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I was born and brought up in Baroda, a small town in Gujarat. I went to school there, and later did my engineering there. I joined Larsen & Toubro for five months after graduation, but left to start a manufacturing unit. I built it into a business with a turnover of Rs 3-4 crore in less than two years. After a while, my contribution started stagnating. I knew engineering, but was scared to look at a balance sheet. I had no commercial understanding. So I decided to do an MBA. I joined the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, the top business school in India, in 2004.
Those two years built confidence more than business skills. I knew from the beginning that I did not want a cushy job at the end of those two years. I also discovered that I really enjoyed the entrepreneurship course run by Sunil Handa, who took on only 30 students and invited entrepreneurs to talk about their experiences.
I met a like-minded student, who is now my business partner, Aravind V. We explored various sectors and zeroed in on education. First, we thought we will start a school, but then everyone was doing that. So we decided to provide services to all those schools that were coming up.
We had a lot more free time in the second year of the MBA programme. So Aravind and I took on an independent project to find out gaps in the education sector. We wanted work that had potential and would allow us to make money. We also realised that not many professionals joined the education sector.
But we still had no idea of what service to offer. Around this time, both of us got selected for an exchange programme in Canada that was hosting students from 40 countries. We met this guy from South Africa, who told us about the deficiencies in the education sector there. They got a lot of aid for education, but had to return it for want of avenues.
We decided to explore an opportunity to do something together. So after finishing the MBA in April 2006, we went to South Africa. We met ministers, private schools, public schools, educationists, et al. We realised the sector had a lot of potential, but there was no quick money to be made.
Our friend opted out. But Aravind and I opened an office in July to sell the concept of multimedia content and animation. We were highly conservative with our money. We did not build content first. We simply got brochures done for client meetings. It was only after we met at least a thousand people that we made our first product.
In fact, at the seed stage, we were offered Rs 2.5 crore for a 30% stake in our business. We refused that. And that was a great decision in hindsight. We did not even spend 10% of our revenue on marketing in South Africa. We would have unnecessarily parted with one third of our equity for money that we didn’t need.
We started developing content. Being in Ahmedabad, we got in touch with people at the National Institute of Design, who helped us create good quality animation. From the beginning, we used the one measure that is used by parents all over the world – marks and grades. We are now the only Indian company with statistical data on how multimedia content is improving grades.
When we started out, we got small projects. We were tempted by the money coming in, but we stayed focused on developing our own product. We only sell software; we don’t do any wiring or hardware projects. When things looked very bad, we would look at the map and say: every school in the world will use our product. It is just a matter of time.
In the last three years, there were a number of times when I gave up. We did not see any money coming in. We learnt every business lesson the hard way. We would show our product to people, who would agree on its superior quality; meet people with decades of education experience, who admitted to never seeing a product as good as ours. But we sold nothing.
We knew it was a matter of time, but the wait was frustrating. Aravind showed more courage than me. I was financially stable due to my manufacturing business. But Aravind, despite family responsibilities, would not give up. I got my motivation from him.
We looked at other channels of sale, such as NGOs and corporate social investments, which had clear, objective briefs. They were clear about getting a return on their money, so our proposition worked. Slowly, we built acceptance for our product related to school-level science and math.
We now work with 700 schools in South Africa. We launched our services in Baroda three months ago and are working with 18 schools now. We have bundled our software with computers in Mexico. We are looking at developing countries, such as Turkey and Egypt. We do about Rs 5 crore in sales and have 90 employees. The aim is to get to Rs 10 crore by September next year.
We are still trying to finalise our strategy for the Indian market. A lot of players have shown interest in licensing our content, since Indian players have traditionally not invested in developing high-quality content. But Aravind and I are still not sure whether we want our own feet on the street, or find another model for distribution.
What eggs us on is the knowledge that only 1% of schools in India have access to digital content. We are not in a hurry. We have learnt our lessons well in the last few years. Instead of achieving Rs 5 crore in one year, as was our first business plan, we reached there in three years. So, now we plan only six months at a time. Rest is simply a fancy exercise in number creativity.
We are not out to make our millions overnight. We have been approached by venture capitalists time and again, but we are clear we will not shell out more than 10% of our equity. We are in the midst of some real breakthrough technology, which has a lot of potential for the education sector.
For the time being, we are going with the flow. People create a lot of hype around things. Our purpose is to simplify them using multimedia. We simply want to introduce fun into learning – just as we are having fun building this business.
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