Physicswallah on Amazon streaming & the future strategies of successful edtechs.

Fact 1- India's annual?#education?budget is below 9 billion $

"In this year's Union Budget, total allocations for education stands at Rs 69,907.23 crore" -

Fact 2-In less than 3 years (20-22 august) Indian?#edtech?startups raised 9 billion $.

This is actual money????put in, not valuation !!

?Most of them went for exam tech, not really ed tech. And a large part of that then went down the drain.

For a developing economy where education is critical, we successfully burnt through billions of $$ while celebrating the ones who started and oversaw the fire-calling it innovation !!

There have been exceptions-three I can think of, off-hand -Scaler , Stoa & PW (PhysicsWallah)

All 3 had a few things in common:

1. They realized 'ed', was critical in edtech. (I am flummoxed how many people still don’t get it)
2. The biggest growth comes from Word Of Mouth-which comes from building a great product?
3. They focussed on one vertical initially.
4. They constantly evolved
5. They replaced more established institutional structures often at a fraction of the cost

But the core strategy was always education. Students. Once you take care of that rest follows. Where Byju missed out, was that their core strategy was sales, tech & ads.

?Those are secondary, the former is primary.

What they could have added to their strategy mix:

(that's my opinion. I haven't worked with any of them…but it’s a marketer & teacher's instinct):

• PLG-Product-led growth -the social aspect happened as a result of the education but could be better integrated into the product itself.
• Gamification:Education -from MBA, Engineering or UPSC prep is a lot about competing. Gamification brought by tech can enhance that.

• Community: Community is a part but it's often a second thought in some cases. I was briefly exposed to the workings of Pagal Guy, probably the first web 2.0 edtech & it grew all by the community -so both online & offline community building are critical
• LTV & Cross Sell: Physicswallah seems to be working on that but one thing I have learnt from the coaching industry, it's all about the LTV of a student (no, doesn’t mean the student keeps failing :-), but other means). The trick in edtech often is to learn from the best educationists offline and then use technology to adapt and scale it.

?Because of all that these startups and others like them have achieved, I was glad when I saw this video today.

A show on Alakh Pandey (PhysicsWallah) who is the founder of Physicswallah HR on #amazonmini

A culture is recognized by the heroes we have.I am glad that the startup ecosystem has better heroes to celebrate now.

And that’s great branding for PW (PhysicsWallah) & Alakh Pandey - well deserved. I can gaurantee you that it will give Physicswallah at le 3X the ROI than Byju's branding at FIFA. That's strategy !

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(Strategy is key for any business & is often misunderstood. Check this article out on how to look at Strategy for your business: read here )