Interview With Hari Charan P - CEO of LearnClue Edtech Pvt Ltd Hyderabad

1. Describe about your Business and founders.

LearnClue - World’s 1st Digital Abacus APP: 

LearnClue is an edtech startup, designed with core values of developing higher-order thinking skills and problem-solving abilities for students, with our vision as "Right skills @ Right age". 

Founders:

Prasad Pichikala P R , Founder and a product design specialist with over 20 years of experience in education sector involved in evolution of complete strategy.

Satish Babu Mandava, Co-founder and an IT professional who has built and has been working cross different technological platforms, with over a decade of international business.

 CEO: 

Hari Charan - An MBA graduate with 20+ years of experience in marketing operations & strategy from fortune 500 companies.

2. What is the biggest challenge of being a CEO and how do you overcome it? 

The product “Abacus” has been accepted in more than 140 countries and now we need to establish ourselves in dynamic world with “DIGITAL ABACUS”. The biggest challenge as a CEO was to get that first investor. Gaining that trust of the first investor is really challenging but once you overcome that, it becomes easy to get students use it. And also, during this pandemic, it opened a huge opportunity for all academic based digital services; so we have to bring awareness about the need & availability of brain development programs in digital mode.

3. Where do you see the company in the next five years and how will you bring about the change?

Our Vision is to be a market leader in delivering “Right Skills @ Right Age under K12”. And we are introducing, the first of its kind up-skill programs mainly focusing on the overall development of a student. We wish to touch 1.5 million paid users on our app.

With its great R&D team for product development, In-house Experienced trainers and great marketing strategy, we hope to achieve our goals very soon. We are also trying to go for B2C from B2B model.

4. Did you ever feel like giving up on being a CEO and what motivated you to pull this off?

Never felt like giving up on being a CEO as our products has world wide accepted & scientifically proven to shape younger generations from past centuries, even I really feel sometimes that if in this pandemic, we are more confident because we strongly believe that our product will bring lot of impact on students psychological aspects and has a huge need in the all time scenario. Even NEP 2020 (National Education Policy), strongly recommends skill and ability development in the students and our app is the one which integrates both the conventional and digital education models. This USP always motivates and encourages me that we can overcome any difficult situation.

5. Describe your biggest achievement.

Digital abacus is the biggest achievement of us. Learn Clue’s worlds 1st Digital Abacus functions exactly the same way as the physical instrument in addition, also computes techniques, thereby unleashing their cognitive & lateral thinking and mathematical capabilities. Further, LearnClue has integrated several other modules into its app, which include well-proven ancient method of mathematical computing ‘Vedic Maths’, ‘Expressive English’ and ‘Xperteach’.

Few of our other achievements are, 25,000+ Applications downloaded till now, 15,000+ Students enrolled for MySchool Live Class, 2.5 Mn revenue generated since September 2020 and many more.

6. From where you get the idea for business?

Our founders are veterans in education sector with robust product and market know-how and the directors of ViswamEdutech ( Schoollabs.com) engaged in providing skill based education from past 20 years ( B2B2C model) and got good response, which made us to stand with 10K+ schools & close to 2Mn children across nine states in India growing every year.

To empower more students in India & across the world, we decided to start a digital wing “ Learnclue.com” of our services which has got appreciation in more than 120 countries targeting direct customers (B2C model) which has the potential to reach a pie in the ed-tech market. Only in India currently ed-tech market is pegged at $700 million, which is projected to reach $10 billion by 2025, primarily riding high on the massive adoption of online education to empower them with Right skills & Right age agenda.

This was the main motivation behind starting LearnClue.

7. What was your aim to start the company?

Indian education, both conventional and EdTech mainly for K12, focuses solely on grades. Hence children are not exposed to real-world challenges. Hence, it becomes difficult for them to deal with the real world.

Curriculum limited to academics (Less focus on cognitive skills No experiential learning), lack of good communication skills, no emphasis on life Skills, learning phobia and fear of failure, these are the few gaps which the current education system is having. So, we started LearnClue with the aim to fill these gaps by connecting academics with real world.

8. Tell us some of your failures.

Even though we are conceptually partly physical ready with the product lines but till now we are able to introduce only 2 product. So can say that the delay in introducing the product lines as planned, is a failure according to me. 

9. What is the role of your family in your successful career?

I was working in a very good company and had a stable job with good salary package. I left that job to start this business. Without the support of my family, of course it would’ve been impossible for me to pursue my dream. They always supported me morally even during this pandemic. I am really grateful to have such a supportive and understanding family. 

10. What is your message to the young generations and to their parents?

Our education system is more concerned about only academics. But we should look beyond academics too. Getting yourself ready for the future is the demand of 21st century. Most of the students are excellent in academics but when they go out for a job, many lack those required skills. So I would like to say the young generation that, “Everywhere, skills transform lives, generate prosperity and promote social inclusion. If there is one lesson we have learned from the global economy over the past few years, it is that we cannot simply bail ourselves out of an economic crisis, we cannot solely stimulate ourselves out of an economic crisis, and we cannot just print money to ease our way out of an economic crisis. We can only grow ourselves out of bad economic conditions and, in the long run, that depends more than anything on equipping more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive our societies forward and on using those skills productively. Ensuring that all people have a solid foundation of knowledge and skills must therefore be the central aim of the post-2015 education agenda. This is not primarily about providing more people with more years of schooling; in fact, that’s only the first step. It is most critically about making sure that individuals acquire a solid foundation of knowledge in key disciplines, that they develop creative, critical thinking and collaborative skills, and that they build character attributes, such as mindfulness, curiosity, courage and resilience.

And for the parents I would like to say, “You shouldn’t only focus on the academics but also should parallelly identify the inner inherent ability of your children and try to develop those skills. Future is going to be very competitive so you should nurture them with the skills required to succeed in life. Believe on their passion and let them find their own career.”