Hybrid Education is the Buzzword!

Online education is changing the world. As the new age offers best quality courses including perfect combination of video content, personal mentor and assessment, uFaber Edutech, one of the fastest growing players in the online education space has also managed to carve a niche for itself.

In a candid conversation with Rohit Jain, co-founder of uFaber Edutech, we learn about the ways they used hyper-personalisation of the courses for each student to enhance the process of learning.

Could you tell us about your journey, so far?

We started uFaber around three years ago as a market place model initially. We have been growing multifold every quarter and now we are self-sustainable business with 70 people team, 500+ remote team members and 10,000+ paid students.

Please tell us more about your team and their specific roles.

My partner, Anirudh Swarnkar and I, passed out of IIT Bombay and started our first venture in K-12 education space back in 2006.

I personally take care of sales, marketing and products strategy, and also function as an advisor and angel investor for many startups. Anirudh or the ‘human Wikipedia” as people call him, specializes in creating contents on varied subjects.

We handpick our courses with diligence and select those according to demand. Product lines such as upscpathshala.com, gateschool.co.in, ieltsninja.com, emaester.com, kraftplace.com, thefluentlife.com are popular in our organization.

What’s most exciting about uFaber in 2017?

A special program called the eMaester program has earned us great recognition. We have empowered 300+ women over the last six months and plan to reach out to 1000 eMaesters in another six months. With the eMaester program, applicants get access to world class training to master a highly demanded skill.

What's your USP/ what bigger problem are you trying to solve in the education sector? Any milestones / achievement or instances that really gave uFaber a blush?

We provide complete solution to the students and not just a supplementary product. The key problem of education is the classroom and we are solving that by hyper-personalization of the courses for each student. We are creating a new breed of teachers who are more effective and affordable to masses.

Getting referral customer is the biggest achievement for an education company and the fact that we get 20 per cent of our customers through referrals happens to be a big achievement for us. This proves that people want personalized courses and they have no problem in paying for the same.

How do you raise your funds? How much have you invested in the company so far?

We believe in sustainable growth and business. The business has now reached to the operationally break-even level and is not dependent on external funding. Whenever there is a requirement, we have put in personal capital. Earlier, we had taken angel funding of Rs 3 crore from extended network of friends.

Which are your target segments and what marketing strategies have you adopted to reach out to them? And what according to you is more effective?

Every course has a different audience and we reach out to them via Facebook and Google. These are amazing channels to reach out to any audience. We have been quite effective in using these channels to get very low-cost of customer acquisition, unheard of in the industry.

What kind of challenges are you facing? What worked for you?

Finding good people to join the team is the biggest challenge and most of the bandwidth goes in that in early days.

How do you see online education sector developing in the country?

It’s still at a nascent stage and online education is a big key word. There are so many verticals and domains in education and people frequently make mistake in applying one formula for all of them. Like other industries, education has to shift online but different verticals will have different structures. This can’t be compared to travel/e-commerce.

What are your future plans for expansion?

We plan to get the leadership position in the courses that we have already launched and develop 50 more courses over the next one year.

How does this venture give you satisfaction? What are your tips for startups?

Education business is unique as the satisfaction here is not just about making money but also about helping people realize their dreams. They trust us for their career and living. With that kind of responsibility for so many people the feeling is amazing.

My 2 cents for startups are that they should focus on making sustainable business and not burn a lot of money in the name of growth. The growth that doesn’t make money is not sustainable.  If you are not able to stand on your feet, don’t try to run.

Can hyper-personalisation process of courses really enhance online education system in India? Or is it just a hype? Please share your views.