Edtech company for professional learning and upskilling Great Learning is leveraging AI to launch new courses starting at R1,500. In 2021, the company was acquired by edtech company Byju’s, which is currently undergoing insolvency proceedings, for $600 million. But Great Learning has now come out of Byju’s clutches.
The company has been profitable for eight of the last 11 years, and its revenue grew by 23% to $118 million in FY24 compared to $96 million in FY23. In an interaction with TNIE’s Uma Kannan, Mohan Lakhamraju, Founder & CEO of Great Learning, said that he doesn’t regret the transaction (acquisition by Byju’s) and that it was the right thing at that time. Edited excerpts:
Post Covid-19 pandemic, not many online edtech companies could survive. What is the future of edtech firms?
I think online learning is absolutely here to stay. If you want to increase the gross enrolment ratio from 40 to 60, that’s an additional 40 million people, it costs a lot to actually create campus-based learning for all these people. For each person, it typically costs R10 lakh to create one extra seat in a physical campus. So, it has to happen online. And not all of these people even need to do degrees at the beginning of their career. They may want to learn something, do a job, and they may pursue some other time. Everybody is going to be a lifelong learner. There is no way you can do that in a physical setting, you have to do it online.
There are many edtech companies currently in India and are offering various online courses. How are you looking at this competition?
Our view on this has always been long-term. We have never raised funding, and we will never do that. We’ve always been bootstrapped and the reason is because we don’t want to put educational Objectives subservient to investor objectives. For us, learning is the superhero always. Everything is in service of learning, and we never want to compromise, and that’s how we always function. Offline is expensive. We have offline centres (5 or 6) in metros. We have 12 million learners. While the physical centres took us to a few thousand students, online mentored learning took us to a few lakhs. With AI, I’m hoping it will take us to many millions.
When you look back now - Byju’s downfall- do you regret being acquired by the company?
We are not part of Byju’s anymore, but their lenders are very much our shareholders. Shareholding moved from one place to another, but that doesn’t change anything for us. I’ve been running the company- the whole time, so nothing has changed for us, and we will continue to do that. I think at that time, it was the right decision (acquisition) for us. Also, that was the time when there was a lot of money sloshing around. All our competitors had raised a lot of money, I didn’t want to raise money from investors. Yes, it was a distraction, but because we were never integrated, it did not affect us in any way. I don’t regret the transaction and that was actually a good thing that happened to us. We’re very glad and relieved that we are not impacted by that and are out now.
You have launched AI Mentor and AI Teacher. How will these innovations transform the overall digital learning experience?
We are introducing about six or seven new courses, but that’s just the beginning. There will be more, and these are relatively shortcourses that one can do in a month. Eventually, we are hoping to get some kind of recognition from the government for AI teacher-enabled courses. Today, the government doesn’t recognise that. Currently, if you want to do any degree program, it costs lakhs. We want to offer the same at a low cost.