4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
English

HOME

STORIES

IN

NEWS

RESOURCES

RESEARCH

ASIA

AFRICA

USA

DEPTH

INVEST KARNATAKA

Never Miss a Story

Must to know tips for education startups

in India
PARDEEP GOYAL

516

11 JULY 2015

I worked in two education-centric startups. I know there are many issues worth solving for
students, teachers, and school management. I have seen many startups doing great things
in the education domain.

The education industry is more than USD 30 billion in India alone, but most of the times
startup founders got this wrong. Dont get fooled by these numbers. The education industry
is very wide, and valuations seem swelling when we look at total education expenses of the
Indian population. We, the founders, should only focus on valuations of niche in which our
product is going to make money. Lets take a deeper look what lies under the hidden layers
of the education industry.

MOST POPULAR

POPULAR

How 22-year-old
achieved Rs 34

his one-year-old

POPULAR

4 organisations

restart their car

POPULAR

This 23-year-old

build a Rs 50-cr

There are six types of education institutes.

1. Prenursery/Kindergarten

Bollant Industri

POPULAR

Why this succes

founder turned

This category was almost non-existent even a few years back. In the last 10 to 15 years the

Uber

number of working mothers has increased in many folds thus the demand for the schools,
taking care of early education has also increased. There was a rapid growth in the sector of

POPULAR

How an enginee

early education.

revolution is tra
agriculture

I see these schools as crche with a better business model. No wonder, big companies

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

1/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
grabbed the opportunity and successfully built public companies like T.I.M.E Kids, EuroKids,
POPULAR

and KidZee.

Inspired by a ba

Australia, these
start a chain of

Got:Aninnovativestartup.
Get:Onthebiggestlaunchpad.
Win:Aflighttosuccess.

*MandeepManochaCoFounder&CEO,
ReGlobeSeason3,GrandPrizeWinner

Runway
toSuccess
Season4

Replay

POPULAR

RegisterNow!

Meher "Magella

Indian woman t
Advertisement

has 18 filled pas

181 countries

What do they sell?

POPULAR

Flipkart goes be

eKart to serve o

The dream of homelike care at school along with basic education which is needed to get
admission in top ranked branded schools.
POPULAR

Did you know th

increased mont

To capitalize on the popularity of online learning, you must deliver your content and

10,000 farmers

applications quickly, reliably, and securely. You can do that by turning to the cloud and
delivering it via a world-class, global CDN.

POPULAR

Uber cab driver

juvenile passen

For a proven approach to delivering eLearning videos, you can take advantage of Akamais
video streaming solutions. Register for the YourStory-Akamai eLearning roundtable
happening tomorrow (Oct 05) in Bengaluru to learn more. More details here.

POPULAR

The day my star

POPULAR

Bootstrapped a

pc YoY - meet t

behind world's f

charging tablet

POPULAR

Delhi Metro goe

unveils trains p
passengers

POPULAR

Perplexed over

rankings? Thes

help make bette

decisions

POPULAR

How this bootst

crossed 100,00
within 8 weeks

2. K-12 schools
POPULAR

Kishore Biyanis

This category of schools was ever present but never been that hot space as it is now.
Schools are getting smarter with technology, infrastructure, curriculum and extra activities.

acquires Rocke

FabFurnish for 2
sources

POPULAR

Parents are becoming more concerned about their children and demanding more attention

How slashing su

from schools. Schools are cashing out this opportunity by increasing fees and providing all

affect cab aggr

the facilities expected by the parents.

POPULAR

What do they sell?

How this Chenn

from bankruptc

moments of hap

A dream of a smart student with IQ of Einstein + Sports spirit of Tendulkar + Musical talent

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

2/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
of A.R Rehman.
POPULAR

This Mumbai-ba

3. Supplementary Education

platform aims t

emotional and p

concerns anony

It is our favorite tuition market. In early times, tuitions were for the weak students who could
not keep pace with the speed of teaching in school.. Parents started sending their kids to

POPULAR

5 challenges I fa

my services sta

tutors so that they can learn at their own individual speed.

Teachers started exploiting this opportunity of making extra bucks. School teachers joined
the race of becoming the part-time tutor. Then they started favoring students in the school
who were taking tuition from them. Soon, parents observed that the tuition going students
were scoring more marks. Of course teachers were preparing their tuition students for the
questions which they were going to set in the school. Illegal, but under the carpet and no one
could ever rectify this corruption.

Ganda hai par Dhanda hai yeh today supplementary education is a big business.

What do they sell?

Extra Marks!! That is it.

4. Extra-curricular activities

Parents want more for their children. They want their children to excel in every possible
field, so they send their children to dance, music, painting and other classes.

What do they sell?

A dream of becoming a multitalented student.

5. Competitive exam preparation

This segment of education was not popular before the trend of studying engineering burst in
India. After the success of IIT-JEE preparation classes, teachers get the attention of all
possible competitive exams.

Now people brand their coaching institute as IIT coaching from the IITians.

What do they sell?

Dream of getting into IIT/AIIMs (or similar branded institutes)

6. Colleges

Colleges and universities are the upper segments of the education system. Businessmen
exploited this segment in the name of popular brands.

Promise you wont laugh at Think beyond IIMs, a ponytail hatching his golden eggs.

Today, higher education market in India is dominated by builders and landlords. The major
investment is land and infrastructure, the rest of the things are almost free in comparison to

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

3/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
infra cost.

What do they sell?

The sweet dream of a job.

What people are solving?

If you analyze education industry carefully, then you will observe a lot of problems. Parents
are genuinely concerned about the future of their children so they are willing to spend as
much money as they can. On the flip side, education providers are now businessmen who
want to increase their profitability every year, they care about making more money.

In between the startups who are solving problems like

Platform to connect teachers & students
LinkedIn type of platform for teachers
Content sharing platform
Discussion portals exclusively for teachers or students
Content curating & aggregation
Zomato like portal for searching schools or pre-schools
Game based learning
E-commerce for school accessories
Communication channels between schools and parents
ERP, CRM for simplifying internal admin processes of schools

What needs more attention from startups?

You, as a startup founder has to look deeper into root issues. Do not consider education
domain as a cash-cow. It may be true for school owner but definitely not for you. Tell me the
name of 10 education startups who made hefty amount in past 10 years? Not much, but
schools, coaching institutes & colleges are making loads of money every year.

You might be solving a valid issue but dont just touch that issue on the surface level. Some
of my suggestion for you to research further are

1. What student wants?

Think as if you are student, what you will need? Dont think yourself as a revolutionist who
define what student should have. Students will reject your product if you are not solving his
pain.

Students are fed up with supplement education. If you are passionate about supplement
education, then look for a niche. For example, if you want to make science learning product
then find 100-200 students who are extremely interested in your product. Keep iterating till
you find your product to be-market fit.

Go into product depth then expand in width (market growth).

There are three segments within students

1. Rockets High-speed individuals fueled by self motivation proponent. These are students
who are hungry for knowledge. You do not have to teach them; they will figure out their own

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

4/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
ways to excel in their favorite subject. Unfortunately percentage is very low for this segment.
How many rockets have you seen in your class?
2. Mercedes/Audi/BMW High worth students who are excellent in studies but controlled by
ground boundaries of the curriculum. They need directions; they need the motivation to
break records, they feel valuable when people talk about them, they feel motivated when
appreciated by masses. I dont know the exact percentage, but can we assume top 10%
students?
3. Public Transport These are students who are driven by public pressure. If given a chance
they will not move from their station. They feel a burden in everything they are doing about
studies. These are masses, you see them everywhere in metro cities, urban cities and
villages. These are the students who are ignored by most of the startups.

Figure out your segment. You can not make a product to satisfy all the segments. Everyone
may participate, but your focus must be on one and only one segment.

2. What teachers want?

Teachers in India are different from teachers in US/UK. Before building something for
teachers, you must understand why a teacher choose teaching as a profession. I feel sad
when I see some teachers who are teaching in colleges because they have not got a job
anywhere else. Very unfortunate but true in my experience. I will love to get proved wrong at
this point.

This unfortunate situation happened because of crony capitalism. Education businesses

need cheap labor because they dont want to pay packages like IT companies. They hire
graduates and post graduates who are rejected by other companies. Why? Because no one
look at the performance of a teacher, they look at the degrees. Teacher performance should
be measured by the number of students who love to attend his/her class without
attendance pressure.

I have seen some teachers who are passionate about teaching. Who could have got a better
paying job but they are teaching because they love to teach. Students attend their classes,
not because of fear of attendance shortage but because they enjoy learning from that
teacher.

Why schools and colleges need to impose minimum attendance? Because they failed in
making education an enjoyable process.

Re-evaluate what you are making for teachers. Find out a target group of teachers for your
product. Start with 10-20 early adopter teachers to validate what you are making.

Figure out their difficulties. Ask them what they want. Do not ask them what other teachers
want.

Chip and Dan Heath explained an experiment with human psychology in their book Made to

Stick.

Lets assume that you are trying to persuade someone to take a new job in a department
that is crucial to the companys success. Here are three possible pitches for the new job.
1. Think about how much security this job provides. Its so important that the company will
always need someone doing this job.

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

5/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
2. Think about the visibility provided by this job. Because the job is so important, a lot of people
will be watching your performance
3. Think about how rewarding it will be to work in such a central job. It offers a unique
opportunity to learn how the company really works.

This experiment reveals the chasm between ourselves and others. Most people say no. 3- an
appeal to learning would be most motivating for them. Those same people predict that
others would be most motivated by No. 1 (Security) and No. 2(Esteem)

Learn the art of taking feedback. Ask them what you want?, not what you think your
colleagues will need?.

3. What school/college management wants?

No Secret, they want profits. Build something that can reduce their costs or help them in
making more money.

Some schools want to make money in every possible way (wrong or right) but some schools
want to increase profits by taking responsible steps. Both are right in their places. Debate is
not to prove someone wrong. Debate is how to add value in their life.

Some random ideas

Save their money on SMS by providing them WhatsApp type simple communication
platform
Save their money on paper printing by implementing e-library easy to access, easy to
search, easy to read
Help them in getting more students (highly monetizable business)
Give them something for which parents can pay extra happily. Something so cool that the
school can provide as optional buy for parents and 99% parents says YES.
Reduce schools headache from government regulations/policy updates. Send them easy to
interpret and actionable notification whenever there is any relevant update from C.B.S.E,
state government or central government.
Reduce their existing manual cost by upgrading to technology. No bullshit. Be practical,
your offer should be so simple that you pitch for sale, and they should get saving
calculations in their mind.

After reading above points, if you get an idea that you will have all my suggestions as part of
your product, I am sorry to say but 99% chances are you will fail.

Focus only on one thing at a time and do it with sheer excellence. Once it is done then think
about including next best thing.

If you think I am imposing my shitty thoughts on you then take an example of WhatsApp.
Until their acquisition by Facebook, they were simple text/image based communications
platform. Recently they added voice and not yet a video calling. Do you think they lack in
technology expertise or money or video was not something people wanted? They just
focused on one thing.

Conclusion

Education seems lucrative space to build next big startup, it is big space but do not get

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

6/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
fooled by big numbers and size of the market that analytic experts are telling you. Think
about creating value for the stakeholders. Pick only one stakeholder at a time, filter out a
niche, build something awesome that people love to talk about, iterate and iterate to make it
next big thing.

Think big but act small. No one ever became successful in satisfying everyones needs. Build
your product for one person and make him fall in love with it. He will do the rest of marketing
for you.

To capitalize on the popularity of online learning, you must deliver your content and
applications quickly, reliably, and securely. You can do that by turning to the cloud and
delivering it via a world-class, global CDN.

For a proven approach to delivering eLearning videos, you can take advantage of Akamais
video streaming solutions. Register for the YourStory-Akamai eLearning roundtable
happening tomorrow (Oct 05) in Bengaluru to learn more. More details here.

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED

Teachers, tablets and technology: what Indias education truly needs

A startling revelation by the Unified District Information System for Education once again showed the
shambles in which the Indian education is. Maharashtra, as an example, has a whopping one lakh
teachers with the highest qualification of just Class X. If this is the condition in what is regarded by some
as the most

KRISH KUPATHIL
11 NOVEMBER 2015

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

7/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia

RELATED

RELATED

Education vs. literacy is digital

How is mobility revolutionizing the

education the answer to Indias ed

education sector?

On 5th September, schools across India

Way back in the 90s, studious kids back in school

celebrated Teachers Day. A day that reveres

were often referred to as bookworms. We still

teachers and education for a society to progress.

have nerds, but we no longer call them

PM Modi inter

bookworms. Bec

KRISH KUPATHIL

KRISH KUPATHIL

27 SEPTEMBER 2015

28 AUGUST 2015

TAGS

ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION

EDUCATION INDUSTRY

CHIP HEATH

EUROKIDS

COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM

PART-TIME TUTOR

T.I.M.E KIDS

DAN HEATH

TECHNOLOGY EXPERTISE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pardeep Goyal

I spend most of my time on reading, writing, and developing marketing plans for startups. I love to help
startups. I am sharing my entrepreneurial journey via www.startupkarma.co, you can drop me an email
at pardeep@startupkarma.co

32Comments

Sortby Top

Addacomment...

HimanshuVasistha
Nicewriteup.Onesimilarreason,whenyousaythattheColleges/Unisarerunbybusinessmen,thesame
istrueforEduTechstartupstoday!HowmanyEduTechstartupsinIndiahavebeenstartedbyactual
teachers?Iknowonlyone,www.tutorvista.comandthatwasacquiredbyPearsonGroupifIamnotwrong.
Restofallthewebsitesyouseetodayarefromyoungpeoplewith23yrsofteachingexposureornoneat
all!!Mostofthemknowhowtobuildawebsiteoranapp,butknowverylittleabouthoweducationmustbe
delivered.
Ithink,ifmoreteachersshowedinitiativesinthisfield,thingswillchange.
Whathasbeenhappeningis,someIT/WebDevelopersgettogetherandtheshortsightedVCsfundthem.
Thentheygoonahiringspreeforteachersandexperts.
Moreinsightsonthiswillbeappreciated.
LikeReply

2Jan26,20167:32pm

SarthakGroverOwneratBazinga
ToanyonewhoisworriedaboutthestateofIndianEducationsystem,pleasehanginthere....Ijustwantto
tellyouthatmanyofusaretryingtochangethissituationandactuallyworkforthebenefitofthenext
generation.Pleasedon'tcommitsuicideduetoimmensepressure.Lifeismuchmorethanclass12board
exams.Inthelongrunthesestupidexamsdontevenmatter.Itsyourknowledgeandexperiencethat
matters.Dowhatyouloveandonceagainjusthanginthere,weareworkingonthissituation.
LikeReplyFeb27,20165:07pm

PankajMishraFounderandCEOatPrudentLearning
Reallynice,iamworkingoneducationstartup,itisundoubtedlyaneyeopenerandthoughtprovoking.

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

8/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia
Thankyouforsharingatrighttime.wishingyoumostnmore.
LikeReply

2Jul12,201512:16am

PardeepGoyalChandigarh,India
ThanksPankaj.Iamgladyoulikedit
LikeReplyJul14,20159:20pm

HussainAliSRASMatReelabsPvtltd
Thankstrueandgoodinfo
LikeReply

1Jul12,20154:36pm

ManishPanjwaniCEOandCoFounderatTonewdigital
Interestingarticle.Educationisonthegrowthpath.itneedsrevolutionandEducationtechnologyis
becomingadrivingforceinmakingitreality.CollaborationbetweenTataandKhanacademyisoneofthe
biggeststepforIndia.Bestwishes.
ToNewDigitalisaEducationtechnologycompanybasedoutinNCRwith15+yearsofeducation
technologyexperienceWearereachableat:http://tonewdigital.com/#contact
LikeReplyFeb20,201610:42pm

ArshalHaidsUniversityofCalcutta
Hipardeepihavedroppedonemsginfacebookpleaseseetoit
LikeReply

1Jul12,201512:28am

PardeepGoyalChandigarh,India
butIhavenotreceivedanymessage.Youcanconnectwithmeovertwitter@pardeepg
LikeReplyJul14,20159:20pm

SusheelNairFounder,CEOatShambalaCommuneOrg
"AdreamofasmartstudentwithIQofEinstein+SportsspiritofTendulkar+MusicaltalentofA.RRehman"
QuiteIronicthatone.All3ofthesegreatswereschooldropoutsnyetmostparentspushtheirkidsinthe
wrongplace.Nicelywrittenarticle,Pardeep!
LikeReply

2Jul11,201511:46pm

PardeepGoyalChandigarh,India
GladyoulikeditSusheel
LikeReplyJul14,20159:21pm

PrashanthVarikuntaWebDesigneratGudduzTechnologies
THISISMYTURNTOJOINWITHYOUFRIENDS.
LikeReplySep3,20152:29pm

AdnanShamirAhmedProgrammeratMuraaiInformationTechnology
Ihadchancetoreadmanyarticlesandpracticalsurveysineducationsector,butyourarticleisoneofthe
best.Hadpracticallyexperiencedmostofyourthoughts.Appreciatedthanksforsharingyourknowledge..
LikeReplyJan3,20163:14amEdited

PardeepGoyalChandigarh,India
ThanksAdnanforkindwords.Ineverthoughtofwritingbetterthansurveysthough
LikeReplyJul14,20159:23pm

KanakAnupamaPalFounderatAnkushInboundTravelAcademy
HelloMrpradeepthanksforyourkindness.WehaveanIdeaonaTourismSchool.TheideaisNewand
UniquelydifferentfrompresentInstitutions.
Pleasehavealookontheideawww.aitaacademy.com
Waitingforyourvaluablefeedback.
LikeReply

1Dec7,201511:56am

Load10morecomments

FacebookCommentsPlugin

Sign Up for the daily YS Newsletter for all the

latest updates

Type your email address

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

9/10

4/9/2016

MusttoknowtipsforeducationstartupsinIndia

ABOUT US

CONTACT US

FAQS

PRIVACY

JOBS@YS

PARTNER EVENTS

TERMS & CONDITIONS

TEAM YS

TESTIMONIALS

DISCLAIMER

PRIVACY

2016 YourStory Media Private Limited. All rights reserved.

http://yourstory.com/2015/07/educationindustry/

10/10