Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How does the teacher handle so many grades?

Manan Khurma: The teacher handles the students either in a one-to-one class or she does a small group of students. Typically, our teachers will opt for a certain grade segment. Even in a group class, the teacher is essentially teaching one-on-one. Let’s say a teacher has four students in a group at that same hour. Each student would work on their own material. The teacher would hop on from student to student.

The teacher is not broadcasting. She is working as a coach. When you look at a Cuemath class, the teacher is not lecturing. The learning is expected to happen as a consequence of the student solving a calibrated sequence of problems. Let’s say I’m a grade four student and I have to learn fractions. In a traditional class, the teacher will teach fractions.

In a Cuemath class, the student will work on a problem set. The problem set will drive this learning outcome. The teacher is there, but she steps in only when the student needs help. Even when the teacher intervenes, there’s a specific methodology she has to follow. She has to nudge the student to self-discovery. That’s why we’re called Cuemath. The teacher has to cue the student to arrive at the answer.

Sramana Mitra: As you started student recruitment with online marketing, you started getting US students. What were you targeting? Were you targeting specific US geographies?

Manan Khurma: The initial acquisition was opportunistic. We were targeting parents of Indian descent. We started acquiring from that set. These were usually from San Francisco or New York. Over time, we also started seeing students from non-Indian backgrounds. Majority of our revenue comes from outside India. We now think of ourselves as a global business with US as our biggest market. We’ve been in existence for eight years, now but this part of the business has materialized only in the last year.

Sramana Mitra: What is the revenue scale now?

Manan Khurma: We’ll be at a hundred million sometime next year.

Sramana Mitra: How many teachers are you working with?

Manan Khurma: We have more than 10,000 teachers on the platform.

Sramana Mitra: Is it the same model still? Women working from home?

Manan Khurma: Yes, all they need to have is a good internet connection and a laptop.

Sramana Mitra: That’s brilliant. I’m so thrilled about your story.

Manan Khurma: It’s been a very interesting consequence of building the business. It’s been a very interesting consequence of building the business in terms of the supply side emerging. This has been one of our biggest wins. Our teacher community is passionate and tightly-knit. An average teacher will stick with us for about eight years. When many of the husbands lost their jobs due to the pandemic, some of these women became the primary breadwinners.

Sramana Mitra: How much do these women earn on average?

Manan Khurma: It depends on the hours they spend. A teacher would make about 500 rupees per hour. That’s about $7 an hour. If you do 20 hours a week, that would be $140 a week.

Sramana Mitra: Is there a pricing differential in how you’re marketing to the United States?

Manan Khurma: In the US, the pricing is $100 to $220 a month depending on the student grade. This gets the student eight classes with the teacher. In India, the pricing is one-fourth of the US pricing.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic! I love your story. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Solo Entrepreneur Building a Venture Scale EdTech Company from India: Cuemath Founder Manan Khurma
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