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| Edited By: Ashish K Tiwari |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 25, 2018, 03:03 AM IST
An Indian ed-tech start-up, Eruditus, offers professional development programmes to working professionals in India, Singapore, Dubai and other global locations. The company, which recently raised Rs 52.36 crore ($8 million) in its Series B round from Bertelsmann India Investments (BII), has collaborated with the executive education arms of INSEAD, Harvard Business School, Wharton, MIT Sloan and Columbia Business School to deliver online or in classrooms located globally. Chaitanya Kalipatnapu, co-founder and director, Eruditus Executive Education, in conversation with Ashish K Tiwari talks about the business and more.
We bring ivy league education to India. The pain points we are solving are affordability and access. Using technology and curriculum design innovation, we are able to offer programmes from top business schools such as Harvard, INSEAD, Wharton, Columbia and MIT to working professionals in India at a fraction of the cost they would incur if they were to go for the on-campus programmes.
According to various reports and estimates, the higher education e-learning space is around $17 billion globally. Of this, the Asian opportunity is 20% i.e. $3-3.5 billion and the India opportunity is estimated about $200-300 million. The executive education market is estimated to be $60-70 million in India.
There are various players in the space of our long duration programmes including the likes of ISB, IIMA, Northwest, etc. In terms of online programmes, it is based on the topic, for instance, those offered by UpGrad and other b-schools. What works for Eruditus is that we design and deliver top quality professional programmes. Our growing portfolio of 28 programmes with top Institutes is a testament to it.
Secondly, we focus a lot on learning outcomes through our programmes particularly by making a difference to the participants in terms of their knowledge and career development. For instance, participants pursuing the INSEAD ILPSE programme have demonstrated 30% plus salary increase (on average) over the last five batches. Also, the online programmes, in collaboration with EMERITUS, have over 90% completion rates with focus on applications and outcomes.
We are leveraging the brand and thought leadership of ivy league institutions in terms of possible programme options and marrying it with market needs. The focus is also on learning outcomes and making a difference to the participants in terms of their knowledge and career development. As far as marketing is concerned, we identify the customer segments across our geographies and their willingness to pay and look at offline/online channels to engage with them.
The classroom learning programmes (CLPs) are priced between $30,000-50,000 while the six to eight week online programmes are priced at $750 to $900. The costs for Eruditus mainly involves sales/marketing, revenue-share for schools, operational expenses (logistics, student support etc).
We work on different models based on our partner schools. Fundamentally, it's based on revenue sharing with the respective institutions based on our responsibilities for the respective programme. We have always operated on a break-even basis with respect to our programmes. The investment raised is not to plug the burn but rather to scale faster.
We had 5,428 participants across 58 countries. Of these India, USA, UAE, Germany, Brazil had bigger representations.
We had 120 participants in 2012 from India and today we are at 5,428 participants across 58 countries. The next milestone to grow this number to over 15,000. This will be done by adding relevant programmes from our existing and new partners while also expanding the geographies in terms of enrolment for our programmes.
