Edtech startups in India have raked in $4 billion in valuations and experts expect global digital learning activity to grow 12-fold in the next five years. So when another edtech company jumps into the fray, it's not surprising. However, Spayee's business model may well disrupt existing digital learning models. On one hand, companies like Byju have invested heavily to become the second largest Indian unicorn in the market by offering online K2018 courses. At the other end of the spectrum are global players like Udemy and Coursera, which lists tutorials from content generators. Spayee follows the latest model but with a clear 'Make-in-India' mindset where it helps all content creators and educators to create, promote and manage their tutorials with a unique set of services delivered in a SaaS model. . by the platform. The Spayee platform was launched in XNUMX.
Blocking helped
Founded six years ago by four fledgling entrepreneurs Sandeep Singh, Gourav Kakkar, Aniruddha Singh and Vijay Singh, Spayee offers a white-label course platform that enables teachers to create, market and sell their academic products digitally. Offered as a SaaS model, the platform keeps both the data and the tutorials under layers of security protection. The post-Covid-19 lockdown made the business profitable within two years. Although Spayee Labs started its journey six years ago in 2014, the product launched in 2018, which co-founder Sandeep Singh says has been a blessing. "Nobody could have predicted the blockade and its impact on education," he says in a conversation with TechRadar. Today, the company boasts of over a thousand paying customers, who generate over Rs 200 crore (approximately €27 million) in revenue from selling personalized tutorials on the platform. The lockdown since March 2020 has led to a rush for educators and other content creators, with Spayee's paying customers falling from 200 to over 1,000.
Educators were reluctant to connect
Singh says the idea for such a platform came about six years ago when they realized that content creators needed an all-in-one platform that would help create tutorials, market them, and support one-click payments. “We realized that content creators needed a simple solution to build and manage their own portfolio,” he says. In fact, early adopters of the platform found the ease of use so simple that one of them even provided Spayee with seed money. The client was using a global platform, which was not optimized for the Indian audience until they came across this localized platform. “It helped them and the money helped us improve our product and bring it to market,” says Sandeep. While business growth during the pandemic has been phenomenal, it has translated into strong six-month growth that the co-founders had forecast for two years. "However, this also posed its fair share of issues, as we weren't prepared to support the growing customer base. As teachers were integrating digital for the first time, it took a long time to get started."
Spayee's growth challenges
We did not have the bandwidth to train and support educators and their clients as we were adding 150-200 clients each month during the shutdown. As we evolved, we also realized the need for more features, which we were prepared to do with a development team. The company doesn't get involved in creating content on the platform, but there is a built-in ability to market what users create. "We provide them with a white label solution that is branded as they want. Spayee is nowhere to be found and works from the backend." In fact, the company is also providing a white-label website for content creators as part of the deal. In fact, the company operates in the B2B2C market where its clients could be educators or legal entities that want to create their own training and development programs on a platform that employees can use and reuse an unlimited number of times. . The company, which is being withdrawn among Indian teachers, now expects to go global in the next six to eight months and is seeking investment for this purpose. "We are in talks with some investors and we hope to close a round in the next two or three months," concludes Sandeep. Since the Covid-19-led pandemic hit the shores of India in late February, nearly €1.5 billion has been invested in the past nine months in Indian edtech. It looks like it's about time for another disruption in this emerging market. Do you want to know the latest technological events? Follow TechRadar India on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram!