Hosted by ACT, UnHerd brings you the unheard stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt the social impact landscape. From social entrepreneurs to venture philanthropists, dive into real-world conversations on what they’ve experienced and learned about changing the status quo.
Our sixth episode welcomes Tarun Saini (Founder, Vidyakul) who, in conversation with Sunaina Mathur (Manager, ACT For Education), shares his experience of building an ed-tech solution for Bharat and talks about the importance of knowing one’s user.
Listen to this episode on our Spotify or watch the conversation on YouTube.
Sunaina: Hi everyone and a very warm welcome to the sixth episode of UnHerd – a podcast hosted by ACT that delves into the extraordinary stories of individuals who are challenging conventions to disrupt India’s social impact ecosystem.
As you all know, India gained tremendous momentum in online learning during the pandemic and today, is said to be the second largest e-learning market in the world. While we have over 250M children in India’s schooling ecosystem, 80% of these children actually attend state boards. Hailing from underserved communities, these people often do not find high quality, contextualised ed-tech solutions that can help them in their learning journey.
This is exactly the problem that our guest founder will be talking about. Tarun, from Vidyakul, is on a mission to ensure that ed-tech levels the playing field for Bharat’s children. Having grown up in a small village near Ambala himself, he has witnessed firsthand the constraints of a rural Indian classroom and set out to create an affordable solution that caters to state board students exclusively. An affordable app-based freemium solution that hosts educational content for Hindi-medium, English-medium, and vernacular languages, Vidyakul is helping over 2.5M students across Bihar, UP and Gujarat find success in their board exams to unlock brighter futures.
Welcome to UnHerd Tarun, great to have you with us today!
Tarun: Same here, Sunaina, and thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
The spark that lit the fire: Early experiences that fuelled the mission
Sunaina: You started your life in a small village near Ambala. You grew up, finished your higher education in Australia and spent almost six years working in Australia, which for a lot of people is the ideal life trajectory. But you decided to make that shift back to India. Could you share a bit about that journey?
Tarun: You mentioned it was an ideal life, but it’s not an ideal life honestly. The struggle is 10 times more than it is here.
As you mentioned, my childhood was in Ambala. I’m from a small village, which is so small that you could see it in two minutes if you wanted to. Everyone knows each other and that is the beauty of the village. I completed my schooling in a Hindi medium school. Our village had one teacher who taught us everything – physics, chemistry, math – all the subjects.
I had often seen that parents or families believe that they can financially afford to either spend money on their boys or on their girls. If they had enough money, then it was a very different situation, but if they didn’t have basic financial stability, then most families would spend more money on the boys.
But when I landed in Australia, I saw the atmosphere was very different. The value of women’s education is very different. And after years, when my sister got married and came to Australia, I saw how she built her life. She did her M.Com from a private university and in Australia, she became a chartered accountant and began running the firm. So, with that, we both became ideals for our village. Whenever our friends and family saw us, they saw how our financial situation had changed.
Our experience made us realise how important education is. One is academic, the second is financial literacy and spending time away from one’s village and home. That was a big learning experience. When I used to travel to India from Australia, where the education system was robust, I saw that our villages hadn’t seen much of a change. So I thought, why not do something to empower the background we came from.
I had built a house in Australia, I had my PR. But I thought, let’s just go back and see how we can start up. I still remember, I made that decision within 7 days. I went to my sister and told her, I’m going by an Air India flight tomorrow. This is the key to my house and car. I may come back, I may not. She said okay. You go ahead. That’s how the journey started.
First principles lens: Building user centricity from the bottom up
Sunaina: There were a couple of interesting things you said, Tarun. First, the fact that girls don’t get equal opportunities and as you grew older, you understood that maybe some things could be done differently. And we’ll come to that a little later in the conversation.
The second very interesting thing you mentioned, was the network effect you saw in the village because you and your sister set an example which inspired the rest. Can you talk a bit about that network effect in the village? What made you want to build for Bharat?
Tarun: I think the most important thing is that I come from that same market. Every entrepreneur should be familiar with the market they’re building for. Understand how the consumers live, what they buy, what they use. Each of us three founders at Vidyakul come from the same background. So, that was an advantage.
As for why Bharat? Apart from a deep rooted connection, it’s fun to do something for where you’re from. And I believe very strongly that every family’s situation can change in the Bharat segment, and it can happen through education. Education is the only weapon for them to come out from these situations.
Sunaina: That’s very beautifully put, Tarun. But this audience is very price sensitive, acquisition costs are very high. How do you connect with your audience? What’s the secret behind Vidyakul’s user stickiness?
Tarun: We earlier spoke about the community effect, I will give you a very small example. In a village, if even one farmer uses a fertiliser or a new seed variant that improves the crop and yield, the entire village will shift to using that seed and fertiliser. This is because the village is a very small community where everyone talks to one another. For example, when I went to school, the entire village knew which tuition I went for, which books I carried, and if I looked even a bit healthier, people would ask my parents, “What is he eating?”
So the community factor in a village is very very strong. I would say that if you give one person your product to use, and that person understands your value and outcome, then by the next year the entire village will be using your product.
So when building for Bharat, you really need to understand the district, taluka, and village to map it. It’s a very deep market and that’s why I said, those from Bharat know how to innovate for it. (But yes,) it’s a very price sensitive market. Students compare your price with the value they gain out of the product, and education is very high-stakes.
Education is more of a service market I would say – it’s value driven and so the outcome is at stake. So, you need to be very careful with the quality. We measure impact by assessing a student’s performance before and after Vidyakul. For example, a child who used to get 50% in his exams, who then started getting 70-80% and has consistently improved. We have mapped this very deeply for every child who comes to Vidyakul.
So it took a year and we saw the network effect take place in one village. We visited that village and highlighted the student’s example. That she – let’s say she’s Ram’s daughter who studied at Vidyakul – has topped the district. If you publish that (information) in that particular district and village, where everyone knows everyone, it becomes impactful. And the quality that you deliver should be consistent.
Sunaina: I want to dig deeper into gender. You spoke about your own home and the problem of inequity is so pervasive in even urban India, and it’s quite ingrained in rural India as well. So how do you navigate this at Vidyakul?
Tarun: 100%. I think this is the day to day task for us to educate the families.
Education is a movement and we’re just at its starting point. Awareness is the most important thing. Parents need to know how much value education will create for their children.
If we speak of women’s education, in tier 3 and tier 4 towns, mothers are very aware, because their mindset is very clear. Whatever they went through, they don’t want their daughters to go through. They are very clear that their children are destined for more than just household chores.
So when you target boys, you usually run campaigns for the dad. But when you run a campaign for girls, the mother should be there. Because the emotions are much stronger. If she fights for her daughter’s education, the husband will listen.
Traversing tough roads: Building with patience and deliberation
Sunaina: Thank you so much for sharing that Tarun but it wasn’t an easy journey. It was an uphill battle, especially considering the time that ed-tech has been having. And you’ve still been at it and you’ve been able to build a sustainable business out of it with a very price sensitive audience. If you can share a bit about the challenges that you faced during this journey, and how you navigated them?
Tarun: Everyone has the impression that as soon as Covid came, the ed-tech landscape began to boom. But honestly, that was the first stage of ed-tech in Bharat. Those in metro cities were already aware of ed-tech–how to use it, and they had the money. But when it comes to Bharat, they knew nothing about ed-tech when Covid hit. There was some distant awareness through platforms like YouTube and Whatsapp, but that’s when the ed-tech market in Bharat actually began forming.
While in metro cities the usage of ed-tech is falling, but in Bharat, it’s just starting to rise. And we are very proud to say that within the last 3 years, we have built a very strong fundamental business, where we’ve gone from 1000 paying users to lakhs.
I think the biggest challenge was being patient. As a founder, you want everything to happen within a month. Second is building the team. I think for us the biggest advantage was that we came from a similar background, but finding the right mindset is a very unique task because you can get good people who actually build for the metros and they understand their market. But people who are building for Bharat are in very limited companies and you have to go in the districts or states to find the right people to build with.
Third, when we started, we mostly got influenced by other ed-tech apps. And this is the first stage with founders. They take an app, say it’s very good and think it’ll be successful if they change it in certain ways. But it doesn’t work like that. One day we said, we are going to build for our own market. We’ll build a product based on our own understanding. And right now, we are at a stage where our product is very unique, and is so deeply embedded in Bharat, that we know if there are issues in particular districts with a particular subject, their homepage will actually reflect those issues. That’s how deeply we’ve understood our end users.
So I would say, don’t get too excited in the early stage. Don’t copy anyone. And we made that particular mistake initially, so we learnt to stick with our audience and build for them.
Future forward: Advice for entrepreneurs building for Bharat
Sunaina: Two things that you said that I do want to highlight. One big thing is building bottom up. Not just the product and the feedback, but even the team. Because ultimately, for every insight, you won’t be able to go on ground. And that’s where your team’s insights become valuable. That is why, even though the Vidyakul team has 100 plus people, the Bharat centricity is still there.
And the second thing you said, that ed-tech in Bharat is still nascent. During Covid it was in its awareness phase and only now is it reaching widespread acceptance. If you were to articulate specific advice for people who are starting out in ed-tech and tell them about the Bharat opportunity, what would you like to tell them?
Tarun: It’s important to build knowledge and perspective of Bharat. Most people building from ed-tech have themselves been through CBSE and good schools, and are therefore solving challenges they faced themselves. But CBSE is a very small part of the entire education system. UP alone is much bigger than the CBSE. CBSE has 21-25 lakh students in 10th grade and UP’s Hindi medium board has 32 lakh students yearly, so it’s much bigger. So those who don’t come from that segment will have challenges in building that mindset.
I truly believe that the day we see more founders from Bharat, they will automatically start building for Bharat. That I am 100% sure. Because they have lived that pain, they are able to relate to it.
Sunaina: Building for Bharat from Bharat. That’s beautiful. Tarun, so we are coming towards the end of the conversation, but a reflective question is, is there something you would change about Vidyakul’s journey? If you were starting Vidyakul today, what would you do differently?
Tarun: The failures we have seen in the past 3-5 years have taught us to build sustainably. So I have no regrets. But for those who are solving for Bharat, I’d encourage them to find entrepreneurs building for similar segments. This will help you fast-track the process.
And if I were to go back, I would stick with a very small segment. When we started, we were excited to do everything. But if I were to start again, I will pick one district and I’ll go very deep into that particular district first for PMF and once I have a profit and then I build for Bihar or any other state. So I think those two would be my top lessons.
Sunaina:
Thank you so much, Tarun, for taking the time today!
This brings us to the end of our sixth episode of UnHerd – a podcast presented by team ACT. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channels where we’ll bring you more unheard stories of people who are passionate about creating impact at scale in different ways. People who truly stand apart from the herd.
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