Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about Indian companies? There are a whole bunch of players that are doing really well like CueMath.

Felix Ohswald: Two markets that have always been quite advanced when it comes to education businesses are India and China. China had some regulation changes last year that made it difficult for these businesses to operate. In India, you have about 10,000 active EdTech companies. The thing is a lot of the players are focused on their core market. India is already so big that there is enough room for the companies to operate.

When it comes to the European market which is super fragmented, there are not many players who operate in multiple countries which put us in a good position. We managed to scale quite rapidly in about 20 markets where we have our local operations. This puts us in a good position for our core business as we’re not focusing on one single market.

Sramana Mitra: What is the language strategy? Are you offering education in English or in local languages?

Felix Ohswald: Most of the time, local languages. If you are from a Spanish family, we connect you with a Spanish teacher. We do have cases where a Spanish family wants a native English speaker. Overall, we always try to connect a kid with a teacher from the same country.

Sramana Mitra: Language seems to be one of the great competitive advantages of your business. The Indian companies don’t do local languages in Europe at all. Their whole business is in English. They don’t necessarily offer tutoring in Spanish or French.

Felix Ohswald: Exactly. We call it being glocal – global but having a strong local touch. Especially when it comes to education, you need to be local. Education is still a very local business. Every country has its own curriculum. Every country has its own school system. Every family has certain expectations. You can’t just apply one concept to all of the countries. You need to have an approach that focuses on the local needs.

Sramana Mitra: Do you support all grades and all subjects or is it just math and certain grades?

Felix Ohswald: 40% of the requests are in mathematics. 40% come from languages and the remaining is in science subjects.

Sramana Mitra: The tutors are tutoring based on their own expertise or are they following a methodology?

Felix Ohswald: The local teachers that we recruit, we try to make sure that they have a deep understanding of the local curriculum and that they can help the local kids. We give them tools that they can use to better teach. At the end of the day, we really try to individualize on every single child.

What we do quite a lot is assess and collect data around what makes a great teacher and why is this particular teacher better than the other teacher. Why is this teacher able to teach something much faster? We share that with other teachers. Let’s say a couple of Spanish kids are bad at mathematics and we receive really good feedback from a teacher, we do a deep dive on what this teacher is doing that works so well. They also give space to this teacher and show other teachers.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Building a European EdTech Unicorn from Vienna, Austria: Felix Ohswald, CEO of GoStudent
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