Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Ashwin Damera on The Art and Pursuit of Disciplined Entrepreneurship (#006)

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Ashwin Damera on The Art and Pursuit of Disciplined Entrepreneurship (#006) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

0:00
SPEAKER_01: So much of success or failure is timing.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: And so we should take both of these very lightly.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: We should be very forgiving of so-called failures, and we should be very humble about so-called success.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: In my own experience, you know, if eruditis had started not in 2010, but let's say we started two years back or five years back.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: We would not be the same company.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another section of compromise.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, I have a complex.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: She is the CEO of the leading ethics foruditus.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Ashwin is a character complex and a management graduate from our business school.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: She is a stock leader and special people manager and for office achievements.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Ashwin is an extremely grounded and humble professional.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Today he talks to me about the changing phase of education and learning and the need for discipline entrepreneurship.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in into my conversation with Ashwin.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Hi Ashwin.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for uh being a guest in the Contraminds podcast.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: And uh first of all, congratulations on completing 10 years at Eriditus.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a great milestone to achieve, and uh I'm really happy that uh you've taken time for this podcast.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Swami.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh the good thing is I know you for more than those 10 years.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: So I'm super glad that I'm having this opportunity to talk to a fellow entrepreneur and also somebody who I respect tremendously.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh so super excited to be doing this.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ashwin.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Um I wanted to start this conversation with uh something that I read uh that you'd kind of uh you know talked about, which is saying that this venture you actually failed before you found success.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: So, what are what are the key takeaways uh you know from that and what are the normal mistakes people make when they start and uh you know when they fail first?
2:03
SPEAKER_00: And what do you think they must avoid?
2:06
SPEAKER_01: So, first Ami, you know, I love uh uh answering this question on failure.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: I think uh all of us must re-look at the definition of success and failure.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: Today we all look at success and we say, look, XYZ founder is good because he raised at 1 billion, 2 billion, or some fund invested in him, et cetera.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: These are, in my view, what we call uh outward mixed metrics or extrinsic metrics of success, which is what the press celebrates, and today, unfortunately, the ecosystem celebrates.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, failure is defined as if you started a company and it had a small outcome or you know, no big guy came and invested in you, you're a failure.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my view always for entrepreneurs is that failure is not even attempting to do something.
2:52
unknown: Right?
2:52
SPEAKER_01: So, with that definition, while my first venture I could say also was a moderate success, but I learned a lot.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I would not consider you know an entrepreneur failing in any realm.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: I would just say it's a stepping stone to success.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: In fact, a Stanford professor once said this to me.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: He said, I would rather invest in the second venture of a so-called failed entrepreneur than invest in the first venture of a newbie.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: Right?
3:20
SPEAKER_01: And so that's the key difference.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Now, clearly, this why does the second venture of a failed entrepreneur matter?
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Because hopefully that entrepreneur has learned a lot.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: For me, I think some of the key lessons that I sometimes, when I give advice, uh you know, free advice, maybe not very valuable, to some uh, you know, people who ask.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: I think the first thing is as an entrepreneur, we always overestimate revenue and underestimate costs.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: It's what I call uh the entrepreneur's overconfidence, right?
3:51
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's what makes us successful, because we see something that nobody else sees.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: That's that overconfidence or belief, etc.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: But then we also see revenues that nobody sees.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: We also don't see costs that everybody sees.
4:03
SPEAKER_01: And so what that means though, when you start is you know, you think, okay, I'm gonna build this in three years, scale to X.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Just yesterday, for example, Swami, I spoke to a potential entrepreneur who says, Look, I'm raised$1 million and I build, I can build 100 million in revenue in three years.
4:20
SPEAKER_01: And I said, like, this is like wonderful.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're laughing, I know.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then my first thing is look, you're overconfident on revenue and underconfident on uh or underestimating your cost.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: So, what does that mean?
4:31
SPEAKER_01: You have to obviously think through how much funding you need and how you build.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing that I like to tell people.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: The second thing is always product market fit, right?
4:40
SPEAKER_01: Because as an entrepreneur, again, you see something that nobody has seen.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: So you want to get off the gates and run that race.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and sometimes you don't have product market fit, you burn a lot of cash, and then you're in a bad situation.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're lucky, you can make a pivot.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: Most successful large companies have made pivots, including you know, mine and I'm sure yours.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: So the key skill of the entrepreneur is to find the product market fit or pivot quickly.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: I think that's an uh advice that I would love to share with people.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, the team matters.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: I've seen enough companies where the founder has no tech experience, but uh they want to build an ed tech, foot tech, you know, fintech company.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: And what are they doing about technology?
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have I found a firm that I've outsourced my tech to, uh, and that's their belief.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: And so you know, you know straight away that look, execution will be a challenge.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: And then maybe one other point which I may say, Swami, is again, this goes back to the success and failure uh piece, right?
5:37
SPEAKER_01: So much of success or failure is timing.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: And so we should take both of these very lightly.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: We should be very forgiving of so-called failure, and we should be very humble about so-called success.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: In my own experience, you know, if eruditus had started not in 2010, but let's say we started two years back or five years back, we would not be the same company.
5:59
SPEAKER_01: Had we started five years ago, earlier, uh, we probably would have shut down.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And in every industry, you can see so timing, like so many companies that were one year ago, they were exalted, right?
6:10
SPEAKER_01: These were the kind of the mavericks who were conquering India and you know, the soft banks and the tigers of the world were pumping in cash.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: Today, because of the pandemic, which is no fault of theirs, they are in the doldrums.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: So, how much of their success is their own abilities, how much is timing the external environment?
6:28
SPEAKER_01: So, my view is be very humble about success, but also be very forgiving about failure.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: It's you know, there's some research that comes out from Harvard Business School faculty where about 40% of the success of any startup, and they they had uh looked at about 400, 500 startups, is actually attributed to timing.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: So, for all entrepreneurs who believe they're very successful, it's a very humbling data point to be aware of.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh you talked about product market fit, and uh somewhere I read where you'd kind of quoted saying, you know, uh you spent seven years getting your product market fit for this venture right.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And in a day and age where you know people talk about uh speed, scale, why did you do that and what benefits are accrued for you in this venture because of that philosophy?
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that is a philosophy, there could be others.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: And my view is you know, you can run very fast, but you better know where the finish line is first before you start running, right?
7:27
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, it's not going to get you there faster.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And that's the simple notion of product market fit.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: See, when when we started Eruditis, we thought that, hey, if we just get faculty from top schools, instead of working with the school themselves and charging a fraction of what a school or a university would charge for a course, we have a winner product because it would be cost leadership.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: It didn't play out that way.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh did we think we had product market fit?
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: But we could not fill up a classroom.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, and you were part of that exercise, and we couldn't pay the lead faculty also, which uh you know later on worked out fine.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: But the key insight was hey, you have to work with universities because the brand for education is very important.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: And then the question then was would they want to work with you?
8:15
SPEAKER_01: What is the right price?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: What is the right format, right market?
8:18
SPEAKER_01: So there's so many questions around this product market fit.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: And you're right, we spent the first five, seven years figuring it out, and then we were ready for scale and we've scaled exponentially.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: I remember, you know, I was in a conference in Bangalore in a very celebrated K Ganesh, celebrated CL entrepreneur.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, so he came after, and this was five years after I started said, You're wasting your time, just raise hundred million dollars and scale this.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh and he meant it well.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: Look, he wasn't making fun, he was like, you know, why are you trying to you know grow slowly, etc., scale it?
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Because if you make a few missteps, the money is there to back you.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: So there are other philosophies of scale.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but my own philosophy, and specifically for our industry, perhaps working with universities, was to figure the product market fit and then grow.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: See, one of the uh consequences of that is that we have much more ownership in the company today, right?
9:10
SPEAKER_01: The founding team in Eruditis still owns, I would say, more than a majority of the company.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, and consequence of that is that we still think about long-term impact, long-term growth.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: Right?
9:22
SPEAKER_01: If we were single-digit owners, we're thinking about who's going to buy us, or how do I just raise the next round and put some dollar, million valuation on that?
9:29
SPEAKER_01: But we still think long-term.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: So it does fundamentally change the way the business is built and the way you as an entrepreneur think of the business.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: But then again, that's a that's a path.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Somebody else may decide to raise a lot of money, dilute before they get product market fit, shut down or sell, exit, blah, blah, blah.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: That's another part, and there is success in that as well.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's interesting.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: Given your vision of making education affordable and making it accessible, I'm sure in this product market fit, you would have faced a dilemma between you know tying up with universities.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you talked about cost leadership earlier.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Uh, how did you get your product market fit right with this vision vis-a-vis and the university uh you know kind of uh you know giving you that access?
10:15
SPEAKER_00: And how did you kind of balance it and get your product market fit right?
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's a great question.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: Look, uh our mission of making uh high quality education.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: So high quality is important, uh, accessible and affordable is work in progress.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: Like how much ever you do in that, so you know, the last 12 months we will we would have touched about 100,000 students.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: But my own view is it's a very small number.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: And my own view, by the way, is unless you scale high-quality education, the outcomes, I mean, you can deliver great learning to 30 people, but that may not change the world.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we are in pursuit of scalable but high-quality education.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: The access point we have solved, I mean, today our courses are available in Spanish, in Portuguese, in Mandarin.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: So this is an MIT or an INCAD or a Wharton course available.
11:07
SPEAKER_01: We are launching Arabic soon.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's one.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: Second is, you know, because most of our courses now are offered online, sitting in India, for example, you can take courses from, say, a Cambridge or an LBS, et cetera, et cetera.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so that's exciting.
11:22
SPEAKER_01: That's also access.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: We've started launching, for example, uh courses like we do a MIT coding bootcamp just for women.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: So that's also access.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: The price point is a little trickier because again, once you work with these institutions, by the way, in India we work with the IITs and the IIMs, uh, but they all, given their brand stature, have a certain pricing range that they want to be within.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Now we work closely with them to get it down to a reasonable level so that we can uh expand the access.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: But it cannot be the same thing that a tier two or a tier three university uh you know delivers.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: But I would argue that we have made a lot of progress there and actually using technology, we can go further.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, like for example, I'm a big fan of this$10,000 MS in computer science from Georgia Tech.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: Right?
12:10
SPEAKER_01: The normal US uh you know MS in computer science is$40,000 and they're doing it at$10,000.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: So can we create more such accessible programs?
12:20
SPEAKER_01: That's an endeavor, it's work in progress.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: I think you know we will have more to show in the years to come.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Great.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: One other uh thing that I read about was your uh you know belief in funding patients, right?
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Uh I read that you rejected almost 20 funds and you wondered if you needed funding at all.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: And uh tell me a little more about this.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: And uh I think it's a very, very you know, contrarian approach to uh you know uh what we see around us today.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very interesting point that I read.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: So maybe uh you know you should talk about it and tell us uh how it kind of helped you.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Actually, Swami, you're very kind.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: 20 startups rejected us.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: We didn't reject 20 startups, uh sorry, uh 20 funds.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh, you know, in some ways these things uh happen in a in a for the good, I suppose.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: But I think funding patience comes back to this point of product market fit.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: Right?
13:17
SPEAKER_01: Once you have product market fit, then you can figure out okay, I need to raise cash and I need to accelerate.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: Right?
13:24
SPEAKER_01: Before that, you need to raise as little funding as you need to figure out the product market fit, or as much funding as you need to figure out the product market fit.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: That's how I would think about it.
13:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, but of course, today you look around the ecosystem, it's a it's a difficult thing to do, right?
13:39
SPEAKER_01: Because you know, you look around and you see that somebody is raising a lot of money kind of on a pre-revenue business, and then you you read that in ET and Mint and all of this, and you're like, dude, I should be that person.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: So from an entrepreneur's perspective, it's tempting to fall into that trap of you know, do what your neighbor or what you see.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: The uh, like I said, the upside of being a little more disciplined in your entrepreneurship approach is that you know you really understand the customer better.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: If you have any flaws in your business model, you figure it out much faster when you are smaller.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: Then the cash that you raise is used for what I also call profitable growth.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: And profitable growth does not mean that the startup is profitable, but at least the LTV is far greater than CAC.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: Right.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: So, what that means again is you're not burning money to acquire the customers who then don't stay with you.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: Then you realize that your model is flawed or your pricing is flawed, and then you have to raise more money and more money, and this becomes a trap, right?
14:40
SPEAKER_01: Rather, you're spending money saying, look, I know the model works.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Now let me go and scale this in a different geography, in a different ancillary product, or I have a web, I'll build an app.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: But you know that your unit metrics are great, you're just scaling the growth.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: So that's what I call profitable growth.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: So I really do believe that that disciplined entrepreneurship approach is something that people should think about.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh disciplined entrepreneurship approach.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a nice term to kind of uh use it as a headline for the podcast.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: Because by the way, there's a book on this called Disciplined Entrepreneurship.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: So it's not my coinage by Professor Bill Ollett at MIT.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, one of the things you should know is one of the competitive advantages or perks of what I do is that we get to sit in on the classes taught by some of our leading faculty, whether that is Sanjay Sarma, who teaches radical innovation and the theory of dominant design, or Professor Vijay Govindrajan, who teaches box three, or Bill Ollett, who actually runs the entrepreneurship center at MIT, he actually has this view that entrepreneurship is not some uh haphazard thing that you just do, and some crazy founder who has a horrible hairstyle suddenly wakes up one night and uh you know, wakes up one day and figures out what they want to do.
15:53
SPEAKER_01: It's there's a discipline to it.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think he puts out, I think, 28 steps, et cetera.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest things that I maybe we'll talk about on product market fit is this idea of MVP, minimum viable products, right?
16:06
SPEAKER_01: Get an MVP out.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: So, how do you get an MVP?
16:08
SPEAKER_01: This MVP, there's a whole bunch of stuff on rapid prototyping, et cetera.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: But get an MVP out, and I would say fail fast fails uh soon, right?
16:18
SPEAKER_01: So if you had to fail, fail quickly.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: Like our first program that we launched in eroditis didn't do well, but we quickly learned and we pivoted to something else.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: So that learning was amazing.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that program I would say is the most successful program we ever did because it laid the foundation for everything that we pivoted to later.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: So there actually is a disciplined entrepreneurship approach.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: And I would recommend anybody who's interested in thinking about entrepreneurship or even ex current entrepreneurs to read that.
16:45
SPEAKER_01: He has some very interesting concept, like what is a beachhead market?
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Right?
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so, and therefore, if you find a beachhead market and find product market fit there first, then your much faster uh scaling is possible.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: Don't go after five different markets, find one beachhead market, right?
17:01
SPEAKER_01: So there's some interesting ideas there in that book.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, very interesting.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I think uh I was just uh listening to Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman, and he says, fail fast, fail smart.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's something that you talked about.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: And again, uh he shares a very similar philosophy which you kind of outlined a couple of minutes back, where he said raising funding is an obligation.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's entrepreneurs need to think about it.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, your philosophy of you know, ensuring that you are raising the fund for profitable growth, I think is a fantastic uh point that you are making.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: You also on that raising funding question, let me ask you a question.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh, what is the best source of funding for a startup?
17:46
SPEAKER_00: I think uh, you know, uh bootstrapping, and because you have to put your money where your mouth is.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: So, my uh one of my uh inspirations and a faculty who I think is very instrumental in my success, Professor Bill Solman at Harvard Business School.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: And I took his class, he taught this in his class, and I never listened properly.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Bad student.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: He said the best form of funding is from customers.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: I didn't pay attention.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: I still thought series A, series B, VCP, you know, you go down this path.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: Because he said, look, the moment you have a paying customer, you have made the first step towards establishing product market fit.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Now, let's say an investor gives you 10 million.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you have product market fit.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: But if you get 10 million from customers, it means you have product market fit.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Getting the 10 million from the investor after that is a cakewalk.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: So the key thing on this product market fit and why you take three years, five years, or even in some cases it can be two months, you can figure out product market fit.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: I will say, apart from MVP, paying customers.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: So many times people will come and say, Look, I have hundred thousand users on my app.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: First question, how many are paying?
18:53
SPEAKER_01: Zero.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: You still don't have product market fit potentially, right?
18:57
SPEAKER_01: So that's one more thing that you know perhaps is worth thinking.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you have paying customers?
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Because they that tells you a lot.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a lovely point, and it goes back to my own venture where I think uh you know the initial success was paying customers, and that's really how we build the business.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: So maybe uh, you know, uh the philosophy of getting a paying customer really tells you whether it's working in the market or not.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: You also talk Ashwin about uh you know learning from these professors.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: You just said uh, you know, Vijay Govindrajan's uh you know three box solution or uh you know Sanjay Sharma's future of learning.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: How have you applied that to the business?
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Can you give me some examples of how you kind of saw it seven years ago, uh, five years ago, a year ago?
19:44
SPEAKER_00: How did each of these kind of concepts, how did you apply it to your business?
19:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great question, Swami.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: So let's take three box, right?
19:52
SPEAKER_01: So what does uh Professor Vijay Govindarajan say?
19:55
SPEAKER_01: He says, just because you're successful today doesn't mean you'll be successful five years from now.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: And you know, the business world is littered with examples of companies who have gone bankrupt, though they were market leaders, right?
20:07
SPEAKER_01: So what does that mean for a business?
20:09
SPEAKER_01: So he says to be successful five years from now, you need to be doing a new box three, a new line of business, or a new way of doing the same business.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Or more simply put, reaching non-consumers of your current product, right?
20:24
SPEAKER_01: But you need to be doing it today.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: You need to be making that investment today.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it five years from now, you will be obsolete by then.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: So, what's an example?
20:32
SPEAKER_01: When we started, we started as a classroom business focused on India.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Today, only 10% of our revenue is classroom, right?
20:41
SPEAKER_01: So, had we continued to remain classroom, we would be, I think, extinct.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: But in 2015, after we had done a lot of product market fit, we said, look, there's an opportunity for us to go online.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: But online for us in 2015 was box three.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: We did not know how to create a course, we did not know if it would be very big.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: Would students really learn significantly online?
21:03
SPEAKER_01: In 2015, the answer was not obvious.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: In 2021, the answer is obvious.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: So in 2015 or 2014, when we started making those investments, we had to say, look, five years from now, online higher education will could be online, right?
21:18
SPEAKER_01: The universities will participate.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: We can show learning outcomes that are comparable with classroom, and the learning outcome will be high quality.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: All of these were unknowns.
21:29
SPEAKER_01: There was Khan Academy, there was Coursera, but only 3-4% were finishing.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: Many top schools were not participating, etc.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: So at that time, we started making a box three.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Professor Vijay Gomandharjan himself taught our first online course from Dartmouth, Tuck.
21:44
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, it started, and of course, we made a lot of pivotes and we improved.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: And look, today it is 90% of our business.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Same thing with us about our assumption that we are in India business.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: Today, India is about 20% of our students, 20% is from India.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: India.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: But when we have to succeed in Latin America, in China, US, it's box three.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: We haven't done that before.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: How do you do that?
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Let me talk about one that we're working on right now, which is a product called Emeritus Insights, which is, you know, like 10-minute summaries of books or a two-minute video lesson from, say, Narena Murti, et cetera.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: It's not a course.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: So one of the box threes we have is look, the assumption that our product is a course.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: That is an assumption.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: But what if learning moves to bite-size where people say, look, I will learn across multiple formats?
22:32
SPEAKER_01: How will that's not happened today, but it could happen five years or maybe even 10 years from now.
22:37
SPEAKER_01: So the box three initiative is today, bite-sized learning across formats, across thinkers, across books, across could be an HBR article that we will put into a video or an audio format.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: We don't know how it works, right?
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Today it has zero revenue from it.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: But five years from now, and so that's that thinking of box three, and putting in a different way.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Every year we're thinking about is there a new S-curve, right?
23:00
SPEAKER_01: So I think that's a lot of learning from uh the box one, box two, box three.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: By the one other point is to succeed in box three, you have to be good at box two.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Box two is forgetting the past.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: This is how I did it.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: So this is how I will always do it.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean, all of our HR policies, admin policies are all built on this beautiful thing about five years ago, this was the rule, therefore, for the next five years, this will be the rule.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: And the role of a leader or even and especially an entrepreneur is to break that down and say, look, that doesn't make sense, right?
23:28
SPEAKER_01: So, how should we think about that?
23:30
SPEAKER_01: And box one, by the way, is your current business.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: Your box one, by the way, is very important.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: You should be spending 70% of your time.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: That's what generates the cash flow to keep the lights on.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: That's what funds the box three.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: So nobody's belittling box one at all, right?
23:43
SPEAKER_01: But your box one kind of will get you that 20%, 30% year-on-year growth.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: If you don't do box three, you may become offside.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: That's the idea.
23:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's fantastic.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh great points, uh Ashwin.
23:56
SPEAKER_00: I think the fact that your box one must be giving you the cash flow and you must be spending 70% of the time and keep on looking at your box three year after year, uh, uh, you know, quarter after quarter, depending on how uh, you know, what's the swing in your business.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: Those are very important points, and these are things that businesses don't kind of appreciate, and uh, you know, they kind of lose focus on that.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: I uh and if I just add up an analogy to this, and this is what even Vijay himself says in our Hindu scriptures, they had already captured this box one, box two, box three as Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: So Vishnu is box one.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Preserve the thing, continue to grow it.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And if you do it well, there's Lakshmi there, which is his concert.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: Box three is Brahma, which is knowledge, you need wisdom, you need to break down silos.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: That's box three, that's about the future, it's about creation.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: And box two is you know, Shiva, which is you know the person who is you know destroying stuff.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and and again, destroying stuff not in a bad way, but you know, you've got to get rid of that uh, you know, that the bad assumptions that you have so that you can create the future, right?
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And so it's interesting that you know you can think about very simply box one, box two, just Brahman Vishnu Mesh if you want, or box one, box two, box three, or A B C, whatever you want.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: But that is, I think, true of even life.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: It's true of even an entrepreneur, by the way.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: So I have to think of myself today as a company becomes a little larger, saying, you know, I can't lead and inspire people by meeting them in a room.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: When we were 20 people, that's how it was.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And so, what's box three for me as a leader in my leadership style?
25:29
SPEAKER_00: Brilliant, brilliant.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: I think uh it's almost the example that I keep giving Ashwin is when a company grows, it's almost like uh how a rocket launches a satellite in the you know orbit where at every stage a part of that rocket is left behind.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: So you as a leader, you need to know what you should kind of leave behind if you want to move to the next orbit.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Right?
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And uh, that's very, very critical if you are a manager, if you're a leader, if you are a company, you know?
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Very true, Sami, very true.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's an ongoing uh struggle and a battle.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, correct.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that's written about and uh about your business is Chan Zuckerberg uh initiative, investing in your uh in your venture.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: For me, it's not the investment that uh you know caught my attention, but the adoption of their learning science approach to your business.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: To me, that was more an interesting point that I read about.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: And what is the learning science approach that you're picking up from there?
26:29
SPEAKER_00: And you're applying it for your own business?
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: No, that's a great question.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, when we do online versus classroom, we have so much data in the classroom.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: In some ways, I would argue that we are limited by how data on how the student is learning.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: But in online, we have a lot of information.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you a simple example of how this learning science is actually applied by us.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: What is the typical way in which a you know class runs, right?
26:55
SPEAKER_01: You have a lot of classes, and at the end of the semester, the professor will give you a nice big exam or a project.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Now, what does the learning science tell us when you do online classes?
27:05
SPEAKER_01: The learning science tells us that after five to six weeks, the attention of students, not a student at a cohort level starts declining tremendously.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Now, if I have a, let's say we have a uh 12-week program and you put the final exam, which is 80% of the grade, or the project, which is you know 80% of the grade, in week 12.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: What are we just doing?
27:29
SPEAKER_01: We're telling students that when your attention is the lowest, I'm going to give you the highest uh value of the course in terms of finishing.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I've just tremendously increased your cognitive load.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Right?
27:43
SPEAKER_01: So one of the learning science experiments we have started running is saying, look, why can't we front-end the assignments?
27:48
SPEAKER_01: So why can't we make it 20% at the end of week two, 20% at the end of week four, week eight, week 10, week 12, and see whether we actually get people to have the same learning outcomes and better completion.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is yes.
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Right?
28:00
SPEAKER_01: Now you have to run this through a proper A-B test mechanism, blah, blah.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: You have to redesign your course, et cetera.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: But now think about it.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: What have we just done?
28:07
SPEAKER_01: We talked about access to education.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: This is part of access.
28:11
SPEAKER_01: Because only if you finish the course, have you fully understood and applied what you've learned, have you really got the learning outcomes.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Right?
28:18
SPEAKER_01: So, not just enough that I enroll you in a course, I have to help you finish that.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: That is coming from our learning science.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Now, the next level of tough is like what kind of assignments do people like?
28:28
SPEAKER_01: For example, if I give you an individual assignment, which is a group assignment, right?
28:32
SPEAKER_01: We have run cohorts where, for example, the entire course you can do by yourself.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: And then an A-B test where the course you put in groups of five and you have to do it.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: The social learning courses always do way better.
28:46
SPEAKER_01: Right?
28:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, there's a whole science around why, but you know, so all of that is there.
28:52
SPEAKER_01: So the learning science for us really helps us understand these kinds of things around how people behave, cognitive.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: For example, there's emerging learning science around people, are different kinds of learners.
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Somebody's auditory.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: So they don't want to watch the video, they just want to hear the audio.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: Some are visual, some are you know multiversed in all of these.
29:11
SPEAKER_01: So if you have a dominant design philosophy, which means let's say I'm showing you a lot of video lectures, the auditory learners may be lost.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: And this is something that we have learned, by the way, from uh the Chan Zuckerberg initiative.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: So, how do you then devise courses to appeal to multiple uh learning styles?
29:29
SPEAKER_01: We don't yet have a full answer for that, but those are the kind of problems we are trying to solve as we go forward.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: Great.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: I think this learning science approach is a uh I think the branches that you talked about was very interesting.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh absolutely uh learning being data-led and cognitive led is really the direction uh I believe uh it has to go because half the time, how do you really inspire the students?
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh that's really the key challenge that most of the uh institutions face today.
29:59
SPEAKER_00: So it's not what you teach, but it's about what uh you absorb and imbibe, right?
30:04
SPEAKER_00: So uh I think the learning science uh coherts that you have been talking about would be an interesting, I would say, direction for uh you know people to learn from.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: It's also, you know, there are so many small uh pieces to it.
30:16
SPEAKER_01: Like for example, if you're using video lectures to teach, is a video lecture where the faculty is seen talking uh better, or is a video lecture where you're capturing the faculty in the class?
30:28
SPEAKER_01: So you feel like okay, there's an MIT class, MIT faculty, and I'm in the class, or is a completely animated video, right?
30:35
SPEAKER_01: Which of these are better?
30:36
SPEAKER_01: And today there is an answer, by the way, to that.
30:39
SPEAKER_01: Um, but that can come from, for example, platforms like edX, who have so many millions of users, and they look at the data on you know viewership and completion of the video on these different styles.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: And they've now presented papers on this learning science saying, hey, for in learning, this kind of a video is actually better.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Right?
31:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and then of course, when you see that result, it seems obvious, but it's backed up by learning science and data science.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: So you talked about uh you know uh the importance of uh learning.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: And uh I think that one of the challenges that you see in today's organizations is uh the need to learn uh with uh you know people where uh you know continuous learning after graduation.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: If you look at say a medical profession, uh me as a doctor, I have to have uh what is called as a continuous medical education where I need to keep upgrading myself.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: But many of the courses that are normal, say you do your engineering, you do your uh you know, uh say computer science courses, the technology changes maybe every year, but many people uh you know don't really upgrade themselves.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And this I think is very critical, and that's the role that you know your venture and your company you know plays a huge role today.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: How do how do you think people should get it in this DNA, into their DNA to do this?
32:02
SPEAKER_00: Is it through bite-sized learning?
32:04
SPEAKER_00: Is it through you know uh long-range courses?
32:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh how do you see it kind of uh you know panning out over the next uh couple of years?
32:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a great question.
32:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, in many uh regions, including India, China, South Korea, etc., the aim of education is to get a degree.
32:24
SPEAKER_01: So that uh notion still exists to a great extent, uh changing, as you like rightly pointed out, Xwami.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: But if you get a degree, you think I've done tick, finished, now I can go and focus on my career.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: Right?
32:37
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, the world is changing.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, people are shifting jobs, you talked about all of these new skills that are coming.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and so companies are starting to invest, but increasingly companies are saying B Y O T, bring your own training, which means you decide as an employee when you want to learn, what you want to learn, how you want to learn, and where you want to learn.
32:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to come and do a large learning intervention for you.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but you decide, and based on the skills that you gather, your career will progress faster or slower.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: So they, I would say the emphasis more on the individual.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: But having said that, I think the whole ecosystem can do a lot more to nurture it.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Like every company should ideally have a tuition reimbursement plan.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Every company should ideally measure how much time their people have spent on learning and maybe even publish it.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Like you publish carbon footprint, publish learning thing and encourage people to learn.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: But having said that, look, learning, you know, this is something that I've always uh you know kept in mind.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Education is not given.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Education is received or taken.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, it's like a bee that you know gets the sucks the nectar out of the flower.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: The flower is not going to drop it on it.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: So true education, and truly this is because for education to happen, also, it's not that you sit in the class, you have to apply, you have to think, you have to.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: So really, I think the onus is on that individual.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and how do you bring about the change?
34:04
SPEAKER_01: I think is is a larger uh discussion.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: But I do hope that individuals see this more seriously.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: What I am seeing, which is encouraging, you know, when we started 10 years back, every nearly every second question people asked was, Will this program give a degree?
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Will this program give a degree?
34:19
SPEAKER_01: This was the only question we really thought of ourselves.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, are we in the right uh space?
34:24
SPEAKER_01: Now that question is gone.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Now people are saying, What will I learn?
34:28
SPEAKER_01: What are the career outcomes of past batches?
34:31
SPEAKER_01: But they're not asking us for that degree, degree, degree.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: So this whole alternate credential or even the lack of credential is not important.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: What do I learn?
34:39
SPEAKER_01: Has I think replaced the conversation to a great extent.
34:42
SPEAKER_01: So I think we're moving in the right direction.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a fitness index, right?
34:47
SPEAKER_00: So if you were to, if Nike is able to do that, why not uh educational institution or somebody who is in the business of learning?
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Which brings me into a question, Ashwin.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh you are a chartered accountant and you went on to do an MBA.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: You really talked about learning is about the person trying to absorb something and not pushing it into somebody's head.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: So, where did that inspiration come from?
35:12
SPEAKER_00: How did you go about this uh pathway?
35:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I it's a these are all great questions.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I don't know if it was completely planned and sequenced.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: So, my uh simple advice one, so I I'll macro perspective this is early in your career get a really solid education, right?
35:33
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what, so it doesn't matter if it's a CH, an MBH, an MS in this, it can be even say philosophy literature.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: But I think just going through that solid education where you're questioning assumptions, you're interacting with really smart people.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Like in my Harvard Business School class, I was, you know, classmates with a guy called Alexander Samber, who had built and sold a company to eBay,$75 million.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: They founded Rocket Internet.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: Then I realized, look, I'm as smart as this guy.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: So I can be an entrepreneur, though I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: It's that insight, right?
36:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's what education is about.
36:07
SPEAKER_01: It's not just about what's in the book or what the faculty teaches, it's about this holistic learning.
36:12
SPEAKER_01: So put yourself in a really solid holistic learning environment early in your life.
36:17
SPEAKER_01: Thereafter, take risks.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you the real story, Swami, is after I finished my MBA, I, you know, look, I had a student loan, uh, you know, going from India to the US.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my goal was to work in McKinsey for three years, pay off the loan, and come back to India.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to come back.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: But then this plan I wrote for Travel Guru, the business plan, came runners up.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: And two of my friends said, Look, here's the first angel check, go start this now.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: And then the real pivotal moment for me was to say no to McKinsey, which I'd already taken the signing bonus from, come to India with a huge loan.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: I think it was about 150,000 odd dollars loan to 2005, that was still a large amount.
37:00
SPEAKER_01: Come to India and start something with no salary.
37:04
unknown: Right?
37:05
SPEAKER_01: And again, think about I'm a come from a South Indian family.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: My parents asked me many times, are you sure?
37:10
SPEAKER_01: Are you sure?
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh they were not worried, but they were concerned.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: And then the only thing, and my mother said this, and I also understood.
37:18
SPEAKER_01: She said, What's the problem?
37:19
SPEAKER_01: You have a Harvard MBA, you're a CA, you'll find a job, you'll be fine, try it.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: So that's my advice to people.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: Like once you get the base, don't keep on building credentials on your resume and safety nets.
37:31
SPEAKER_01: If you really want to be an entrepreneur, you know, get your education.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't recommend people dropping out from school.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: It's very sexy, but honestly, the data doesn't support that.
37:41
SPEAKER_01: Get your education and get early life experiences.
37:45
SPEAKER_01: If you're not ready to start up yourself, go work for a startup, right?
37:49
SPEAKER_01: Or work for a mid-sized company.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Now work for a large company and then pivot to doing an initiative there which is more startup-oriented for them.
37:55
SPEAKER_01: My so that is the uh part that I would say.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: Don't be too stuck up because again, what is the definition of failure?
38:01
SPEAKER_01: Let's say your first job is in a startup, the startup folds up in one year.
38:05
SPEAKER_01: By the way, this is the advice that the McKinsey partner was a very wise guy.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: He said, look, don't uh decline the offer.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: We'll give you a one-year extension.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: If your company does very well, great, McKinsey will consult for you.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: Worst case, if your company doesn't do well, please come back, you'll be a very good consultant for us.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's such a beautiful way of looking at it.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: What's the risk here in this?
38:26
SPEAKER_01: There's no risk, but in our mind, there's a lot of risk.
38:28
SPEAKER_01: What will happen if I fail?
38:30
SPEAKER_01: What will people think?
38:31
SPEAKER_01: Will I get a job?
38:32
SPEAKER_01: Those days are gone.
38:33
SPEAKER_01: So I would just say that, you know, you that's why I say the failure for an entrepreneur is not trying.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: Ashun, the real challenge is there are many kids there who probably in India the competition is so huge, they may probably have not done their education or they may not even have uh they would have gone to uh tier two or a tier three or a tier four school where they don't get the exposure, but they may be you know mentally very, very good.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: So, how do you really uh you know give them the platform to kind of uh you know give exposure to them in the platform that probably you got exposed to because of your education?
39:11
SPEAKER_00: So somewhere I think there is a gap that I see uh you know in a country like ours where there are millions of kids, and uh, you know, you tend to kind of go through uh difficulty uh to break through in these kinds of institutions.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Very good question, Swami.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: Very good question.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: That's hopefully some of the problems that we are trying to solve as a company.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: But good education does not mean an IIT or an IIM or a Harvard or an MIT.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Look, there are many, many other institutions that are developing imparting good education.
39:40
SPEAKER_01: Good education can also be, like I said, it's like that honeybee sucking nectar.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: It's up to you to take it.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: Our VP engineering, uh in uh his name is Jesse, uh, has learned coding and everything else self-paced online.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: He's never been to college, uh, and he's a VP engineering.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Before this, he was a VP uh at masterclass also in tech.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh but he surrounded himself with other people in that environment.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: He used to work on, uh learn on weekends.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh so there are a bunch of areas like there are boot camps, there are incubators if you're interested in startup, et cetera.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: Or the other path for such people is you know, get your first job, work for two, three years, then maybe do a further education or do something online.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, so it's not just you need to do a bachelor's or a master's, education can be in many other forms and formats.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: Some of the best education can come from work experience, can come from mentors.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: So I would also urge people to uh start thinking about their mentorship networks, right?
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Um and so that there are different ways to learn uh and do it.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: And by the way if you look at even India and look at the successful startups, many of them are coming from backgrounds like take Oyo, for example, or take even Baijus, for example.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: They're coming from backgrounds that are truly diverse.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: And that's actually very inspiring for people who might say, Look, I haven't gone to the best college, so what?
41:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very interesting.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a very, very good point that you're making, which is surround yourself uh with uh good mentors.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, maybe your first education is not your degree, it's your first job.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, that's really what it is.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: So uh I think these are very inspirational words uh for a lot of those kids listening to this podcast because they then can actually go up and do something like uh what many of you have done.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: Great, great points.
41:28
SPEAKER_00: And uh that brings me to one question where uh you know you talked about an eye-opening internship that you had with uh you know Dave Bajer and of JetBlue.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: So, how was that internship and what did you learn there?
41:43
SPEAKER_00: Which uh is a kind of a question that I had because you talked about mentorship and I saw this as a quote.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: So, uh, what was the internship like there?
41:52
SPEAKER_01: Great, great question, Swami.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: And as expected, you have done uh you know great research as well.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: Uh and this goes back to exactly what we are talking.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: So the question is well-timed.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: So I was in Harvard Business School.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: Typically, you know, in the summer, you go and work for two months, you know, consulting, banking, or other things.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to do something slightly different, and I was grappling with this idea of entrepreneurship, but I don't come from a family of business people or entrepreneurs, so I wanted some experience.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: And I was enamored by the whole airline industry, and so I wanted to work for JetBlue or Southwest.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: The dean of Harvard Business School was on the board of JetBlue.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, as very scared, uh meekly, I wrote to the dean saying, Look, uh, can you connect me to somebody at JetBlue?
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Because JetBlue was not recruiting at uh Harvard, right?
42:41
SPEAKER_01: And then I got an email saying, Look, you can go an intern for De Baj.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: De Baja at that time was a chief operating officer, then later on became the CEO.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: So I got this phenomenal opportunity of shadowing him into board meetings, into meetings where they were buying like hundred Airbus planes, like billions of dollars.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was sitting there like a fly on the wall, not daring to open my mouth.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: But there was one thought evolving in my head saying, one day I want to be this guy.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: And there went my McKinsey dreams, and there started the entrepreneurship aspiration.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, I learned a lot from Dave Bhajan.
43:16
SPEAKER_01: Not, you know, like he would walk down from the office, there would be the um receptionist, and he would say, Ashwin, hey, have you said hi to Ted?
43:25
SPEAKER_01: I have walked up and down that building so many times, never said hi to the receptionist.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: Here's the CEO who's talking about this receptionist and how his family is doing, and he taught me so much, so you know, so many leadership lessons.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: But that inspiration for me was key.
43:39
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, so much of my journey has been the people who I have met who have inspired me.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: Right?
43:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, so that inspiration was key.
43:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I'm saying look, it's not about you know only what you learn in college, it's about the people around you you interact with that inspire you.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: Right?
43:54
SPEAKER_01: They can be your friends, they can be colleagues, they can just be random people.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: But the time and effort.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: Took me to get to a day bhaja was my effort.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: Right?
44:03
SPEAKER_01: They don't come on campus.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: The dean at this uh business school had to uh introduce me, etc.
44:09
SPEAKER_01: That's the difference between I think the people who climb the peak and then the people who stay in base camp and wait for the weather to clear up, right?
44:17
SPEAKER_01: That's the difference.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: You you have to make it happen.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: When you do, I'm telling you, when you put your heart and soul and mind into a certain goal, the whole universe will conspire with you to make it happen, assuming it's good for you.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: But that's a little spiritual, but it is true.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: I've seen that manifold times in my life.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh Ashwin, uh, how do you see the education and the uh learning business over the next uh decade or so?
44:42
SPEAKER_00: How do you see it uh moving and uh what are the kind of trends that you believe are going to be uh you know disrupting this business?
44:49
SPEAKER_01: So I mean the future is so bright that I can't see it.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm just kidding.
44:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, look, I think uh these are great questions, right?
44:59
SPEAKER_01: Um in fact, just what has happened over the last one year has been, you know, I mean, you still have to take a pause sometimes and just digest what has happened over the last 12 months, which is very interesting.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: Again, go back five years or six years.
45:12
SPEAKER_01: Investors were not investing in education in India, right?
45:14
SPEAKER_01: And so this comes back to that box three.
45:17
SPEAKER_01: Like the future is not what you see today, it is something else.
45:20
SPEAKER_01: So I don't know fully what that future is.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: I do believe that in India, especially, there is a huge opportunity.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: Hardly 25% of school kids are going into college.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: That number should be 80, 90 percent.
45:33
SPEAKER_01: Even in schools, if you look at the tier three, tier four cities, there's so much to be done.
45:37
SPEAKER_01: I really hope, by the way, the government privatizes education.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: I've said this many times, so I'll say this again.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, the water we drink, some company that gives you bottled water makes money off it.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: The food we eat, every single company makes money of it, the electricity we use, the clothes we wear, these are more essential than even education.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: They're all run by nonprofit companies, right?
45:57
SPEAKER_01: But education alone, why should it be free?
46:00
SPEAKER_01: And the moment you make it free, that means no investment, no private sector participation.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: So then how do the schools get built?
46:07
SPEAKER_01: In higher education, Swami, we have about uh 30 million Indians who are in colleges.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: But that represents about 27% of the call uh of the school uh we call it the gross enrollment ratio.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: If that number has to go to 40 or 50 percent, we need to create 30 to 40 million more seats.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: And we have to do it before the demographic dividend becomes a demographic curse, which means in the next 10, 15 years.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: How can brick and mortar do this?
46:35
SPEAKER_01: How can just the government do this?
46:37
SPEAKER_01: Right?
46:38
SPEAKER_01: So, so anyway, so I think there's a scenario here where if the government, by the way, to be fair, the government has made some bold moves.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: The new education policy, the uh allowing online in degrees, et cetera, they are moving there in some ways.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: But the opportunity gap is so big that we all hope always that they move faster.
46:56
SPEAKER_01: So if this privatization happens, I see that look, India can still uh, you know, like many of the Southeast Asian companies, Singapore, South Korea, just through the skilled workforce have, you know, really grown very fast.
47:07
SPEAKER_01: Now, beyond that, you know, I think technology will take more shapes and reinvent itself.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, can the future classroom be run out of AR and VR?
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh, blended learning models will develop.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: Will the degree even be relevant, you know, 10 years from now?
47:22
SPEAKER_01: These are all great questions.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't have an answer, but these are perhaps directions in which the industry will lead.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: One last thing I would say is that we all as entrepreneurs in the education industry must always be mindful that education has to be driven through learning outcomes.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: So gimmicky stuff, you know, short-term things that people do sometimes, false misleading advertisements, these are things that can become an impediment, right?
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Because the whole sector can be tainted with a bad brush.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we have to act responsibly as well, given that after all, education is about people's lives and livelihoods.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: And I want to end this podcast with one question.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: How do you balance your personal time with work time?
48:09
SPEAKER_00: And how do you uh you know really uh you know build work-life harmony?
48:14
SPEAKER_01: So I think uh thanks.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh because of COVID, I would say that you know, I've saved a one hour commute to office and one hour commute back.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: So I've got two hours of life back, which helps.
48:24
SPEAKER_01: My kids are not going to school, so I get to spend more time with them.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: So actually, it's worked out better now in work-life balance.
48:30
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, yes, Swami, it's a it's a struggle.
48:33
SPEAKER_01: Like every entrepreneur, any entrepreneur says, Look, I have the perfect work-life balance or harmony.
48:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I haven't met that person, but I would love to.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: And for me, I won't lie at all and say, look, that's I have that uh perfect harmony.
48:47
SPEAKER_01: Like everything in life, it's about trade-offs.
48:50
SPEAKER_01: Right?
48:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't watch TV.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I sometimes record something and watch it because I can do it at my own time.
48:56
SPEAKER_01: But live events, live shows, I don't watch serials, zero.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: Right now, but there are some trade-offs which I would love to do, which I can't do, like reading books or my meditation, those have become you know less because of work.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a trade-off.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, one thing I've also realized for me is if you're very, very busy as an entrepreneur and doing stuff, that also is a problem about you.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: Right?
49:18
SPEAKER_01: So, your point about as your company becomes larger, you have to learn to delegate and let go.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: Let go also of outcomes.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, mentally you're always worrying.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, even when you're sleeping, you're thinking about, hey, what happened to that bid we made, what happened to that project?
49:30
SPEAKER_01: So letting go, I think is very, very important.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: I think one thing that's helped for me really is meditation uh and some spiritual grounding.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: It's still work in progress, by the way.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: So I'm nowhere near where I should be.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: But letting go is very important for entrepreneurs if you want to have uh any balance, work-life or even in your personal life.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Uh, by the way, even in your company.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: True.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: Great.
49:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh thanks, Ashwin.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was a fantastic conversation, many, many takeaways.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: And it's been, as always, absolutely thrilling.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Your honest, uh, authentic answers have been inspiring.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for your time.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you too had a good time talking to me.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: I absolutely did.
50:15
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, and honestly, the roles can be reversed, and the conversation would be equally exciting.
50:20
SPEAKER_01: It's just that you put me in the hot seat today.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: But really, thank you for this opportunity.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: Really, really appreciate doing this and appreciate doing it with you.