Need a Mentor – Education Startup

About Myself-

Have 8 years of corporate experience with 3 years into coding, 2 years in business development and 3 years in Marketing.

During this time have worked with IT (L&T,TCS) , Internet (People Interactive) and Telecom cos.

Srarted my business – April 2013.

My first coaching class called e-Study Tutorial was setup.

Taught Maths and Science to 50 students in my first year.

Range was right from 5th standards to BSc IT (Maths only) and Engineering 1st year (Maths only).

Marketing tools-

Banner and Pamphleting – Spent 30K and got not more 2-3 students.

Just Dial Subscription – Spent 10K and got around 20 students.

Referrals – 5-7 students

Rest students – I tied up with a Home Tutor who got her students to my class to teach . This helped me especially in first few months when I was struggling to convince parents to enroll their kids to my class. ( The entire fees of these students went to this teacher). With rest teachers I have gone with revenue share model. Monthly salary to be paid to them was not affordable.

Also what worked for me was teaching IGCSE (international board students) whom other coaching classes in my area do not teach .

Made a loss of Rs.1L

Start of 2 nd year;

Have already got 12 students enrolled (which covers approx.60% of my cost for the entire year).

With schools reopening in June , expect major enrollment to happen in June & July.

Batch size – Restricted to just 5 students which helps me to charge premium and differentite from other classes around the area who have average batch size of 30 students.

We show students videos from youtube to help them understand concepts better.

I have following thoughts on next steps:

1. Short term; To start another brach in thrid year with focus only on private batches and subjects of maths and science.

Perform experiments ( especially Physics) in class for students to get better feel of the subject. And this will help me to differentiate from other regular coaching institutes.

In Long term; 8-10 years to have many eStudy Tutorial coaching classes (Dream/Aspiration).

2. Education Portal:

Have done a lot of study past few months on this side of business.

Aside; Alok’s blog on product vs services– to grow big one needs to move to product.

My reading;

Enough content on K-12 in audio-video format, tests for professional courses, etc. Expensive to start. Havent worked for Merit nation and LearnNext. LearnNext is now adopting an end to end education solution for schools which is helping them to grow.Retail model didn’t work for them.

I see some space in talent search – on lines of Olympiads and SpellBee. Marketing heavy business but I like to believe there is opportunity.

There are few more thoughts in my mind , not sure in which direction to move.

I need a mentor who can guide me in getting some clarity on next steps. Should I stick with services or try to venture out in education product, etc. How should I grow into more branches. Is franchisee model viable. How I can differentiate further and many more questions.

Please connect to guide me:

9029037661 or hardikkh@rediffmail.com.

Thanks!