1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How many of those 11 investments are in EdTech?

Rahul Chandra: Just one so far.

Sramana Mitra: Do you want to talk about that?

Rahul Chandra: We have not announced this one, but I can talk about it. The premise is similar to what I’d said. There is a two-dimensional, non-interactive nature to online classes. Online classes is an outcome of COVID with schools shutting down. The best possible solution was a video class with very little interaction.

Education in India requires a scaled solution. There are way too many topics to be covered to improve employability. Schools and colleges are not enough to do that because of the same limitation of experiential learning, the ability to showcase your learning through project works, and just learning to peer. This company is looking to design the whole educational experience by targeting the post-college employability gap.

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. In something like that, what is the go-to-market strategy that works?

Rahul Chandra: Digital education in India has evolved with some kind of a hammer of a hard sell. It’s aggressive selling in some cases. We are also betting on that nature of education selling to convert into a pool where students want to work through this experience.

That’s a big bet but we’re betting on it that the way digital education has been sold needs to be turned on its head where education regains its original value versus becoming something that you end up doing because your parents are paying for it. There is a tangible value that comes out of it. The end result is how many people get employed.

There is no hard sell replacing the go-to-market. There is awareness creation, but there won’t be people calling you three times a day to have you buy something. There would be an ease of payment, but that will not become the path to selling.

Sramana Mitra: My observation is there are all these schools in every corner of India. They’re graduating huge numbers of people. That’s where the employability gap often is. Is there a way to leverage these colleges and make them better at what they’re supposed to be doing?

Rahul Chandra: If this environment is what can be created which is an ability to do the things I mentioned, this is eventually intended to be a platform in which colleges give a better experience around learning. What is common to most EdTech is cohort-based learning. You take batches, but you do it every two months. You can improve your delivery with every cohort.

Also, you can manage the cohort much better because you can track how that cohort is moving with a maximum completion rate that is being guarded by mentors and people who are motivating these students to keep moving. There are a lot of best practices now in EdTech which can be translated to a much better experience.

Sramana Mitra: My last question is, how do you feel about what’s happening with unicorns? For example, these 11 companies that you have invested in. How do you feel about them going this route? You can turn anything into a unicorn by slapping a bunch of liquidation preferences. How do you feel about your companies going in that direction?

Rahul Chandra: There are very few people who are in this mix of taking companies to a limitless pool of capital. With their ability to give the company a path to forgetting about capital constraints, there are not that many investors. I think there is a method to this madness. The perception can be that anyone and everyone is getting it.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Rahul Chandra, Managing Director at Arkam Ventures
1 2 3 4