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Building on a formidable legacy | Akshay Munjal @ Hero Vired
379 Plays2 years ago
Akshay Munjal shares his first-hand experience of watching the Hero Group founder Brijmohan Lall Munjal build up Hero into a truly remarkable business. He shares his personal journey of first running the corporate training venture Hero Mindmine, then setting up the BML Munjal University, and finally creating Hero Vired as an ed-tech platform to train the youth on next-generation skills at scale.
Additional links:-
1.Hero Vired: Hero Group partners with MIT, Cambridge for edtech company
2.Hero Vired betting on upskilling wave in the post-pandemic
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Transcript
Introduction to Akshay Munjal and Hero's Educational Ventures
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Akshay Munjal, founder and CEO of Hero Wired, and thank you for having me here.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hero is a household name in India, mostly known as the world's largest bike manufacturer from India. But beyond bikes, the hero group also has interests in training and education. In this episode of the Founder Thesis Podcast, your host Akshay Dutt talks with Akshay Munjal, who leads hero group initiatives in the space of upskilling.
00:00:36
Speaker
Akshay Munjal shares his first-hand experience of watching the Hero Group founder, Bhrjmohan Lal Munjal, building up Hero into a truly remarkable business. He shares his personal journey of first running the corporate training venture Hero MindMine, and then setting up the BML Munjal University and finally creating HeroWired as an edtech platform to train the youth on next-generation skills at scale.
00:01:00
Speaker
Despite his background, Akshay remains grounded with his focus on creating solutions for large-scale impact and shares his insights from building both an edtech and a traditional educational institute. Stay tuned and subscribe to the Founder Thesis Podcast and any audio streaming app to hear about the journeys of founders creating impact at scale.
Family History and Hero's Humble Beginnings
00:01:26
Speaker
I actually grew up in a small town called Ludhiana. Actually, the genesis of Ludhiana is after the partition, the family moved from Pakistan and we settled in Ludhiana, which is a model town, which was essentially a refugee colony. Sir, you are the grandson of Bridge Bormann Janus.
00:01:42
Speaker
Correct. When my grandfather was alive, while we all knew and we all respected him for what he was. But now that you know more, we just think back of the small stories, instances. With him and his own philosophy in life was, whatever you did yesterday, you have to do better today.
00:01:59
Speaker
And there's a story I asked him that when you were setting up Hero Cycle, or that time Hero Honda, which is now Hero Motoka, what was your aspiration and dream? Did you ever think that you want to make the world's biggest cycle company or the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer? And his answer was very interesting. He said, when we started making cycles, it was all about survival. When we shifted from Pakistan, we didn't know anything else to do.
00:02:24
Speaker
We started by repairing cycles on the road. So they started off with repairing cycles. And from there, they said, you know, we are repairing when we put a cycle together. So they started making my one cycle a day, then two, then three, then five. And that logic was that whatever I did yesterday, I have to better that. And then they kept on that journey. And
00:02:45
Speaker
Sometime in 83 or 84 is the Guinness Book of World Records reached out to them and said, by the way, you become the largest man fraction of cycles. And they said, we have no idea that we already become the largest. And that was the world each other thing. And the other interesting thing is, which I always tell our learners also, one of the things my grandfather used to call him Dada,
00:03:04
Speaker
He used to always say, worry about the basic. Don't worry about the fancy things. And in his view, the basic was really basic value. Worry about punctuality, discipline, hard work. If you trust, if you've given your commitment, make sure you meet that. So, he was very clear that
00:03:25
Speaker
I just need to worry about these things, and the big things will take care of themselves. And he reared by that, that any city he went to, whether it was a holiday of a world, he used to randomly go and visit dealers. And there were so many stories, you know, I remember growing up with him, we had gone to Kerala in a small town called Munnar. In the morning he got up, he wore his suit, and we were like, you know, dada pa, you know, holiday.
00:03:46
Speaker
He said, no, so he wanted to let you come. So we all got ready and we just walked into that time hero Honda dealer and the dealer didn't know who he was, who we were. So he went there, started talking to the salesman and at some point the people there got a little suspicious. Okay. Who is this man asking these questions? And then the dealer recognized he is the chairman of the company. So
00:04:09
Speaker
He used to love doing that. Anywhere he went, it was how do I connect with my dealers, even in the showroom. He should randomly talk to the potential customers. So there was so much to learn from him. He had his ear to the ground, which would have allowed him to continuously make the product more in tune with what a customer wants. Till his last day or till he was, he went to work till he was 90 to 93 years. Till that day,
00:04:35
Speaker
or consumer complaints that we used to come to him. So every complaint that Hiro Moto used to go to his desk. He used to read it. He used to direct the appropriate person. And then he used to chase. I sent the letter, is it done or not? So that is one of the things where he took it as his primary role, what the customer is saying. And if any dealer ever came to Delhi or Indiana, it was fixed. No matter whether you're a big dealer, small dealer, you will be invited for lunch.
00:05:05
Speaker
at home for lunch or dinner. It was no matter who you were. And the way this used to roll out the red carpet, it was whether you're the Prime Minister or the President or you're the smallest dealer Hero had. The same level of attention and love and respect was given. What was your ambition growing up? Did you see yourself joining Hero Motors or what were your inclinations like?
Career Path and Transition to Education
00:05:27
Speaker
I'll tell you the truth.
00:05:28
Speaker
I used to love history. My ambition in life growing up was I want to play tennis and I want to be a historian and I used to love these two but of course I couldn't follow either becoming a historian but I still play tennis. I studied finance in my undergrad post-grad and more of destiny that I landed up in education. If you asked me like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, even in my wildest dreams, I never thought I'd be in education. I always thought I'd be
00:05:53
Speaker
working somewhere in finance. How did you end up in education? I finished my master's MBA in finance in the US. I worked in New York, and I came home and we had a company called Hero Mine Mine, which was at that time, it was a market leader in voice and accent training in BPO training. And that was a very interesting company, had a great brand, great legacy, but was struggling to scale up.
00:06:17
Speaker
Mine Mine at that time had about 1995 franchises, Center Pan India, and we were also training in companies. And these were primarily your IT, BPO setups. And mine was a very large trainer for them. It was heavily on the B2C, the consumer side, the franchise model, and we had our own centers. So this was Hero Mine before you joined.
00:06:39
Speaker
So once you joined, you would have probably realized the challenges. Like you said, it was struggling to scale up. What did you discover? My in mind was pre-etech days. So what was happening was we had a lot of franchise where we used to send them physical books and material. So your control with franchise was very limited. And that business we had franchises who were running programs. One was teaching French.
00:07:04
Speaker
When the company never had anything, we had no program in French. So, people were doing all kinds of things under the mind-mind brand. So, that took a big task to clean up. But, how do we focus on the core? So, from the franchise business, we started focusing a lot on the B2B.
00:07:22
Speaker
Because in B2B, there was a big requirement for audio tools, sales training, customer service, communication. There's a large requirement there. And the second thing which we did was we started focusing on colleges because a lot of these students were in college. How do you train them to get a better job? And we were training them in some of the same programs, communication, CV writing, body language, basic Microsoft Office.
00:07:48
Speaker
This was like you pivoted to an asset like model where you don't have to actually create study centers because if you go to corporate, then they provide the providers. Similarly, college will provide them. This would also allow you to have better quality control. Like with franchisees, the issue was quality control, which here it would get solved.
00:08:07
Speaker
What is quality control and also the reality is if your franchise don't make money then they are going to find for other they will look because they have to pay rent they have to pay salaries so unless you have enough product offerings enough opportunities for a franchise to make money if they are not then they are they also need to survive so they will look for other avenues
00:08:26
Speaker
So we picked it from there and we've moved to a model which is the code directly where the consumer is. So the consumer is in colleges, the consumer was in companies and that is where really we found our sweet
BML Munjal University: Filling Quality Gaps in Education
00:08:38
Speaker
spot. And you were running this like the CEO or like what was your role?
00:08:42
Speaker
I joined as a CEO, chief operating officer. Within a year and a half, I became the CEO. And yeah, that was my first exposure to education. As I was running earlier, I'd always seen education as a student. Now here was education as from a management perspective or a manager perspective. Did you find it difficult selling to colleges? I used to run an English training center myself with that call center, that BPO era.
00:09:09
Speaker
And I was looking at a similar approach of selling to colleges and I found that so hard to do. It was very difficult selling to colleges, but colleges were saying, great, we understand that our learners, our students need to know better English, they need to know how to communicate better, both verbal and written. But can you, if they know better, can you guarantee that they will get a better job? So at the end of the day, everything the college was doing
00:09:33
Speaker
was linking it to a better job. So their yardstick of measuring success was, do they get a better job? And our point was that, you know what, they will get a better job on what they know, what they've learned over three years, four years, and communication only told to express it better. I'm able to, whether it is verbal or written, I'm able to express my point of view better. Yeah, it's the garnish on the dish, but
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, but if I don't know basic, if I have not learned basic skills, then I'll just have to fast my way through. It will get caught very quickly. Tell me that journey. Like once you pivoted into corporate and campus business lines, how did it go? What kind of results did you see? And eventually you moved out. So what made you move out? Just help me understand that journey.
00:10:18
Speaker
You know, I think it was a very exciting journey. It was very tough also because we had a large number of franchise. How do we settle with each one? How do we reconcile? How do we scale down? How do we only cherry pick the franchise who are working, the ones who are not working?
00:10:33
Speaker
Clothed in an amicable manner. So it was a very very difficult journey at that stage because there was a lot of franchise people had invested a lot while the B2B and the B2I journey was relatively easier at that stage. A lot of companies were scaling up and where Mindmind found its sweet spot was really behavioral training at an entry level and that's really where if you look at an organization that's where the most number of people are. So we used to do a lot of training for large OEMs
00:11:02
Speaker
either trading their workforce, trading their dealer's service. Anytime a new vehicle is launched, how do you train the dealers and their salesmen? So that's really where we became very strong in working with a large number of OEMs because they could deploy
00:11:17
Speaker
you go to the training pan India. So we were doing that and in the B2I space, we started working with a lot of colleges and a lot of colleges found value in it because we used to really go and say, we will go in and do a baseline where your students are, where are the gaps and then go teach them accordingly.
00:11:35
Speaker
And we should train them in how do you write a CV? How do you give an interview? How do you communicate better? And also some basic skills which you will need. How do you use Excel? How do you use PowerPoint? So that was a very interesting journey. And eventually you moved out. So what made you move out? Did you feel that the business does not have legs?
00:11:57
Speaker
After a great question, the reason I started even thinking of moving out was there was a recession which hit. And in recession, the first thing which got cut is training. So a lot of the B2B business was slashed. And also with colleges, because the recession hit, companies were not hiring as much. So your college students are not getting placed. And then the college says, why do I need to spend more time effort training my students? If you're not able to place them better.
00:12:21
Speaker
And that's really when it struck me that training is very cyclical. When things are good, everything is good. When things turn bad, this is the first thing which is slashed. I would rather focus on something where companies find value irrespective of the economic cycle. And the second thing was when we were training in the B2I segment. It's really when I got a ringside view of what is happening in the Indian education sector. And we are primarily training tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 colleges.
00:12:49
Speaker
and BTEC, MBA, these kind of courses. BTEC, MBA, BBA, and we were training for these colleges and that's really where I got a ring check of how large the potential is. We talk about demographic development in India. If we don't train our young college-going students,
00:13:07
Speaker
and though we don't train them well that they get meaningful jobs the demographic dividend will turn into a demographic nightmare very quickly and a country of India's size and scale needs many good institutions and at that time very excited that can we set up a university which will be a role model for others because India already today has more than thousand plus universities has more than 80-90 thousand colleges which are approved and there are large number which are unapproved unapproved sorry sure
00:13:37
Speaker
No one university or no ten universities or no ten colleges will change. But how do you become that aspirational university which others want to follow and start causing a change reaction for the better? And we've seen that happen since private universities started coming into India when government really allowed private universities in 2008. We've seen how and I think overall the quality of higher education in India is moving up. I remember when we set up the university named after my grandfather
00:14:04
Speaker
This you're talking of B.L. Munjal University. Yes, B.L. Munjal University and more actually more of a tribute for him and another interesting thing my grandfather used to say that all of you people are educated you take education for himself for the 10th class graduate for you're not studying more than 10th you ask someone
00:14:21
Speaker
who has not been educated the importance of education and he used to always say I owe all my success to engineering even though I never studied engineering. We set up this university named after him and this is actually the first thing in the family which we named after him and he was very embarrassed and shy about it. He via you naming it after me and it was more of a
00:14:41
Speaker
tribute to him his legacy that how do we really set up an institute which will take his legacy, his principles forward and that's really how the idea of our BML Munjal University started and you said the government allowed private universities so BML Munjal is a private university which means it's a for-profit or it is still a non-profit only like in Akshay, actually in India, government does not allow education for profit so
00:15:07
Speaker
Government has been very consistent over the last 50 years. That education in India will not be for profit. And they have taken the same consistent view throughout.
00:15:17
Speaker
Private university means, so before 2008, you could set up a college or university, you had to be deemed to be, that means you had to be under a state university, or you had to be affiliated to AICT. And after that, after doing that for 8-10 years, you could apply and say, give me approval to, and that thing they were called, dream to be university. So the technical word was, dream to be university. That was a college which got promoted. So in 2008, they allowed universities to come in and start as a university. While purely not for profit,
00:15:47
Speaker
But you could start from day one of the university, which really gave you the flexibility on who you hire, your curriculum, pedagogy, the kind of course you offer. And that, I think, has caused a huge change, I think, over the last decade. There's a violent revolution, which is happening in India, which is the quality of higher education of how that is improving, changing. So tell me about BML Manjal University. What is the headcount? How big is the campus? What courses do you offer? Like a little bit of like the highlights of that journey.
00:16:16
Speaker
So, B.E.B.M. Jhaj University started in 2014 and started with really three basic principles. And the first one was, how do you make learning fun? You look at, learning has got associated with this whole series, something which is, you know, fun is separate, learning is separate. But if you incorporate the fun element,
00:16:35
Speaker
You incorporate and learn by doing. The best way of learning is by learning when you don't even know you're learning. If I learn by doing, learn when you're having fun. So how do you make learning practical? And the second component we looked at was, how do you blur the border between education? Today, it's a very straight jacketed. If you do engineering, you will only study engineering. You do management, you will only study management. You do law, you will only study law. But as a human being, you want to know a lot more than just your discipline. If I'm running a company,
00:17:04
Speaker
It could be a problem which is a management, a finance problem, could be an engineering problem, could be a combination of two. Problems in life don't come labeled as such. If you're an engineer, you need to know how to communicate better. You need to know basic account, you need to know basic law. So how do you blur the boundaries? And the third one was how do you give people flexibility to learn at their pace and flexibility to take the courses they want to do.
00:17:27
Speaker
So these were three basic principles. Learn by doing, learn beyond your subject, and learn at your own pace. So when we took and that is when the university started. Today, we offer programs in management, engineering, law, liberal arts, from
00:17:43
Speaker
post-doctoral PhD to undergrad and it also goes well. The management school has been consistently being ranked by NIRF with moving up the rankings and our placement data is very robust. So this is when I talk about when people have a choice, you automatically show outcomes when you get them, people want to be there. And that is what I think
00:18:04
Speaker
by allowing private universities. Overall, the sectors are improving. And that's the same example of giving someone. When you look at before Maruti came to India, you had Hindustan Motors, you had Fiat. When Maruti came, they upped the whole automotive sector with their practices. Today, Indian auto sectors compete globally. Because of the ecosystem. Because the ecosystem matured, developed, became competitive. It was not protected before Maruti. You only had a handful of choices and you had to wait for your...
00:18:33
Speaker
vehicle to come in, quality was very iffy. Today, that's not the case. So yeah, so BM, beyond that university is done well. Next year we're celebrating a 10th anniversary. What is the capacity? Like how many students graduate each year? So we have about 2000 students on campus and every year about anywhere between 300 to 400 students graduate.
00:18:54
Speaker
But the number is just increasing. We want to build a high quality institution which has impact. Now, what does high quality institution which has impact mean? High quality really means that you are able to show superior outcomes. But to show superior outcomes, you need to have enough faculty, enough great faculty, enough industry tie-ups, enough opportunities for your students.
00:19:16
Speaker
And all of that takes time. And my own belief is that your quantity always follows quality, not the other way around. So when you start showing superior outcome, you can start increasing your number of people you take. And that is the journey. You look at your world-class universities also. You look at an Oxford or a Harvard. Oxford is 900 year plus. Harvard is 350 year plus.
00:19:38
Speaker
All of them have gone through that journey. And after they've gone through the journey, they've matured, ecosystem has matured. And then today they can take a large number of learners. Similarly, if you look at in India, Indian School of Business, that also started off with a handful of students. Today, they've also taken large number of large numbers. But the insurance also mature. And there are different segments. Not every student is going to get a 90% plus, not 80% plus or whatnot. So with an education also,
00:20:04
Speaker
There are different players catering to a different customer and each segment has a different need. Somebody who got to get a 99.99% will want to go to IIT. Somebody who's got a 60% will choose something else. So you've got to which segment are you playing for and are you meeting their expectation? And then you start moving up slowly. Got it. Okay.
HeroWired: Addressing Employment Challenges with Skills Training
00:20:26
Speaker
Okay. What led to the birth of HeroVide? There were two things.
00:20:30
Speaker
Way back in 2018, we had an office in Delhi, very close to the district court. This was the office of the university? The university, correct. I was not fully involved in the university. The university was like a baby to me. My first child in the university are one year apart. And with a very funny story, I had gone to a doctor, and he was talking about the university, and then after two minutes, he asked me, how many kids do you have? And I said, 1200. And the doctor dropped the thing. He was like, what?
00:20:59
Speaker
I needed how many children do you have? Oh, I think me, I have, I only have two children, but in my mind, it was how many children you had. One, how many, learned it in the student. Well, how many students we had in the university. And one, one day in 2018, I was driving back home. Somebody had put up these posters.
00:21:16
Speaker
in both English and Hindi and I have still a picture of those which said, wanted graduate engineers to drive luxury cars and they had put up in English, Hindi, they had given various phone numbers and that I found it very troublesome because I had been in education by then, was also running a university of child engineering and then I was talking to somebody and the person made a comment to me, he's like, why are you getting so troubled? He's like, next time, anytime you order on Amazon or Flipkart or you order on Uzumato or Swiggy
00:21:44
Speaker
Why don't you ask the delivery boy how much he or she has studied? And there's a very high probability person will be a graduate. Whilst I found that very disturbing, I think, what do you mean? He's like, no, just try it. I said, okay, I mean, if you're saying it, I'll try it. It was actually true in my own, whatever survey, little survey I did, 30 to 40% people were actually graduates. I mean, that was very troublesome. Back in 2018, I was like, looking, what can we do?
00:22:07
Speaker
There are many should we expand more programs in the university? Should we take in more people? Should we do something different? But in the university, if you took in more people, how do you ensure quality? Because you need that many good high quality faculty. You need that many companies. You need that one process system. And at that price point,
00:22:26
Speaker
Because to run a high-quality institute without any government funding is very capital intensive. And I'm sure you've read that even government has often quoted the figure, if they remove the subsidiary at IITs, the fees would be more than 4 or 5 lakh a year to provide that quality of education. So for us without the subsidy, how do you provide that quality of education to a large number? And that's the time we're thinking on that 2018-19, why can't we offer something
00:22:51
Speaker
which is virtual because in virtual you are able to people don't need to come to one place they can be wherever they are they can be home and how can you more scalable more scalable how can you offer them high-end skills which are extremely job focused and that was really the birth of hero wired wired means virtual education and it was interesting we did was in 2018-19 we mapped out which are the
00:23:18
Speaker
high growth skills, which have huge demand and are expected to grow over the next five, 10 years. So that is a filter we applied. So the salary should be attractive. Demand should outstrip supply. And this scenario should be there even five years from today. And that's how we came to set off courses today, which we offer in HeroVide, where whether you look at courses like Data Science, Fullstack, DevApp Cloud, FinTech,
00:23:42
Speaker
huge demand from industry where industry demand today outstrips the supply and that's really the birth of wired and then the second thing was while you've got Indian universities you how do you get world-class education in India even if you take the Maruti example I was giving imagine if you ever had a
00:24:00
Speaker
Harvard or MIT or India. Imagine what chain reaction they will start. That high quality education, their faculty, the system processes they use, how they do research. How do you start that revolution? That overall quality of the sector goes up. So that was the two thoughts.
00:24:20
Speaker
So we took really high quality content available from our collaborating institution like MIT, NCCIAD and the offer which are extremely in demand, job LinkedIn in demand. So we took these two principles and that's already why it started. So what was that the journey of launching your first course? Did you start by first finding a collaboration and how did you sell the course and help me understand that launch journey?
00:24:45
Speaker
It's very interesting, you know, it was a very different mindset. But before WIRED, I had done a university, set up a university which was a brick and mortar. And before that was, you know, mine, mine. WIRED was very different because while we were setting it up, COVID hit. Just when we were initial thoughts, the plans were getting ready, COVID hit in March 2020. So we had to move everything virtually.
00:25:08
Speaker
actually we hired our first employee also virtually. I met her eight months after she was already on board because of COVID and it had a very strong tech presence because we had to offer you programs which were really high quality or you leverage tech to make it more intuitive yet you have the human collect life teaching. So the journey we started our first program was in collaboration with MIT
00:25:34
Speaker
which was a combination of Data Science, AI, ML and we launched Hero Wide actually in April 13th, April 2021. We launched on 13th April and then Delta Head Delhi literally one week after launching. So April, May, June were very difficult month. A lot of people including me, my family down with COVID. It was a very difficult time for Delhi per se. And we launched our first program in June, July.
00:26:01
Speaker
2021. And from there on, we've just been building on going strength from one program. Today we have more than 14 programs. We cover a wide array of courses, not just we do tech, data science, management, and we have an interesting bucket called FutureTech. In FutureTech, we offer programs in gaming, and we've got some other very interesting
00:26:24
Speaker
cutting-edge program that you are going to launch in another two or three weeks in that bucket, which are absolutely unique programs, which nobody else in the country is offering. I want to zoom into that first course with MIT. In such a case, you would be paying some sort of a royalty to MIT for using their curriculum and brand. That would be like a revenue share or something like that. That would be the arrangement.
00:26:45
Speaker
M.I.T. is a very interesting arrangement where M.I.T. has got the content developed and they give certification. So, M.I.T. certification is recognised by M.I.T. and M.I.T.'s partner institutions globally. So, you could be sitting in India getting M.I.T. credits and which you could transfer to M.I.T. and M.I.T.'s partner institutions. So, there was a way and the way we were teaching which was completely live teaching. We had live industry practitioners who were teaching you. So, you could take our courses
00:27:13
Speaker
Take the credit from MIT and transfer to wherever you wanted to go. That was a very interesting journey because at that stage, the company because of COVID, people were all remote. The company was getting launched and EdTech at that time was extremely hot, difficult to hire talent. It was a red hot sector at that time. It was extremely cheap.
00:27:35
Speaker
Even the data science course space is also crowded. There are quite a few companies offering that data science courses. Absolutely. Very crowded. But our program personally was quite unique with the combination of data science, AI, ML and the whole model of life teaching that we have industry practitioners teach you live. And because they teach you live, they're able to give you superior outcomes. One of my key learnings
00:27:58
Speaker
But the education was that you have to show outcomes, no matter who you are. Education, unfortunately, you looked at a means and end the job or a better job. And that really stayed with me throughout. How do you show superior outcomes? And that's when we launched the first program of data science, where we launched the program in finance and FinTech. What were you doing for customer acquisition?
00:28:22
Speaker
What we started off in hero wide earlier was purely online. We were using a lot of Google AdWords and Google AdWords digital media. But over time, even wired scaled up three verticals today, B2C, B2B and B2I. So somewhat similar, if you look at back to mind mind things with three verticals.
00:28:41
Speaker
but purely tech, all tech enabled and all really cutting edge programs which are linked to job outcomes. Okay, okay. And you didn't tell me that arrangement with MIT, like what is the commercial arrangement there? With MIT, what we do with MIT, we give them a minimum guarantee of number of certificates which we'll consume from them.
00:29:02
Speaker
Okay, so MIT charges you on a Perth certificate. So MIT charges on the Perth certificate basis, while MIT does not do any live teaching for other partners like INSEAD, which is very unique. INSEAD faculty teach 50% of the program life. So we offer two programs in INSEAD, one is strategic management, and one is product management. And essentially, if you look at the way strategic management is structured, it's like a mini MBA, somebody with more than
00:29:26
Speaker
five-year experience but not done in MBA, how do you give them a broad overview of all skills and topics required to be an effective manager? Initially, you must have done a B2C only, like it would have only been...
00:29:40
Speaker
Initially, we started with B2C and then we launched B2B and then B2i. What are the characteristics of each of these divisions? For B2C, what cells? What are the key drivers? What are the levers of growth over there? Same for B2B and B2i.
00:29:57
Speaker
So to us, B2C, it is very important that you bring your CAC down. Otherwise, there are lots of these tech-enabled businesses which are just blowing up money to acquire customers. And we've seen that kind of money which are being blown up, and if people are not getting, and if you're not able to show outcome, they're not able to stabilize your cost, you will have a tough time surviving. So for us, it was very important that our CAC customer acquisition cost is below 30%. And the only way of bringing it below 30% is
00:30:26
Speaker
A. Having a lot of organic traffic. Having a lot of content out there which is appealing to people. 2. Over time. Having a lot more referrals. Then nothing better than positive word of mouth. If a satisfied customer will tell 5 others.
Customizing Education for Diverse Learners
00:30:41
Speaker
Unsatisfied customer will tell 20 others. So you need to have a lot more satisfied customers. So how do you bring your, how do you keep your cat under control?
00:30:49
Speaker
How do you build the brand slowly? Like for us at Wired, we have hardly done anything which is over the line. We have hardly spent any money on traditional marketing. We are building the brand slowly, organically with positive word of mouth rather than going out there and saying I'm going to spend 10 then 100 of crore on TV or print and make sure everybody is heard of me.
00:31:12
Speaker
I would rather take that money and spend it on my product, let a product offering be so good that each customer tells 5 other key, this is a good place to be. So, the key lever for B2C business, for any type of B2C business, is making sure your CAC is under control. Your customers are happy with what you are doing because without positive
00:31:32
Speaker
word of mouth. As it goes back to what my grandfather used to say, if your customer is not satisfied, then you have a fundamental problem that no matter how much money you spend or how much new customer you get, it is not going to work. You said organic traffic for reducing cash. So that means it's like video, like building YouTube channels or what is it? A lot of YouTube channels, putting free content out there, participating in forums where customers are.
00:31:56
Speaker
Tell me about B2B then, like how did you start B2B? So when we had B2C, we were doing all of these programs, whether in data science or full stack or DevOps cloud, we started getting a lot of inboard interest from B2B, that you know what, when we hire engineers, we hire a large number of people, each one in an interview, we spend two or three or five hours, only that much we know of an interview.
00:32:18
Speaker
But when we hire them is when you get to realize how good bad they really are or how much they know they don't know. So what we started doing was that when you hire people, we started doing a baseline. We went to the company and tried telling the company like we do a lot of work with Ola that you tell us what is important for you, what are skills you feel the people you've recruited should have. So then we did a baseline.
00:32:39
Speaker
that you hired X number of people here is the baseline assessment of where they are where each person is and then how do you bring them to an acceptable level because for a company while I may have hired you you may claim or say I know these XYZ programming languages
00:32:54
Speaker
But can I actually deploy you and can you actually start working on it from day one? Or I deploy you and I figure out after three, four months that what you said you really don't know as much as you claimed. So how do you do that from day one, so that you suddenly let them have a baseline and when people finish the program, they're all acting somewhat similar level. So we started doing that. So this was a paid service, like the essentially assessment that you started with.
00:33:18
Speaker
Assessment is followed by the training. So assessment is not a core business. Training is a core business. So assessment was like a free service to sell the core business of training. Some cases companies didn't wait for it. Some cases they didn't have any detailed assessment. And other time companies, some companies use legacy technologies, someone working on .NET today or PHP. Today, colleges don't teach .NET or PHP, but their systems are running on that. When they hire these people, how do we train them on these skills so that they can be useful for the company?
00:33:48
Speaker
Because the way I look at it, for every company, unless you're a training company, training is your business. For most companies, training is not your core business. So you focus on your core business. Let others do what they're good at and you measure them on the outcome. And what is your target in businesses? Because business can be a startup which has 100 employees or it can be a company like Maruti which has tens of thousands. So what kind of companies do you target?
00:34:13
Speaker
What we really find is two age companies, two types of companies that we get a lot of traction. One is the new age, unicorns, unicorns, who've grown rapidly over the last few years, but now are really spending, investing heavily on the quality of people. That's a very good target segment for us. And the second is legacy companies, strong brand, strong systems, but not able to hire the kind of talent because people don't use the legacy
00:34:39
Speaker
Your solution comes in after hiring or do you also aid in the hiring process itself?
00:34:45
Speaker
Well, that's a very interesting question. So when we started doing in B2C, then you also had gone to colleges and then you know what, we'll train your students while they are in final year, we'll train them so they get a better job. But when you're doing these two, then we went to companies, you tell me what are you looking at? What do you want people? And because we are training in B2C and B2I, I can train the student in those skills so that when he or she graduates, you've got what you need. And that works very well for everybody because from a student,
00:35:14
Speaker
You get a trained professional. You get a trained professional. Students start earning from day one. Companies start seeing output from day one and work very well for us because we are sitting, training people and we are able to place them. It adds value to your offering, basically.
00:35:30
Speaker
It would add value to everybody in the ecosystem. I think that is the fundamental place where we'd love to be where every partner feels value. The recruiting contribution is in terms of helping your students to get placed. That's how you help companies to recruit talent. We also help companies recruit talent.
00:35:46
Speaker
So, it works both ways. So, we help companies recruit talent and for our students. And what of work we do with B2I? They are very clear. So, if we work in a B2I, colleges or institutions are very clear. I'm doing this training so that they get a better job. And we are also very clear. We are telling them they get a job. So, we go with that mindset. And you know, what is the price point similar for these three lines of business? I'm assuming like B2I would be subsidised because that's a bulk deal you're getting. B2I is subsidised. B2B is because
00:36:14
Speaker
You're not spending too much on acquiring the customer. And in one contract, suddenly you'll get 100, 200, 300 students. So the pricing works very differently. So what's your students' strength? How many students graduate each month or each year? What's the right number to look at?
00:36:29
Speaker
For Hero Wired, our average program ranges from 6 to 11 months. And till now, we have more than 2,000 plus students. The engineer is growing rapidly, like I mentioned, 15 to 20% month-on-month growth. So that's got his own set of challenges of how do you handle that kind of growth every month. I'm guessing this growth is not as challenging as, let's say, at the university. Because here, one professor can teach 60. That same professor can teach, like, a faculty could also teach 120 after a month.
00:36:57
Speaker
The reason I'm smiling is because when we were in the university, we always looked at tech company and said, oh, look how easy they had it. Now I'm in this sector, I'm thinking, you know what? But university is so much easier because everybody walks in on the same day. You are class start on the same day and everybody is on the same age. You start engineering when you are between 17 to 18 years.
00:37:18
Speaker
You graduate when you are 21 and 22 to the homogeneity or the heterogeneity. There's a big role in a tech. Here I've got a father-son in the same program. I've got a 45-year-old from Bombay and I've got a 22-year-old from a Tier 4 city. How have you placed both of them? So both sides have its own challenge but to answer your point, even hero-wide, we don't increase. Anytime we have more than 40 students in a batch, we split it because we feel the efficacy becomes difficult. You make
00:37:47
Speaker
call my learning from education. Very difficult to manage large batches. Do you deal with this issue of different learning speeds, different starting levels, things like that? It's a real challenge because I could be from a tier one institute working in a great company from a tier one city versus very different. So what we do is either we divide the batches so that there is somewhat similarity or within one batch, we give people different projects.
00:38:15
Speaker
So we have different learning paths for them. So for example, we have a program with insurance and product management. There we have people who spend 10 years already in product management and somebody who doesn't know the ABC or product management. Those are real challenges in A-Tech, like a college or university. Because in university, college is everything is time bound. You will start on the same day, convocation on the same day, while here. Different. The personalization is not such a big need over there, but here you need to make your course very personalized.
00:38:44
Speaker
Personally, you're always recruiting students, you're always teaching students. It's the preparation, you know, 365 day cycle of recruiting and placing. What is the role of your own product in making learning outcomes better? Do you have a product like a learning management system or something like that you built? What have you built? So, all our learning happens on an LMS, learning management system, where it gives you your attendance, your grades, you can chat with your peers, you submit your assignment through that. Everything happens.
00:39:13
Speaker
And this you built from scratch? What we did was we took a model solution where somebody had customized it somewhat. So we bought that and then fully customized it on top. And for me, we call it VLearn or LMS. It is always a journey. I don't think at any point we will see our LMS is done. Even today, whenever we review with the team, there are 20 more things we like to do with it. And I'm sure even after a year, there'll be 20 more things we want to do with it.
00:39:42
Speaker
Because I think in education, if you look at fundamentally, education has not evolved the way other industries have evolved. And I'll qualify that comment. Oxford started this model of having one teacher or one faculty, you know, what Oxford called one phase on stage, and you have six stage students all learning the same thing at the same time. The superstar faculties.
00:40:07
Speaker
Superstar, learning the same thing, same time, all being checked, all being addressed all the same way. That model was started by Oxford. Before that, you had the Gurukul system, which was not more personalized. The Guru was responsible for your overall well-being, not just education. So when the Oxford model came in, everything was standardized, and that was the need of the R. And you know what?
00:40:27
Speaker
Let's standardize everything. Now from then on if you look at even today in a traditional classroom you have a faculty on stage or in class every student learn the same thing will be processed the same way, will be taught the same way. Two people are identical. I may respond more to learning by rote. You may respond more to learn by doing. You may be better at
00:40:50
Speaker
giving practical exams. I may be better by giving written exams. You may have a certain learning preference. I may have a very different learning preference. So to me, education will be the next big revolution where I think the next 20 years and I'm willing to stick my neck out there and say, how we teach today in school, colleges or online, what we teach in the next 20 years will be absolutely different. So what's the customer journey like? Say a student fills up an inquiry for what happens?
00:41:17
Speaker
moment customer fills up an inquiry form, our target is to immediately reach out to them.
00:41:22
Speaker
that you've figured in inquiry form, how can we help you? So we have learning consultants who will have a chat with you. You fill this out, what are you looking for, even if the program is suited for you. There could be cases where we could say, you know what, this program may not be suited for you. You may want to look at something else, or you may want to work a little more, or you may want to come back and do this program after some more time. So they'll have that discussion with you. And for certain programs, then the faculty will also come and discuss with you that, for example, the MIT program, the MIT level program, it is not easy.
00:41:51
Speaker
It is MIT level stats and MIT level ML. So we want to make sure you succeed. So they will come and check. Okay. You have some sort of assessment before enrollment?
00:42:02
Speaker
What we like to do is more than assessment, we like to have the physical virtually, let the faculty chat with you. Because in the assessment... Like a counseling session. Correct. But in the assessment, I am not able to understand your aptitude. I may have poor academic marks, but if I really have the desire and willing to put in the hard work, I believe everything can be learned. If you have the desire and willing to put in the effort, that no test will ever tell you. Test will only tell you how much you are, what you know.
00:42:29
Speaker
not really your attitude and hunger to learn. So for some tests we have the faculty will speak with you for most they will not speak to you and then you enroll. The moment you enroll, we start our engagement process. We start understanding who you are, where you stay, what are your career aspirations. So we start building a baseline on you so that we start understanding you as an individual, where you are, where you want to go.
00:42:52
Speaker
And in there, there are many fashions. You'll also speak to a counselor, you'll speak to a psychologist, you'll speak to career fashions. Somebody will look at your profile on your LinkedIn, CV. So a lot of things kick in even before the program starts. See, because to me, we are more expensive than our competition. We believe, we give superior outcomes.
00:43:13
Speaker
And that's a period of more personalized learning. How do I ensure each of my learners succeed? So that journey starts.
The Future of Education and Lifelong Learning
00:43:20
Speaker
And then the class will start on the batch date. When the batch starts, then we also have doubt clearing session during the week. We also have code along session. We have watch along. So we do whatever it takes.
00:43:32
Speaker
to help a learner succeed. So you put them into separate batches as per where they are currently, as per the starting point. How does this work if it's a B2I thing? B2I is really easy. It's the same batch. Same batch. Because they would be roughly same age, similar aptitude. And if we get 120 learners or we get 100 learners, then we'd shuffle that to the top 50 and below 50. For B2B, do you create a batch for each company who signs up or their employees join existing batches?
00:44:01
Speaker
No, we create a batch because each company has a different outcome than looking at. And so it's customized as per what technology stack they work on. Absolutely. What is there? No, that is our USB. We are able to customize your operating.
00:44:16
Speaker
In a crowded space where there are well-funded unicorns also in this space, like Bijouz acquired Great Learning, which is this space, UPGRAD also unicorn in this space, you have Talon Sprint also, and a lot of much smaller players as well. And most of them have a head start over you. They've been around longer. So what do you see as your path to succeeding? Great question. One of them have been around much longer. In 2020, I was reading some data.
00:44:44
Speaker
10,000 plus ad tech companies in India when we just launched HeroVide. I think with the fundamental difference of what we do is, we are able to give superior outcomes. That is the reason why we are growing at the pace we are growing and the kind of partnership type we have, kind of program we have. I think this helps us show superior outcomes. Nobody else has tie up with NCIAD.
00:45:06
Speaker
Nobody else does the kind of life teaching we do. So we operate at a very different segment and space. And the example I give... Life teaching is... I would disagree on life teaching. Most of this is great learning I know does life teaching. Talent Spirit also does life teaching. Now I don't know whether it's 100% live or they have some live, some recorded, like those numbers might vary. But both of these are like covered waste courses only. Most of these companies.
00:45:30
Speaker
After what most people do is, they will give you pre-recorded lectures, then they do doubt clearing sessions. We call the doubt clearing session as life teaching. What we do is, we believe that people are busy or do not have the time to look at pre-recorded lectures. And especially for more complex subjects, you'll need that hand-wording. If I could give you recorded lectures for everything,
00:45:51
Speaker
Why do you even go to college? Or why do you even do anything online? Today, YouTube has enough content available from how to bake a cake, to how to drive a car, to how to swim, to how to become a data scientist, to become a rocket scientist also. Yeah, there is an ocean of content available here.
00:46:09
Speaker
But in that ocean of content, the moment the content becomes complex is where you need a guide by your side. And that's really our whole model and philosophy of which we operate. And we actually are not finding that competition. And if you were to talk more ethically, India has 1,000 plus universities. But university is not really a competition fair because you have six month to 11 month courses as opposed to three or four year course with universities.
00:46:32
Speaker
Universities also offer programs online. Universities also do executive education. So competition is not just ethnic per se. Fundamentally, if all of these were there, why do we still have unemployment or underemployment? You're saying the market is big enough for multiple players to exist and each player to find their niche. More than the market is big enough. Today you talk to any company. Most companies are always complaining that I'm not able to find talent. Now, why is that?
00:46:58
Speaker
Regular college level education is typically not good enough to make someone employable. Not just college level, if you look at overall even and the other reality is, why do we look at education as that, okay, you know what, I went to school, I went to college, that is the end of education. I think that's a big fantasy. More and more, if you look at the Western world in the US, Germany, Europe, education is intertwined with your work.
00:47:23
Speaker
Today, unfortunately in India, it's become a narrative that I finish school, I join college, I may do undergrad, then I may do post-grad, then I start working, I get married, and that's the end of my education. You look at pilots. For a pilot is mandatory to go through two trainings a year, no matter how many years of experience you have. We need to have similar... Imagine somebody who's designing a building, who went to college 50 years ago,
00:47:47
Speaker
has not attended any upskilling program after that. Has no aware or not aware of what is happening. Imagine a doctor, would you go to a doctor who studied 50 years ago and did no upskilling after that or has no idea what is happening in the medical world after that. So to me, education is very fundamental.
00:48:04
Speaker
Even if you are working, technology is changing. You need to still go and get up-skilled. You need to continuously have that intertwined relation. Today, today it is a, unfortunately, it is a handshake to say, college over and I'm done with education. But more and more today, even NEP, government is recognizing the fact that I need to bring people back.
00:48:23
Speaker
I need to uphill then. Technology is changing rapidly. Skills are changing rapidly. 10 years ago, who thought of drones? Who thought of EVs? Today's the life question. How do you handle law? If an EV, self-driving car, bangs into somebody, whose liabilities? Is it the manufacturer or the owner? Everybody's grappling with these kinds of questions. Today, if a drone does something,
00:48:46
Speaker
Who's liability is it? The way things are moving, I think we need to really come out of the whole mindset of saying that education is a way of life.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:48:56
Speaker
And one of the questions I learned in the US, even if you're an 80 year old, they have hobbies and they're still learning.
00:49:02
Speaker
In my college, I used to play tennis. And there was a lady who was 80 years old learning tennis at the same time in the court next to me. And I used to come back and tell my mom. I was like, mom, look at that age also. They are open to learning something new or folding their hobbies and passion. Why is that in India? They look down upon hobbies and passion and learning something new. Okay. Got it. Revenue wise, what is your, what do you estimate your close current year at revenue wise or what is your ERR or something like that? If you can share some numbers on that.
00:49:30
Speaker
I can share for last year what we did. This year we're doing 5X of that. And our ARR would be 150 crore plus. And by next year, we expect to do 2 to 3X of that. That automatically puts us in the top five in India. You know, in Hero Mind Mind, you told me that you discovered that it was a cyclical business.
00:49:49
Speaker
Doesn't that concern you here because it's the same business? Not at all. Now think of it like this. Here, they're doing high-end skills. The moment there's a recession, people come in, they want to do the skill which will get them jobs. So here, opposite works. And even when things are booming, then people hire, companies hire large numbers. They want to standardize who they're hired. So here, it works both sides. And that brings us to the end of this conversation.
00:50:13
Speaker
I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to this 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 this 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.