EDUCOMP SOLUTIONS FOUNDER
December 9, 2008
43,EDUCATIONAL CONTENT PROVIDER
CMD, E D U C O M P S O L U T I O N S
INITIAL INVESTMENT:IN 1994 Rs 1 lakh
CURRENT TURNOVER: Rs 260 crore
BIGGEST CHALLENGE: To create conducive classrooms that will craft the leaders of
tomorrow.
SUCCESS MANTRA: Innovation. Identify the problem and then create a differentiated
solution.
EARLY START: Did not study year round, learnt the “art of cracking exams”.
Entrepreneurship came early to Shantanu Prakash, the 43-year old chairman and managing director of Educomp Solutions. From a B.Com at Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce to an MBA at IIM Ahmedabad, Prakash with a friend had a nifty business model organising rock concerts. “I had to find ways to make my life more interesting,” he laughs.
Post-MBA, he diversified into providing IT solutions in education, starting with computer labs for schools. “At that point I realised that there was a deeper issue to be addressed—basic education itself.” With a seed capital of Rs 1 lakh, he started Educomp Solutions. Prakash started by approaching private schools. “There was too much curriculum, lack of concept clarity and stress in learning. And tuition was thriving. We thought, why not improve basic learning in classrooms?” he adds. But raising capital was tough. In the early 1990s, Prakash had to borrow money at rates as high as 26 per cent a year as banks were not willing to lend with simply
intellectual capital as security. But he managed to work out innovative business models where he divided the cost of setting up a computer lab into a monthly subscription fee for each student, instead of asking schools to cough up huge sums of money. Educomp’s blockbuster products
include the Smart Class, an animated teachers’ aid for classrooms, and Mathguru, an innovative maths-help programme for students, a subject he himself hated. The company has also diversified into e-tutoring as well as schools—The Millennium Schools from kindergarten to Class XII. Overall, it supplies content to 19,000 schools worldwide, reaching 9.8 million students. The company got listed on the Indian stock exchanges in 2006 and has revenues of Rs 260 crore today. “The social implications of education are so large,” says Prakash, “that you can solve
a lot of problems through learning.
Post-MBA, he diversified into providing IT solutions in education, starting with computer labs for schools. “At that point I realised that there was a deeper issue to be addressed—basic education itself.” With a seed capital of Rs 1 lakh, he started Educomp Solutions. Prakash started by approaching private schools. “There was too much curriculum, lack of concept clarity and stress in learning. And tuition was thriving. We thought, why not improve basic learning in classrooms?” he adds. But raising capital was tough. In the early 1990s, Prakash had to borrow money at rates as high as 26 per cent a year as banks were not willing to lend with simply
intellectual capital as security. But he managed to work out innovative business models where he divided the cost of setting up a computer lab into a monthly subscription fee for each student, instead of asking schools to cough up huge sums of money. Educomp’s blockbuster products
include the Smart Class, an animated teachers’ aid for classrooms, and Mathguru, an innovative maths-help programme for students, a subject he himself hated. The company has also diversified into e-tutoring as well as schools—The Millennium Schools from kindergarten to Class XII. Overall, it supplies content to 19,000 schools worldwide, reaching 9.8 million students. The company got listed on the Indian stock exchanges in 2006 and has revenues of Rs 260 crore today. “The social implications of education are so large,” says Prakash, “that you can solve
a lot of problems through learning.
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