 We're going to be inviting our first speaker of the day, Mr. Mayank Kumar, co-founder and MD Upgrad. Well, an education maven and accomplished entrepreneur, Mayank Kumar is one of the sharpest minds leading in the EdTech revolution in India. Mayank is the co-founder and managing director of India's largest online higher education company Upgrad, which within a span of five years has impacted almost one million learners globally. Well, this fireside chat will elaborate on how a future forward brand transforming ambitions. Thank you so much, Mayank, for joining us today and over to you, Dr. Bhattra and Mayank. No, thanks, Pavna. Thanks for having me here. Hi, Dr. Bhattra. How are you? Thank you so much, Mayank. I'm sure the last eight months have been very busy for you. First of all, how have the last eight months worked personally and professionally? A lot of other things have, as you rightly said in your opening note, that online education in EdTech has started to take the center stage. So we've jokingly called that violent K through 12. There has been an inflection point, but for higher education and working professional EdTech ecosystem, it's a good tailwind. So it's been quite positive overall. People have taken things quite well towards online education. Personally, we are getting to spend a lot more time with your son at home and with your wife at home, which otherwise was getting missed out. So overall, I would not complain. I think whatever that happened helped us build a larger business, a scale, a much more scale business. By the same time, give us some time instead of spending time on traffic. You can spend time at home with your family out there. So that's, I mean, overall, it's been quite positive for us. Yes, Mayank. And apart from the fact that you saved time, Upgrad was launched many years back. About five years back, Mayank? Five years back, correct, yeah. But the acceleration has happened in the last 10 months, I mean, of a different kind. Of course, it was growing every year. There was a natural traction, but the COVID has acted as a chief acceleration officer, a chief digital officer, a chief transformation officer. Tell us, how has Upgrad kind of grown in the last eight months? And what is the future you see for Upgrad? And genuinely, education technology becoming mainstream, then being adjunct? Yeah, no, I think there are a lot of questions in that. I think overall, yeah, we have been growing at 100% year on year. This plan was for us to sort of grow at close to 200% plus. With COVID being there, it definitely helped us push the pedal on the accelerator much faster. It definitely sort of brought online education to the main light. It brought us a lot of PR coverage because of all those things happening on the COVID ecosystem. So for us, I think interestingly, this is a good fact, Dr. Bhatia, that when we started off, March 17th is when we said, it's work from home, and 17th onward, 18th onward, everyone was starting to work from home. We were at about 600 employees at that point in time. Come today on 2nd of December, we are currently with about 2,200 employees. And that scale up of 3xing, 4xing, the number of employees has happened completely remotely. So we joke internally that 80% of Upgrad employees, we haven't seen each other face to face. So that's been the challenge from a scale up and the team perspective. Overall, our business has quadrupled in similar period. We are seeing good traction, good sort of people coming in. People are taking online education very seriously. So while the adoption has happened, so one of the things that I say that what would have taken perhaps three, four years for online education to get into mainstream happened in three, four months. So that's been a good positive sign overall. And I think because of that, if you actually notice a lot of great high quality online education companies started coming in recent past that has opened up, I mean, from an entrepreneurial perspective, very different kind of ecosystem, which otherwise was not very easily accessible. Thank you so much for giving a sense of those numbers. Now, give us a sense of what kind of courses are being taken, what is the kind of people for us to understand what is the nature of adoption. And as they say, right now we are compelled to do certain things. You've done remote hiring because you don't have a choice. But when we have a choice, what will stick and what will go. Give us a sense of your own understanding from what you see happening in terms of adoption of a grant. Sure, so I think the kind of program that I've worked well with an upgrade. I think the broader theme of data technology, those programs definitely do well. If you read, I mean, even today, if DCF enforcers are coming up with the reports, one of the key things that they always put down is what proportion of my revenue is coming through digital projects. And the general rule of thumb, as you know that in IT sector for every employee, you generate about $50,000 to $70,000 per year. But if you're digital in nature, you generate about $120,000 to $150,000 per year. So Infosys is a $10 billion revenue company. 200,000 people at $50,000 give you $10 billion. But if they have to go to the $20 billion mark with fewer employees, digital is the way to go. I think data and technology are therefore very common field that people look for, specifically from the Indian IT, Indian technology ecosystem. But interestingly what we started doing and given BW, you guys are quite focused on the media marketing space. We are seeing a very strong traction coming from marketing professionals, sales professionals, trying to learn digital marketing. And trying to get sort of mainstream on the digital side. We are seeing also equal traction from people who are currently in traditional sectors looking at doing a new age MBA. So between MBA, marketing, law, these programs have suddenly got lot more prominence on the other hand. To your second question, whether with COVID era going away when you have choices, how things will pan out. See, my personal take is that, look, as a working profession, you don't have any other alternative. If you want to do a good master's post graduate program, you either quit your job and then take up something. Otherwise, you don't have an option of saying, okay, I was going to an offline school, can I do online tutoring? It's unlike that, it is, you don't have an option. You have to do something, online is the way to go. So we do believe that post the pandemic and post sort of market opening up, the positive would be that online would become take more center stage. People will accept online and lack of any options offline would mean that the trajectory will continue to grow. On the last point that I just want to leave you with Dr. Batra is that while you see a strong tailwind for the education sector, online education sector specific in working profession, there's also equally a sense of confusion in the minds of employees. Will my job remain today, tomorrow, day after? And therefore, I'm meeting myself to stay relevant in the future. Yeah, correct. So while there is a thought of how do I obscure and stay relevant, apparently there's also a thought that, hey, now if I don't have a job, do I invest in any further education? So I think those two counterbalancing, but education is a counter cyclical business. So when things go bad, education picks up. So that's been the journey for us that there's positive of higher adoption. There's a negative that my job will disappear tomorrow and therefore what do I do? And those are the ecosystem aspects that we are currently working with and figuring out how to move from here to the next stage. So we do believe online will continue to stay even post pandemic. Thank you, Manju, you're so right. And more and more professionals, the learning cycles are getting shortened, which means they're learning more than once a year. I mean, earlier it would possibly make it simple once a year. Actually, it will be twice a year and you learn one more skill. Also, there is this notion for a lot of professional that they need to create a second source of income. So they need to learn a new skill, a new technology based skill that will keep them more relevant. Now, let me focus, my moniker says business world, but I'm doing this role as an exchange for media team member. And we're about brands, marketing, advertising at exchange for media. Now, upgrade as a brand has been built in the last five years. What do you think are the attributes of upgrade? If we had to do the brand positioning in the minds of the learners who have actually adopted upgrade and benefited through it, what would be the brand attributes of upgrade that would come to the form? Yeah, no, actually, I'll answer that. And maybe a very interesting point that you mentioned. I do this experiment every time when someone joins us. So I do induction of about 1,500 people together. And I ask them one question, give me the ratio of number of years of experience that you have and divide by the number of jobs that you have worked on. So if you have 10 years of experience, divided by three, you will get three. And if you have 15 years of experience divided by two, you will get seven, eight. And I do this consistently. So the usual median number, Dr. What we are getting right now is about two to three. A person stays in a job for two to three years, and then they shift job, or maybe five years in the longer run. And I asked them the second question, what was the ratio for your parents? And the answer is usually 30s to one or 40s to one. So I think you point very clearly that while there was a one job for one career, now there are at least about seven to eight job in the same career span that individuals are going through. And therefore that skilling, constant going back, picking up a new skill is important and getting an additional source of income become extremely, extremely relevant for people in the longer run. Coming on from an exchange for media perspective as a brand positioning and what we look at, honestly, we don't feel we are a brand. We feel that we are creating awareness. A brand will take a huge amount of time for us to build and establish. But when we go out as awareness, we look at two or three attributes at which we want to sort of stand clearly on. I think one very clearly for us is trust. That I mean, education is a brand that you need to trust because it's a serious investment you're making and you need to have the trust that look, this brand will help me out the entire journey. The second for me, the word that I always connect, upgrade should be equal to success. But if you're doing a program with upgrade, it should lead to some kind of success. You're not doing for fun that you're coming in at the end of the day. And third, we do want to give a feeling of celebration slash making our learners feel special that look, when you're coming in, you will feel special. We will take you through the entire journey. You will have trust with us. You will find success. But whatever that you do, you should celebrate that. So if a learner has written a nice thesis paper, we celebrate it. If the learner has, there's a learner whose parents were old age and he wrote a PhD master thesis note on how to use data science to predict ophthalmology problems when you sort of get old age. Any small things we celebrate so that the person starts feeling very confident because a typical Indian middle class doctor that I've noticed is, I mean, I come from that background is low on confidence. Man, me too. If they're extremely low on confidence and they need to just believe that if they're doing it, they will make it big. And we want to just change that thing. And I call our learners as middle of the middle. They're not at the top. They're not at the bottom within the middle. They're at the middle level. How do I let them feel confident that look you can be as sharp as successful as someone who has gone to let's say MIT or Stanford or IITs of the world because you are spending enough time. So I think those three parameters of making the field special, giving them a sense of success and building a trust worthy brand. Those are things that matter a lot to us in the journey. Thank you, Man. I remember my meeting with you at ITC Paril four years back and you come a long way from that and I feel very happy about it. Now, let me talk in the context of brand building. You're primarily used for adoption and sales, if I may say, for go-to-market use digital in a big way. Whereas a lot of other funded edutech players are using television. They're using newspapers. They're using all established mass media and digital to build the brand. Give us a sense of how you're approaching this. No, sir. I mean, it's an ongoing debate. If I know the answer, I would be a millionaire right now. You are clearly a billionaire and no longer a millionaire. I say I only talk to billionaires. So clearly I'm talking to one. But on a serious note, you've done very well. And I'm just saying that there is a rush out there to be able to capture the market, accelerate, go-to and build a brand. Because education is a lot about credibility. There's one category. By the way, there's another rule in education. Old rule may not be true in the new economy. In education brands, hardly advertise. In fact, if you look at every major, you know, celebrated institutions, they hardly advertise. Their ads are like, you know, they're not even synced with the times, so to say. You know, they're very, you know, kind of matter-of-the-fact ads, you know. They're more announcements than that. So clearly the world has changed. So how do you see the process of brand building and media? No, it's a very important topic. And I think every EdTech founder who's looking at building something, it's an interesting, very important answer that they need to have very clearly on. So we look at three, I mean, all channels very differently. We look at the Googles and the Facebooks of the world as sort of, I mean, the social medias for acquisition and digital platform for acquisition. But on digital, those medium I feel is not economically viable in the long run. And on the digital front, we are strongly moving towards creating branded content and brand integration. So we may come and work with Exchange for Media or the brand conclave to figure out how do I align my story of success with the brand event that is happening. So we do a lot of content integration, whether it is YouTube channels or OTT providers. And interestingly, Dr. Bhatia, the moment you do that, two, three days later, you start seeing your brand searches going up on the system. More people start looking for your brand, start looking for your searches, etc. Television is a step-function change is how I see this thing. That if you're at certain level, television will take you to the next level. It will drop you at the next level. Then you work, work, work. Then you again go to the next level and then you drop you at the next level. So television uses that intermittently to move up onto the ladder because you want parents to know of us, spouses to know of us. And sometimes television helps us quite a lot in that direction. But digital overall is extremely, extremely relevant for us. We look at any kind of content integration. We evaluate content on a regular basis that look office setup is working. But I think we should look at some kind of a house setup for a new kind of content or friends talking it vernacular within content become very, very critical. So if you have noticed last few months or so, we are in the Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali sort of channels and then various places. It is just mind blowing the kind of audience that it opens up, which we haven't sort of had access to. So we pilot, if it pilot works, we scale and figure out scaling of that aspect. So in a way, digital for me at the bottom level is a, in the old context used to be called BTL below the line marketing. Digital brand integration is mid funnel to create larger awareness and television is just step change if you have to move from level A to level B. That's how we have looked at all three ecosystems come together for us. Thank you. Now, I also want to ask you is going forward in 2022, will your brand building and marketing budgets go up? And if yes, by what proportion? No, I think we will take up brand building budgets higher to the next level. And the reason is that as you rightly said, Dr. Rautra, for us, we are making a change in behavior. I'll give you three, four things that A, we are not trained to learn after we finish an undergrad or post grad program. As far as, I mean, even in a cultural thing, life is broken into four phases. I mean, after Brahmacharya, you have to go to Grestha and there you cannot study. Changing that, that age or behavior requires sufficient amount of awareness building in the minds of consumer that that's supposed to supposedly need to happen. Two, you are also, you have never spent as an Indian individual on your own education. Your school was paid by your parents, your college was perhaps subsidized by the government and the parents paid for you and you have never invested in your own education. And I mean, you would spend enough for your children, but you would never spend on your own education and that is a cultural behavior. Unlike the US, where you know, man, you know, what is the size of the student debt in the US? Yeah, a trillion dollar plus, correct? Yeah, it is a trillion dollar plus. Imagine. So clearly what you're saying is supported by data that culturally we are different and we need to start spending and hence there has to be a behavior change that needs to be induced and television is still a conversation changer or a conversation influencer in a big way. While digital has a role to play, newspapers have a role to play, magazines have a role to play, events have a role to play, but clearly mass adoption happens for that. And digital is not on the cheap, you know, man. No, it's not cheap. If you look at Google, Facebook, they clearly, you know, they're premiumly priced, they're not priced at the bottom of the pyramid. I was running to Dr. Bhattar that look, you can fight with these giants, but they have 10,000 PhDs working out of the valley and you have 500 people working out of India. So it's an unfair fight. So no matter how much you fight is going to be different. So you have to control your own destiny in your own hands. Absolutely right. It's a, you dig your own grave. And in the process of that, it just gets extremely, extremely expensive. So you need to be smart about what you do. And one last thing that I'll add is that app ecosystem these days have also emerged very strongly, that a lot of what used to happen was on website, on mobile sites, etc. But app is now becoming an extremely important part of acquisition where you can hold, retain, engage and converse with the customer and work with them in the longer period of time. But we need to find our own solutions as to how we win this ecosystem out there. Okay, Mank. Mank, if you had to make three predictions for 2021 in terms of the edutech ecosystem and in terms of upgrade, what would those be? Yeah, my predictions have been this, not similar, but it's changing. But I would say one, edtech and edutech will start becoming household brands. And with all huge respect for what Baiju has done, it has created a household brand in many ways. But I still feel that he has only scratched the surface. There's a lot of potential even left there. So I do believe that on a brand perspective, edutech will start getting more household conversation like how Maruti, Tatas, etc. have been from a brand perspective. I think two, we will also see a lot of scrutiny on the edtech space, specifically when it comes to outcomes. I think we have created a market where getting behaviors to change. But unless what we do as edtech ecosystem is not leading to meaningful outcomes and changes, things will collapse. And there are multiple examples where people have scaled up. But if outcomes are not happening, we will all suffer in the process. So I think outcomes will be a very, very strong focus area, irrespective. Any founder who is not focusing on outcome will not have a lot of legroom to grow in the long run. As you rightly said that big universities don't advertise, the results speak for themselves. And that's the thing that outcomes will come and play a very important role. And the last one, which I would sort of add to is beyond just outcomes, there is going to be a very strong focus on personalization of learning, which has not yet happened. So if I come in with slightly weaker section in terms of a particular topic, I need a very different attention. So for me, household brand, very strong sort of personalization and focus on outcomes, those are the three significant changes that we will see in the ecosystem as we go along in 2021. Thank you so much, Amank. Before I let you go, I want to ask you a question that is more on the entrepreneurial side. The last eight months have shown all of us that you talked about outcomes. Similarly, a lot has changed over entrepreneurship. In your own sphere of building up grad, what has changed in Mayank Kumar pre-March and Mayank Kumar post-November? And what do you think has changed in the consciousness of an entrepreneur in the last eight months? No, I think there's a huge change. The moment it happened, you start thinking of the worst case scenarios. And look, I mean, you have been a successful entrepreneur. You have built a large, multiple large brands and businesses. As entrepreneurs, you sometimes get one life. And that one life, you have to make it into 100 lives. So I think from an individual perspective, the thoughts of thinking about absolute extreme and believing that, look, you have to make it work no matter what happens had been a significant, significant shift, a significant, significant transition at an individual level that no matter what may, we have to make things happen and make things shift. And I think the second thing that I've realized that it's a long game. Destruction comes and go. For me, I had not seen 2009 as an entrepreneur. I'm now seeing the current ecosystem as an entrepreneur where things have gone completely down south. I genuinely feel that it's a long game. You have to be in a marathon. You will get a pedal road climb up where you will realize that all your energy has been sucked away in the marathon track. But then you also know that there's going to be a downhill after the climbing up of the flyover where you will start regaining energy and running much longer because if you have to do 21 kilometer or 42 kilometers, there will be patches where things will go really bad. Just take it on the chin. Move on. Never compromise on giving the best experience to your users and the learner. Never compromise on getting the best team with you. Surround yourself with the smarter people. And I think you just overcome all these problems relatively easier. Okay, my last question before I let you go. There are two, three audience questions. I'll take them after my question. It's Ronnie, you and Fagun. You are the pivot around which the company has come together. Ronnie has a role, Fagun has a role. Tell us how do you segregate roles? I know you drive the company and everyone supports you. But tell us a bit about how the collaborative nature of an entrepreneurship play works. No, that's the best part that I can think. I will be thankful of that. I have co-founders that I can truly rely on and divide and conquer. As you rightly said, education has got multiple opportunities. If you start putting your foot in each of these opportunities, most likely you will end up falling. So we have taken a very clear approach of divide and conquer. From a co-founder perspective, I'm the managing director, I'm running the show. But each of us has a very specific carved out role. Fagun takes care of everything to do with which new product needs to come in, which new university needs to be signed off, which new areas that we need to venture into. So he's the growth lever for us. He drives us on the core business, things that we need to sort of drive and grow into. Ronnie, on the other hand, focuses a lot on non-linear areas of growth. So whether it is M&A, whether it is expanding internally, whether it is brand, because he comes with that background of how to build, scale, brand, et cetera. So he takes care of anything which is non-linear outside the core of what we are doing so that object gets ready for the next five years. Well, I focus on the core business, from a revenue learning product and how the experience will sort of pan out for the learner. So in that way, we all complement each other. Fagun is readying me for two, three quarters in advance. He's preparing organization what it will look like in a year's time. Ronnie is preparing the organization what it will look like in a five years time. But I'm ensuring that by the time they're readying themselves for those two quarters or five years time frame, we don't fall in the process of reaching till that point in time. Beautifully put, I think, I keep saying we have to collaborate internally and externally more if we want to survive in this competitive, contactless economy. So thank you for talking to us, Mank. Let me take the two audience question. One is outside India does upgrade see a market and which would be upgrades because market outside India. So there we have already, we're looking at two specific geographies. One outside India that we're looking at is Southeast Asia and APEC. So from Indonesia, Vietnam, not as much as Singapore and Hong Kong because these are much smaller geographies. So Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and then over period of time look at Southeast Asia. That's one ecosystem of international market. The second for us is Middle East and EU. So the entire region of Europe, Middle East and part of Africa. So we have hired one CEO for India region who will take care of our expansion in Middle East and the EU market and another CEO for the Southeast Asian market or the APEC market which we will expand our presence into. We are looking at exporting our existing product into the US market not creating new product for the US market for the time being. So those are the three specific flanks that we have opened up. Let's say these are things that will help us for five years from now. So those are the things that Rani has been driving internally but those are the specific international geographies that we are looking at beyond India right now. My last question before I sign up is, you know, you talked about big shifts in education and you've given some of them. Now, the edutex space has seen lots of money being invested and too many players, it's too crowded and every specialized area is getting crowded. What do you have to say to people who are still looking to invest in edutex? Is it early days you have said that? So clearly it's a very crowded space but it is also early days and you would necessarily feel funding is what gets you success or frugality gets you success. How a wish funding would get a success then... I think education is a hard business to build. I mean, there's no doubts about that. It is a business where when you're building it out you are actually letting the individual or their parents or their spouses or their partners to take a significant amount of money and put it into their education. So I mean, I tell everyone it comes with serious amount of responsibility. If you f-up once, the person's life and career will get destroyed. So I do believe that while money and funding can lead you to accelerate the journey, it is very important that you focus on the learner experience and the learner journey and the learner outcome. The moment we lose focus of that things start falling and look, I have been in 2008, 2009 looked at education closely. There are many education-listed players around 2008, 2009, 10 that were there. They reached to the peak and they had to drop off because the business model at such was not focused on providing outcomes for the learners. And therefore, I do believe that I also feel, I mean, I have a personal pet pee doctor that I never congratulate anyone for fund raise. I always send them a message called wish you all the best because whatever fund that you raise it actually sits on the liability side. It never sits on the asset side. So it is a liability at the end of the day which you have to convert into asset which is what the entrepreneurial job is. And therefore, wishing someone for fund raise to me seems like wishing a runner or a 100 meter race champion for buying a new pair of shoes. The race is a little bit different and that's the most important thing that one needs to focus on. So I do believe funding can accelerate to focus on the core. And that's where perhaps frugality to that context helps. But look, I mean, it's a large market you have to build the market. If you have been frugal, it will take much longer time for you to build the market. So the right judicious mix of where you want to accelerate but hold the fourth become extremely, extremely crucial. Okay. And I just as a follow up question you know, if the big daddy is like Geo, Facebook, Google decide to enter the space in a big way. I mean, Geo has an investment in an adult company and is making some more investments. What's your comment? Of course, as you said, it's a nascent area the pie wide and so you being a leading player in it benefit. But tell us if the action in the domain hots up what do you think is likely to happen? I'd be very surprised if it does not hit up. I think I am, I genuinely feel that it will get heated up much faster than what all of us are imagining because I think Amazon has launched an academy business for test prep. Facebook is looking at something in the English language and test prep space Geo with MBI is looking at K through 12 space quite actively. And therefore I always go back and someone asked me this question in London in one of the universities saying you are doing this but I also have one of the largest IT services company in India who is willing to help me build the entire platform much quickly, much faster. Why do I work with you? So I always give the answer that look do you want to work with a real estate developer or do you want to work with an education ecosystem provider and that education DNA I feel it takes time and it takes effort to build that up and that's the reason why even in the US they haven't moved, that's the reason why even in China they haven't moved that DNA building perhaps M&A would be one of the approaches that many will have to take but teaching someone is a fundamentally different ball game and that's the entry barrier to the teaching ecosystem is how I put it down all of them have aspirations education by the way is one of the few sectors in this country that is easily monetizable with a high contribution margin I will come to think of it television we are not willing to pay 500 rupees or 50 rupees per month but for an education you are willing to pay 2-3 lakh rupees for taking the education so it's a monetizable business it can be built and scaled but you also need to have the right DNA of being able to teach own the customer, deliver them because that's what they will be here to pay for Thank you so much Mank for talking at the India brand Canclave you are clearly building a brand for the future it's already a business we wish you luck from exchange for media and business world and we have no doubt that you will be able to build a very sustainable and respected business and the brand will be at the forefront of driving that adoption so wish you luck best Mank to you Fagun and and I mean Deja who on 8th December I was attending Fagun wedding reception in Bombay last year I think the wedding was a little earlier in Nudepur and the reception was 8th December 6 days away from that so wish you luck Mank and Fagun and Rani all the best back to you Bhavna Thank you very much Thank you so much Mr. Kamaran Thank you so much Dr. Bhattra for joining us today