the school started. We had 14 kids come in the first day, one fourth. And those first three years of running that school is where all our learning happened.
00:48:18
Speaker
We had a lot of failures in the first year because we did what everyone else would have done in setting up a school. We thought of the best publisher. So we said, OK, let's buy Oxford books. And we hired teachers and then we trained them.
00:48:32
Speaker
And then we said, okay, now magic will happen in the classroom. And the first unit test results when it came, we basically came down crashing because the results were really poor. And then we started analyzing what are the issues here. And a couple of things which stood out was
00:48:51
Speaker
in grade two or grade three, I remember in math, basically, students were able to do addition, but not able to do addition with carryover and not able to do word problems at all.
00:49:05
Speaker
And we then were sitting in the pre-primary classes where we had some books which were teaching the alphabet and stuff. And we realized that basically these students who were coming from non-English families, they had no context to
00:49:24
Speaker
English was really, I mean, in our families, you know, there is some semblance of familiarity with the phonology of English. You don't understand the script, but you understand the sound and language of it. These kids had none of those. So they had to cover a very different journey. It couldn't be the journey that we were used to.
00:49:44
Speaker
And that led us to a lot of research on how English is learned for non-English speakers, non-English natives. And that's what ended up us creating this program, which we now call ELGA. And I think Smita can talk a lot more because she's really developed this. But I think the
00:50:06
Speaker
The larger point was working with those teachers, with those students, visiting those parents, spending time with those teachers made us realize that the needs of teachers, students and parents in an affordable school in a small town are so different from a high fee school or a school in a large town or a school which serves parents who themselves are well versed in English.
00:50:31
Speaker
And that really, that deep insight and understanding was the foundation on which the whole LEED school system ended up getting built. But Pritha, if you want to just spend some time talking about the English program, because that's really at the core of a lot of what we do, that will be helpful.
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so I think there, you know, I shared earlier about the reading program that I did with my own kids. And I guess the both, I mean, I think the learning I had during that time was that
00:51:04
Speaker
Just like children, you know, normally absorb language and learn language mostly in an auditory manner, right? Because they're listening to adults, you know, when they're babies, they're listening to adults and they're just connecting those meanings, right? That X word means something because they've seen it and someone has pointed at it multiple times. In the same manner, they can actually decode things in print because
00:51:30
Speaker
things in print are also like images and pictures, just like, you know, real life objects and people are. And you know, some of that and then also by the time like both my kids actually, I put them in a Montessori school and I was fairly, again, involved in terms of understanding the Montessori system. And phonics is a very fundamental approach in which they
00:51:57
Speaker
build language skills. And Montessori as a system is a more skill-based system versus a knowledge-based system. And how do you get young kids build early literacy and numeracy skills? So those were things which was something that I had even put together as part of my work with the Aangan bodies. And hence, that's how when we started the school in Areri,
00:52:23
Speaker
Shantini Kethin, we started from nursery to grade three in the first year. And a lot of my focus went in developing our early childhood program, from nursery to senior KG, which was not anchored on any textbooks or anything. I built it with another educator who came from an IB system because my kids were going to an international school and very integrated approach, very skill-based approach, and we built that.
00:52:52
Speaker
And, and when we identified this problem that Sumit was talking about, right, that even in math actually the challenge was English language, we basically at that point, you know, the, the research that we did was that, you know, English language actually across the world and in the more successful education systems is taught as a skill, again as a language skill and not as a subject.
00:53:17
Speaker
And what that really means is that, you know, getting kids to decipher and decode a language means they need to both understand meaning throughout, like words have meaning and they also need to understand how do those words even come together and how do I...
00:53:33
Speaker
piece those things together. So we basically took some of those principles, used the Singapore framework, which is a very, very robust English language learning framework, because that's a non-native English speaking country. But like India has an English medium-based school system. So kids need to be fluent with that language, though that's not their native language to begin with.
00:54:00
Speaker
And we basically then built the entire English language and general awareness program and which actually is split into five sort of components or sub subjects. The other thing that we did was
00:54:15
Speaker
You know, there was this one educator who worked with us, very young lady from TFI Teach for India. And, you know, she was working very, she was our first employee, really. And she was Karen. Karen was working with Sumit and me. And she asked me this question one day that, you know, we have only 40 kids in schools from grade one to three. And they pretty much, you know, they are all at different English levels.
00:54:41
Speaker
And the struggle is that in a third standard classroom, the teacher is struggling because different kids are at different level. So will you be OK if I group them differently? And I said, it's our school. Yeah, we should do what's right for kids. She's like, you know, but then it will not be a normal school timetable. And I told her, I said, Karen, who cares?
00:55:01
Speaker
Like it cannot be that all school timetables have to be the same. I mean, that's a shame, right? So I remember she was elated because she's like, really, can I do it? I said, that's the benefit of your own school. Of course, we can do it. And that's when we developed the level-based program. We did our early experiments, which now what we do with the ELGA program at scale is we basically do baseline assessment of any student who comes into the LEED system.
00:55:28
Speaker
We assess them for English language skills. The way we assess it is basically by giving them a new text that they've never read before and then, you know, they have to read it independently and answer comprehension questions of different levels of difficulty and they read multiple texts and different levels of texts and which, you know, now
00:55:48
Speaker
We basically very easily, you know, technology helps you with all this, right? We very easily are able to figure out what is a child's actual English skill level. And then our ELGA program, actually, it's a learning path where irrespective of what age you are and what grade you are, you start on that learning path from where your current skill set is.
00:56:08
Speaker
So you start from there, so you're actually able to move forward. And then it's like an accelerated path where every child at least goes through anything between one and a half or two and a half years of skill development within one academic cycle. That's how we've designed it. And I think that's been at the core of our success with students.
00:56:32
Speaker
So, ALGA program is for the primary years or even in middle years. So, we've now extended. So, yeah, ALGA is actually there right from pre-primary. We don't call it ALGA. In pre-primary, we keep it like an integrated program, but the journey starts from nursery.
00:56:49
Speaker
Uh, and then, uh, you know, we break it out into Elga only in grade one, because that's where the school systems are today. They still treat subjects differently, but yeah, so Elga goes all the way from grade one to now grade eight, because you know, uh, we've, uh, what, what we've seen is that, uh, in, in small town, India, where we, you know, where we serve students and schools, um, there is anything between two and a half to almost five years of English learning gap.
00:57:19
Speaker
And no wonder the kids are struggling across subjects. So yeah, so we actually extended the program up until grade eight now. So let me recap what I understood. You could have some child who joins in class fifth and while he would have class fifth's academic timetable, but he would also have a couple of hours every week in the ELGA program where he may be sitting with class three students because that's what his level is at.
00:57:46
Speaker
Yeah, so think of it as the timetable, you know, it's the same six hour timetable, but the kid has two classes. So the child will walk into school and go to an Elga class. They don't know whether that is, you know, low or high. They just know it's my Elga five class or Elga six class or Elga seven class. And then this class is.
00:58:08
Speaker
not by the age here. Yeah, it's mixed age group. And then they basically after they finish their class, which is the first one of the first two hours in school, then they then they pick up their bag and they go to their grade level math or EBS class. Now, what happens is that, you know, theoretically speaking, you could have grade three and grade five students sit together. But you don't normally see the thing is that
00:58:36
Speaker
The reason why the kids are behind grade level is more a school level problem. It's not a child level problem. Because these kids have not been exposed to such sort of learning. So pretty much the gaps in a school are similar. So we land up with similar age groups and not dramatically different age groups. But we do have some overlap between two years. And kids are quite OK.
00:59:05
Speaker
We don't land up with like a 13 year old sitting with a seven or eight year old. Typically that never happens unless let's say the 13 year old comes from, has made a switch from a vernacular school. I mean, outlying cases. Yeah, outlying cases. And those we help the school manage the classrooms in a way that it is also age appropriate, in a way that the kids are, they're able to work together.
Scaling Lead School and Future Vision
00:59:31
Speaker
We find that actually kids experience tremendous success because now they're able to understand stuff. See, otherwise this child is coming into a fifth grade class, not comprehending anything. And here they're succeeding and actually kids don't care about
00:59:49
Speaker
which are the grade they're sitting with. What they really care about is experiencing success themselves. And you know, in our own schools, in our early experiments, I know that there were siblings who were three years apart, sitting in the same Elga class.
01:00:05
Speaker
and they had no problems. And I remember, you know, this was, I think in Karmala school, I remember after the first year, like in the first year, when we put them together, the parents came and spoke to me and they asked me that, you know, will they be okay? Will our girls be okay? And I said, we'll take care that they'll be okay. And if they're emotionally not settling in the class, we will, you know, we will solve this. We'll figure this out. We'll separate this, but let's not force the kid into a different Elga level.
01:00:34
Speaker
And they kept faith. And I remember at the end of the year, the parents, you know, and in small towns, you know, for parents, it's so important to see their kids succeed.
01:00:45
Speaker
And I remember the father came and he was almost in tears. And he said, I never thought that my kid could do this. And the older kid had become an introvert before she came into our school because of the fact that she was not succeeding. She was not following anything. And now she was experiencing success in all classes.
01:01:05
Speaker
So 13 to 16, you ran just one single school. How did you pay your bills? So I think we are really poor. You must understand that.
01:01:18
Speaker
One of the books which has had a big influence on both me and Smita is Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think we read it in 2002, I remember. And then we decided that what is it that we need? How much do we need to basically take care of our needs? And our needs are very basic, Akshay. I think good education for the kids and some bit of travel, I think.
01:01:42
Speaker
Yeah, we're not like fancy cars and homes and stuff. We're not that. So we decided that we will need an X amount for us to become what the book says, financially independent. And then we are free to pursue really what we want to do with our life versus having to work to pay EMIs and bills. I think till date we're amongst the least paid in the company.
01:02:06
Speaker
No, no, no. So till 17 you were running that one school. Like when did this scale up happen from beyond one school? Oh yeah. So 2013, 14, 15, three years we ran that first school. 2015 we got the three schools in Maharashtra and we opened a new one of ours. So we went from one to five.
01:02:26
Speaker
So, you got three schools like this was like a franchise. No, we bought those like basically these were running schools. So, we bought the license and we started running those three schools. So, they are run by the same trust that Smita had set up earlier and in Mangong we set up another school which was
01:02:44
Speaker
bought the land and constructed the building and all of that. And here we actually put in our savings. And until then, I think, you know, for the Shantikitpur also, we put in our savings, which was not such a huge amount. But here now we had sort of committed our life to this work. And, you know, we put in some of our savings to
01:03:11
Speaker
So like in 16 you were a private school chain essentially where you had five brats. Yes, actually at that time it wasn't just five we were at one point running I think
01:03:24
Speaker
10-11 schools because we had partnered with the government of like Municipal Corporation of Delhi and we were running four government schools there because I think yeah, we wanted to basically see if you could make a difference in the government school system. So yeah, in 2016, if you ask me, we had five of our own and then four government schools and those schools have been there which had come in looking to partner with us. So they had said, you know, you're doing some good work, can you
01:03:52
Speaker
So, it was like a motley collection of 10-11 schools. And one path for us was we can continue to now grow these schools and then invest back the surplus to open more schools. But we could clearly see that that's going to be a very slow path to scale. And in our lifetime, we'll get to about 40-50 schools. And when we did the math, we realized that it's not going to be even a drop in the ocean because literally India has some 1.5 million schools.
01:04:20
Speaker
And also we were realizing these are like combined government private everything. Yes, 1.5 million is all and 1 million is government and the rest is private. And we also realized that, you know, from an investible vehicle, own schools is not very investible because of the regulatory concerns which a lot of investors have.
01:04:41
Speaker
So that was a fork in the road where we were thinking that now that you've developed a system and these couple of inbound interests also told us that other schools can benefit from it. And then we looked kind of aside and said, OK, there are these 400,000, 500,000 schools, private schools, rather than looking at adding more capacity. Should we actually go and work with them and improve their outcomes?
01:05:08
Speaker
So this was the process of thinking in 2016 where we had these two choices, whether we keep on opening more schools or should we go and partner with existing schools. And we chose the latter because it seemed more scalable. We could actually accelerate our impact because the impact capacity was already installed and it was also investable.
01:05:33
Speaker
And that's the decision making we went through. And then we approached a couple of people, and then Elegar came on board.
01:05:42
Speaker
So, once Alivar came on board is when you decided to kind of scale it up as a school in a box kind of a solution or like what was the solution that. Yeah, so I think a post Alivar the solution has evolved it is not fundamentally changed because fundamentally the solution is what we were implementing in our own schools which basically is that if you give me a building and it has teachers and students
01:06:05
Speaker
and you implement lead school, then all stakeholders get what they need to deliver a great running school. So teachers get their learning materials. Students get their books, workbooks. Parents get a monitoring system. School principal gets a monitoring system. School owner can manage his school. Administration coordinator. Everybody gets what they need. So it's literally like a school in the box because now everybody is equipped and enabled to do their job better so that the sum total of all it is a great running school.
01:06:35
Speaker
How much of your school in a box is a physical product like a book and how much of it is like a digital product? I would say, you know, hard to share. I mean, hard to think of percentages. But basically, I think it is configured around what is right for each stakeholder. So for the student, they need the physical material. So they have the books and they have the workbooks. And then a lot of the audio visual they need is in the in the classroom.
01:07:04
Speaker
and they have assessments. Teachers need lesson plans, resources, assessment analysis, remedials, attendance, all of that. So that's digital. Principles require a system to not only manage their school, but also monitor performance. So that's digital.
01:07:21
Speaker
Parents also require a digital way to monitor. So a lot of those are apps. But in the school for teaching learning, what we have realized is you got to start from what is required to deliver great learning, which is multimodal. So there is audiovisual, there is kinesthetic and there is auditory, which translates into books and workbooks and assessment for students. Teaching learning material for the school, which teachers and students can use.
01:07:45
Speaker
And physical hardware, which is required to deliver. So, you know, every classroom to get transformed into a smart class requires certain hardware. So all of this is put together into a school in a box. And what about like a human resource perspective? Like a lot of teachers may not be able to use what you're providing them. So do you like also?
01:08:08
Speaker
send trainers to schools to upskill the teachers and all that, like is that part of the solution? Yeah, see I think one of our big learnings early on was that the traditional teacher training model also had to be completely appended because it wasn't working. So what we have done is we basically a lot of the teacher training and capability building happens through the product itself.
01:08:32
Speaker
And then the role of the trainer really is a coach because now there is data available on what's happening. So that person can actually analyze and then personalize the intervention for teachers. So what we call our excellence managers, their role is to observe and coach. So they go observe how their teachers are teaching, and then they give very simple inputs on what alteration the teacher needs to make in her behavior. So it's not cognitive. It's very behavioral.
01:09:00
Speaker
What does she need to change in her teaching learning approach or habit or practice in the classroom for learning to happen? So the role of our person has changed. It's not come and conduct a session and do training. It's observe and coach and then also help the principal sometimes make school level interventions. OK. How did you create these excellence coaches? I mean, this seems like a pretty unique kind of a role. You would not be able to hire someone easily for it.
01:09:31
Speaker
So I think this was a massive whiteboard exercise where we basically said, what does a school over 10 months of an academic year looks like? And at what point would teachers need what? Because you've got to start from the user. And then we created what we call like the seven steps of excellence in a school. And I think the early work when they were
01:09:59
Speaker
Given that we had run schools, it was fairly intuitive. The task for us was to break down or deconstruct what we intuitively knew into steps that everybody else could replicate.
01:10:12
Speaker
So, that work happened in 2017 when we got our first cohort of schools to partner and the first year was very close observation on ok we are implementing this is it working not working and then we made some minor tweaks and now it is gone through cycles of implementation for us to know that if we do these certain things with teachers in the beginning of the academic year through the year after the first midterm assessment and then later results come.
01:10:38
Speaker
So I think that the whole experience of having run our own schools actually has been fundamental to developing this excellence model. And then hiring these people, we've got a lot of good people from Teach for India, for example, because they have the right kind of experience set and mindset. And then now we have also learned how to get them on board and orient and train and coach them so that they can become good excellence managers.
01:11:09
Speaker
So how has Lead School changed post getting funded? Once you are a VC funded organization, then I'm sure it would have led to a certain amount of transformation. There are stakeholders who have expectations and probably there is more pressure to grow now. So what have those changes been for you as founders and how have you navigated that journey?
01:11:33
Speaker
I think before Sumit answers that, I have to say, I think especially for the pressure to grow. I think if there's one thing that Sumit has always brought to the table for all of us, because I've been his co-founder right from the beginning, is that the pressure of growth always comes from Sumit.
01:11:50
Speaker
not from any of the investors. And I think we've been through now cycles where both Elivar and even our most recent investor, they sometimes say that, hey, maybe it's OK for you to have growth targets which are little lesser. That will be OK. But we have very high growth targets. And I think a lot of that comes from Sumit's sense of urgency to bring this to a lot of kids.
01:12:17
Speaker
But yeah, Sumit, I will let you answer the list. No, I am guilty as charged here. I am admittedly impatient because I feel that every year we don't reach more students. We are losing generations and you might think that is naive or whatever. But the whole reason for setting this up was a deep sense of purpose. We never thought that we're going to build a large company and make wealth for our investors. The idea was there are these many students who are getting poor learning.
01:12:47
Speaker
How can we get them good learning? And fundamentally, I think again, I would go back to my childhood, you know, I come from a partition affected family. So right from the beginning, patriotism and love for India has been very deeply imbued in us.
01:13:03
Speaker
So if I feel that what we are doing can actually have a role to play in changing the arc of our future or impacting millions of students' lives, then why not? So that's where it comes from. And I guess, yeah, we are all driven by a high sense of possibility that this can happen. So honestly, and the other thing, Akshay, I would say is that we've been both intentional and then fortunate in searching for the right partners and getting them.
01:13:32
Speaker
So, when we did our series A, we were very clear that we wanted somebody who understands what we are trying to build and you know, there is that mission alignment, otherwise it will not work and we found that in Alibar, you know, we were very happy with Alibar and now with Respirage also.
01:13:49
Speaker
We had interest from other firms, but again, in this, we found somebody who, of course, is, you know, your regular P, growth oriented. But Sandeep, as a partner, very invested in education. You know, you see his personal work also.
01:14:04
Speaker
has a deep sense of purpose. So when investors are acting as mission aligned partners, then you don't have a misalignment of incentives and interests and you can focus on solving the problem and knowing that they have your back. So we've been fortunate in that regard, I would say.
01:14:21
Speaker
I would add that not only fortunate but also very choiceful and intentional because I think we are both you know, Sumit and we are very clear about why we are doing this and to be very honest I think the motivation for both of us when we started and even today
01:14:39
Speaker
is that we want a different future for our country. And we believe that a much better future is possible only if many more of our kids are a lot more educated and aware. And that's how they will change the future of this country. That's really the purpose.
01:14:58
Speaker
We also fundamentally believe that if you do good work, people will make money in the process. So for that, I think we are fiscally very responsible. We are responsible towards our investors and board in terms of how we make decisions. And we've worked long enough in a corporate environment to know what are the boundary conditions within which one should work.
01:15:21
Speaker
to ensure that all stakeholders are getting their due return. But because that's been the mission of the organization, I think we've also attracted, and we've been very particular about bringing investors who are also personally very interested in this. And it's true for both the Sandeep's, Sandeep Fariyas and, you know, Jyotsna from Ellivar, they're personally very committed and interested in student learning. We were the first education investment they made.
01:15:49
Speaker
and they of course understand business really well and they've been great partners in this road journey and the same thing is true now with Westbridge. Ever since we set up this organization, the two biggest goals that the whole company rallies around is
01:16:08
Speaker
student outcomes. So mastery levels achieved by students in different subject and scale areas and number of students we serve. Those are the two, we internally call them WIGS, widely important goals.
01:16:23
Speaker
Those are the two goals that the entire company chases. We have not put revenue and profit goals there. We've not put a valuation goal there. And that's very intentionally chosen by us because that was the reason why we built this organization. It was not to build our wealth. So how many schools are you at now?
01:16:48
Speaker
We currently I think we would have reached by now 900. I think 800 was in the last cycle. We've signed 100 more by now because the next cycle has also started. Yeah, so around 3 lakh plus students. Yeah.
01:17:04
Speaker
So in a way, you've just scratched the surface because if you said there are about half a million private schools, so there's like a huge market waiting to be tapped. So what do you see as the kind of trajectory that you'd be taking and what's your vision like?
01:17:22
Speaker
See, I think what we want to do Akshay is that in education, you know, scale will beget standards. So if you are able to get to a place where, you know, 8, 10, 12 million students are learning under the lead system, then you already created conditions for change to happen, you know, where
01:17:46
Speaker
for affordable schools, what should be the right standards, that conversation will actually get started. Currently, it's very, very fragmented. And, you know, people look at education as if it's a homogenous, you know, one block, but it isn't. So the idea is in the next four or five years, we get to serve about 10, 12 million students.
01:18:11
Speaker
And there is still going to be a lot of work I had to do. But what I've learned now is that solving such a big problem or building an organization is like going on a track. You aim for one peak and when you reach there, then there are three more peaks waiting for you. So our next peak is to get to about a 10 million student level. And as we get closer to it, I think we will then restate our goals for the next five years.
01:18:41
Speaker
So what is like a product roadmap from that perspective? Do you see the same product continuing or do you see it getting more digital? How do you see that evolving?
01:18:56
Speaker
See, I think this we've got to basically ensure that whatever we do is anchored on what is right for the child. And given the segment we are working with, you know, unless, you know, device and data becomes ridiculously cheap, we've got to ensure that ultimately excellent education is both affordable and accessible.
Impact of COVID-19 and Future Strategies
01:19:19
Speaker
So within that contours, we'll continue to innovate.
01:19:23
Speaker
One of the things that we want to continue to innovate is making life easy for the teacher so that it is very easy and simple for her to be able to teach accidentally.
01:19:34
Speaker
Whatever that we need to do to make that happen, we'll continue to do every year. We have learnings on what more we can do, how better we can make the teacher happen, how we can help her. Second axis is how can we help each child learn? And school is a 1 is to 40 mass learning environment. And in that, if we have to really help every child learn, we will have to continue to innovate both on tech and pedagogy.
01:19:59
Speaker
So again, that's a continuous pursuit of getting to the last child, ensuring no child is kind of left. And there are a lot of work required in school systems process pedagogy and technology. And then on top of that, I think we need to focus on how can we make school systems better.
01:20:20
Speaker
Technology can definitely play a role. The transformation which happened in banks when they moved from the Bahikata system to the core banking system, I think that transformation is awaited in school system and we want to lead that. So there I think definitely technology can play a part in not only bringing the cost of operations lower for a school owner, but also making the school more effective and efficient by ensuring data is available, analytics are available and a lot of non-value-wide work can be automated.
01:20:49
Speaker
So those are the directions in which we have to move. And again, it's like chiseling a stone to create a sculpture. Every year, we continue to become better. And we also continue to ride the tide of technology, data devices becoming cheaper so we can keep on increasing the access to those for our kids. What is the pricing like for lead school? A school owner needs to pay how much for getting the lead school system in his school.
01:21:18
Speaker
See, the way to think about this is that earlier, it was prohibitive for a school to get transformed because there was a heavy capex amount. If I break it down for a school to actually transform itself, it has to do a physical transformation of converting all their schools to classes into smart classes and hardware, software, all of those LAN connections to put together. So that was prohibitive.
01:21:45
Speaker
Uh, and second, uh, is that, you know, if you have to, uh, ensure all the teaching, learning materials and curriculum is available, that comes at a certain cost and then teacher capability building. Typically schools would, uh, uh, use experience as a surrogate for skill and therefore have to pay high. Uh, what we have done is we've said, okay, you know, let's look at the total cost for a school and if they were to do it through this aggregated system, they'll end up spending about six to 7,000 rupees per child per year.
01:22:15
Speaker
And if we can halve that cost and still make it possible for a school because now it is a single stack one-stop solution, then transformation is possible and affordable. So that's been the design principle. And what we have now aim is that a typical school charges about 25,000 to 30,000 per annum fees of our target. And if we can basically provide a solution which is 8% to 10% of that, we should be OK.
01:22:44
Speaker
So that's the pricing target that we keep so that on a per child per year basis, it is not a capex, it's an opex for the school and it's affordable for parents. And do you have competitors in this field like other companies, whom do you see as competitors actually? Do you see other companies who are offering schools a similar service like Exceed as competitors or do you even see someone like a Bijouz as a competitor?
01:23:15
Speaker
if you look at it currently schools.
01:23:19
Speaker
For the plethora of needs that we fulfill, for some needs, there is no solution at the moment in the system. And for other needs, there are disaggregated solutions. So for some part of the need, somebody like a curriculum provider like XE could play a part, somebody like a publisher could play a part, some smart class provider could play a part, some teacher training company could play a part. So these are all disaggregated solutions.
01:23:46
Speaker
I don't know of anyone who actually provides a single stack solution which is like a school in a box to the depth that we provide. Somebody could reach 70% of what we provide, some could be just 20% if it's a simple publisher.
01:24:01
Speaker
Our single biggest competition so far pre-COVID has been just inertia and the fact that adoption of innovation follows that whole curve of early adopters, late adopters, laggards and stuff like that. So we were going through that now. COVID actually has accelerated it because schools were sitting ducks when this happened and they were not able to provide uninterrupted learning to their children when this happened.
01:24:26
Speaker
So, our hope is that this has been a wake-up call and there could be a far more open adoption of innovation. Because fundamentally, if we have to improve school systems, then we need to approach it from a system-based thinking. And therefore, integrated systems like ours are the way to go. Otherwise, disaggregated systems for the last 60 years, they have not been a difference. So, I don't know how they will make a difference in the next year.
01:24:51
Speaker
I expect a lot more integrated systems to kind of come in as we become more successful. And we just have to continuously focus on innovating and giving our students the best and not looking over our shoulder and worrying about competition because it's a really large market.
01:25:11
Speaker
So COVID has been pretty harsh on schools, with schools struggling to collect fees. So has that impacted your business? Have some schools discontinued because they didn't have enough money? Or have you seen an increase in inquiries and leads? I would say a bit of both. There is no doubt that a lot of the
01:25:37
Speaker
The waters are currently muddied because of this whole stuff that is happening with COVID. So it's very difficult to kind of locate the bottom when the waters are muddied. So we've got to just wait and see how it settles down.
01:25:53
Speaker
See, we are in long term contracts with our school. So, there is no worry about the school accounts going away. We have temporary interruptions and problems with their parents and we are supporting them. Our focus has been how can we support these schools in providing uninterrupted learning. So, whether it is lead school at home or whether it is a platform which our school partners, teachers can use to teach, we have been there for them.
01:26:18
Speaker
given what we are doing now as the next academic year becomes closer schools are thinking about what would they want to do next academic year and that's why that's where our additional school sales are are coming in so I think as long as we focus on supporting our schools to deliver online learning to their parents and and not get too hassle and worried about the temporary interruption I think we are okay and given that you know we've
01:26:49
Speaker
We've basically got the next sales cycle going. I think we are focusing on how do we now reach to more schools and more students. And we are again beginning to see good adoption now the next year. So that was Sumit Pismata telling us how they built LEED school. If you'd like to know more, logon to leedschool.in.
01:27:15
Speaker
This was an HD Smartcast original.