# Is Indian EdTech dying?

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Varun Mayya
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WBZW73xbwo
- **Дата:** 09.05.2024
- **Длительность:** 1:21:37
- **Просмотры:** 37,904
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/12279

## Описание

In this in-depth interview, Abhimanyu (Co-Founder of Scaler) and Bhavik (Founding Leader of Uber India) share thought-provoking insights on the state of Indian education and the future of business and technology.

Through candid anecdotes and contrarian takes, the duo challenges conventional wisdom and offers a fresh perspective on the intersection of education, business, and technology.
For those interested, check out Scaler School of Business for more on their approach to bridging the industry-academia gap.

Check out Scaler School of Business- https://bit.ly/3JUTZB8

00:00 - Highlights
00:38 - Introduction
02:45 - Abhimanyu's Journey
07:28 - Bhavik's Journey
15:08 - Transition from online to offline education at Scaler
18:11 - Challenges with online education and self-motivation
23:20 - Impact of AI on software engineering
30:11 - Future of business with AI
35:10 - Role of Scaler's programs in the AI era
38:28 - Challenges faced by traditional colleges
42:22 - Lottery ticket dynamic

## Транскрипт

### Highlights []

is every business a tech business in the future yes ultimately Tech is a motivation problem about only 3% of the people who start online self-based program finish it I think there's you guys there Master Union there sta how do you differentiate versus them we are always preparing you for the future name the top tech companies in the country chances you're going to find us killer Al there already you've probably been asked questions about Deon 100 times now right basically it makes a software engineer maybe 5x or 10x more productive some of those people competing against you are freaks of motivation students today are far less satisfied with their own achievements than I think you and I used to be ladies and gentlemen today I'm with

### Introduction [0:38]

abim Manu and bavik I think these guys are some of the most fantastic people in edtech uh abanu has been running Scala for a very long time uh you know sometimes I keep texting him he has lots of insights in the attech world he also has the most counter intuitive insights into the at Tech World which is he thinks very differently uh there are a lot of insights where I don't think average person would agree with him and I think today we'll go over everything right future of software programming business with AI coming out we'll go over Devon what is really Devon going to do we'll also go over their stories and hopefully by the end of it you walk away learning a little more about how online and offline education businesses work and you also kind of get a view of how the nature of business CH will probably change over the next few years we'll also learn a little bit more about Tier 1 tier 2 and tier three colleges so stay ladies and gentlemen so you know I think in December I reached out to abanu and I said uh abanu run scaler and I said you should come and be on a podcast with me because scalers has actually been one of the startup successes in India right they've been around for a very long time I've known you since interview bit so they've done a phenomenal job and I think some of that story deserves to be highlighted and I also think because software is changing so rapidly and also I rapidly and every business sort of become like a tech business is changing rapidly right so both software and business I know you guys have a lot of insights on and I thought having a podcast having both of you on and just you know understanding your story your thoughts some of the counterintuitive insights that you've had about uh teaching code about teaching business I want to know all of it right so welcome to the show I think before anything I want both of you to introduce yourself uh from you know ideally from your childhood what yeah I'm sure some people you know they say this right like from early years you were exhibiting something different so I want to know from both of you are allowed to brag for the next you know one minute or so but I'll start with your so I have very I think now looking

### Abhimanyu's Journey [2:45]

back it looks un it's not a very common Journey that I had I grew up in a very small town in mp called Amar kuk uh it is a village within uh you know kind of you know tribal District it was because it used to be the largest tribal District uh of the country called shul uh amarant although is a famous in the like older people know about it because it's a very old city it has its uh mentions in the ramay and Mahabharat uh so Ram back in the day he spent times of his when he was doing the vanas he spent some time there um so it's on a hill it's very interesting that it's a hill station with an MP uh back in the days early '90s when I was growing up uh it was a town with no telephone line whatsoever the newspaper used to get delivered the next day uh the national newspapers because it's so remote that you know on the same day there's no logistical Network to deliver the newspaper same day um so I I spent very early childhood there and then after school I went to trip Hyderabad um so another interesting thing is that uh while triple Hyderabad is considered the mecca for the computer science in India before ending up there I had never used computer in my life I had only seen it from a distance because every year in 10th class 12th class you will have your results being declared or the results of competitive exams uh so you'll go to the only cyber cafe in the city to get your results so from afar you can see it there's a computer on which the operator will take out the result give you a print and charge 10 Rupees for that uh so that was my interaction with computer when I entered College uh now it's like you know like in the middle of Hyderabad surrounded by like I remember Microsoft shared boundary with our campus um then Google a kilometer down and then there is TCS campus right across the corner reinforces huge campus of maybe 150 acres right across what I feel is that growing up in this small town away from you know the fancy schools Etc sometimes people say it's a disadvantage I feel it was a huge Advantage yeah because it kind of kept that Natural Curiosity um and you know the and hunger that you know like there is nothing like basically I was never motivated to just like you know facts I would look at things I'll try to understand what is happening uh what should be happening uh question the status quo and because of that I was able to often take decisions which would not be usual decisions it could be for example back in 2006 when I decided to join Tri Hyderabad I had options to join even you know more older famous established institutes I remember my late father he was pretty unhappy with me because Tri Hyderabad back then almost 15 years now yeah uh rather 20 close to 20 years now 18 20 years Tri Hyderabad was not a very famous college back then today of course it's a very short of Institute and like I just as a 17 18 year old kid I kind of met this rebellious decision that I will not go to some of the 5080 year old famous sort after colleges but I would rather go to Tri Hyderabad because I could see that you know what I want to study do that is happening there um similarly when I had to like you know choice of jobs uh I joined so before starting scaler I worked at Fab for a while when I joined them it was a company with five people and with maybe just a million or two in investment right I had option of let's say going to a company with 10,000 employees Fortune 500 or maybe Fortune 100 I turned that down took this up again not a decision that many people managed to take and then four years into that then I again managed to take a decision that I was doing I was fairly comfortable in the job uh making decent enough money for myself doing decent in the job appreciated by the peers and the and the bosses but then again my father was confused why would you quit this everything is so sorted people aspire to get to at such a place why would you quit that and want to build something of your own right so I think uh this overall have been my journey and I think uh I attribute a lot of that to you know the environment I was part of between when I was 5y old to 15 year old in a remote small place where you get to think from first principles not in a rat race that I must clear this exam I must do this I this is a Chase uh being away from that I think was very helpful while growing up so hav you literally run

### Bhavik's Journey [7:28]

Uber in India what's your story like how do you get to running Uber in India sure uh very different Journey all together born and raised uh in South Bombay on a silver spoon it's like you guys are Polar Opposites I grew up in a fancy apartment in South Bombay typical marwadi family uh business family textiles um you know had all the luxuries that I could ask for uh growing up uh did my schooling in South Bombay as well then I did my junior College also in South Bombay uh and then I did my engineering uh which was in university of Mumbai and by the time I was in the third year of engineering uh two things happened that defined a lot of the things that happened for me uh in my future life one was my family business that my father was running went through substantial losses they had to shut down the entire business uh repay a lot of the loans that led to family disputes and pretty much going from living in South Bombay fancy Apartments we were down to essentially living in a rental apartment uh struggling to just make ends meet um simultaneously when I was on my thir of engineering I almost decided to quit engineering and uh the reason for that was because I just felt I was wasting my time there right um typical traditional engineering College didn't feel like I was learning enough there was no motivation at all on one side I'm seeing my father struggle through his you know Fiasco that happened the business the factory Etc on the other hand I'm like I'm spending time here I'm not even Lear learning much that I can take back home with me and you know sort of almost had this very tough conversation that you have with your father once in your life across the table I'm like Dad I want to quit and like what do you mean he like I don't want to do engine anymore I'm okay I'll join you instead right cuz I felt like you need me I'm my dad of course sat me down like you're third year already it's just one more year just get a degree we'll figure it out later so I went ahead finished my four years of engineering I was good in studies after graduating uh we had about five or six companies that came on campus to hire I sat for zero interviews was very clear I was going to go work with my dad and he was restarting his Factory for manufacturing shirts uh so I thought go join him I survived for 3 months and I realized this is not my place at all like this I can't handle uh the requirements of you know the labor that goes into uh running a family business the factory Etc so my dad is like this is not for you I'm okay I'll run this for how long I can and I'll gradually shut it down you got to move on uh and that's when I took up my first job which was actually a software developer with a called atos origin among the top IT consulting firms back then providing IT services for European region we based in Belgium Netherlands and Luxembourg primarily did that for almost about two years and while I was working there I did a lot of programming in a very old language it was actually a 4 generation language called progress it mimicked C++ to some extent did coding for roughly about two years realized I am a good engineer from a terrible coder just one very interesting trivia there huh so you were right writing 4gl of progress right during my college days I was doing internship for progress and I was building the 4gl programming language so interesting my first programming language was delphy I'm just putting it in the head right there with you guys no so I did some programming progress but I think what's interesting the project I was working on was basically a manufacturing company that was based out the US and I was building the entire Freight solution along with the team and that going be really curious to understand okay what I'm doing sitting in a silo in a small part of Mumbai how is that really impacting the entire business started Googling a lot about the business itself about the company was called qad remember now um I'm like what does this company really do what are the different parts of the business I start getting really curious about it and I did a diploma in financial management at nury monji uh so I used to do a part-time course work through the day and go in the evening for those classes and that going be further interested into understanding just the different facets of business in the first place so a product of I'm a product of engineering but started gravitating towards the understanding all parts of the business doing that made me realize that there was more to learn about the business but the diploma enough wasn't enough right diploma by itself wasn't enough uh which is why I applied for University abroad and I did my u ms in general management and finance uh at University of Illinois at arbana champagne uh in the US I spent about two years doing that fundamentally changed me first time I was away from home you know making my own bed cooking my own food interacting with people from all over the world um I think there were people from roughly about 50 different nations part of my classroom learning different cultures uh and more importantly really getting into the meat of understanding business in general there was a specific thing that the program had which drew me towards that program which was called illo business Consulting it was a consulting firm that was run by the students on campus that was Source real world projects and then through all the experiences started learning about the differences in business outside of India and then the booming business ecosystem that was happening in India as well at that point time Flipkart was just getting started back in 2010 got gravitated back towards coming home so left the gig uh left a very hyping consulting job six figure dollar salary I'm saying this is it I want to go back and build something came back uh did my first startup which is called employee social uh which is providing rewards and recognition programs to large companies like seens baj IBM those are some of the clients that we managed ran that up until 2013 when serous leag got connected with Folks at Uber um met through an online call he told me what Uber is at that point I know what Uber was and this is remember pre Uber days in India right so Uber was just in about 20 cities in the US and the only International City they were live in at that point of time was in Paris and they looking to expand globally at that point of time and looking for their founding leader to start the Uber India business not knowing what Uber was went through a three-month long interview process with them I think that last bought 12 interviews and about four countries had to fly around many places for interviews they flew me to SF on the FL to Singapore and India as well and then finally landed the gig to be the founding leader for Uber in India um so left my own startup because I just felt like was a lifetime you know once in a lifetime opportunity to getting a chance to build what I felt was going to be the next big thing in the country which is going to fundamentally reshape Logistics and transportation in every country in the city right and we all face those issues so we know what are we talking about join duber founding leader I started off from a cafe coffee day just down the road actually V Road was my first office at Uber uh set up the entity hired the first set of people started the Uber business scaled that across the country uh pretty much all the products that you see on the Uber app whether it was back in the day Uber black down to Uber go Uber premium Uber commute Uber Moto Uber all launched by me between 2013 and 2016 and expanded across India Sri Lanka and Bangladesh with the rights business and I went back into uh building and became also the founding leader and the head of Uber Eats for India and South Asia I then built Uber Eats over the next three years um launched Uber Eats in 40 cities in India launched in Sri Lanka launched in Bangladesh and then ran that up under 2019 before Uber went IPO and then once there was a push to become profitable we were looking to exit businesses that required significant Investments moving forward and India was one of them so we end up exiting Uber Eats to zato which you may have heard of back in 2019 uh after that juste agent sorry after that free agent after a free agent I had the opportunity to move to Singapore and head Uber Eats for the APAC business somehow my heart lied in where we are today in India and F there was is so much to do here awesome so uh

### Transition from online to offline education at Scaler [15:08]

you know I've been following Scala story for a while right and I've seen scaler evolve from interview bit small business like we've met often right and I think one of the things that's been phenomenal is this transition that you have had from an online business during like the peak of the pandemic where nobody could do anything offline to now also building like a very strong offline business I've seen this in a lot of other Ed teexs as well right where P I think actually it's not even edex right I think it's all startups and businesses like a Nika would do the same thing right where there's a lot of brand building that happens online there's a product that's sold online as well and then eventually they go offline what was the thought process here what's the play here I can talk about in our context right and uh there have been a very interesting Evolution over last Almost 9 years since we started so me and anjuman we started building in late 2020 uh 2014 right so now it's like just in 6 months it will be almost a decade since we started our first hypothesis as you said was Interview bit right the problem statement that we started with in early 2014 when we were figuring out that what would we want to build uh as a company that problem statement has absolutely remained the same the problem statement was that people do not a large chunk of Youth in India does not have the capability the knowledge the thinking process and skills to become very high performance high impact for the industry and both these young folks they're hardworking they're smart but they do not have a systematic way to build the skills that the industry demands industry on the other hand in a way it's bottleneck for them with the kind of talent they can hire to expand further right so we want this was the problem statement that how do we fix this gap between the two the first solution that we built was Interview bit right it was very simple our initially hypothesis was that if you build a structured curriculum which is step by step perfectly aligned to what companies are looking for right now interviews is a great reflection of that let's say if you want to hire someone in the interviews you are going to thoroughly uh drill down on that do you possess those capabilities or not right so interview bit was built as a gamified almost dual lingo for programmers where you step by step go through uh the journey you spend maybe few hours every day you do that for 6 months and if you finish the entire Journey you would have enough Knowledge and Skills where you can clear the interviews of good tech companies which it did achieve so interview b as um like I it's pretty common that on an airport or you know in a mall someone will come and ask me that you who built interview bit right lot of people used it almost like a huge chunk of people in their final year of engineering they would use interview bit to prepare for the placements but then it had very like if I go with the intellectual honesty and ask myself that was like me and we asked ourself is interview bit solving the problem that we want to solve fully the answer was no and I'll tell you the reason with most online programs which

### Challenges with online education and self-motivation [18:11]

is self-based the issue is that the completion rates are extremely low there is a study of MIT which talks about that even MIT has for example launched many of the on MIT expro I guess they've launched lot of online programs right they publicly they have just data that about only 3% of the people who start a online self-based program finish it I think it's less than that like I have this one channel called Varun Maya level 2 where I did a full Unreal Engine course right both the design as well as C code right we even covered oops first episode from whatever lots of views right second last episode I still remember till today it's like 50 or 80 views or something like that it's like just 50 episodes right and people just quit like I I started learning this I think especially in the last 3 four years that ultimately at Tech is a motivation problem it's content right and it's always been there actually if you're will stud yeah it's always there in the books right like people say all the knowledge is on internet also there in the books but the problem is that I might buy 100 books I would probably finish one of them similarly I might buy 100 courses you know online recorded courses but like most likely I would not even one of finish one of them right so we saw the same on interviewbit as well like when we were young and stupid that we are even today but uh we thought that you know let's we'll build strong gamification we'll build you know try to make strong motivation everyone goes through that by yeah no you have to go through that Journey to understand the deeper problems and then figure out solutions for that right uh what we realized that even at interview bit uh if I remember the completion rates would be about 4 to 5% uh we spoke to a lot of people that uh you know why would you not complete like you know it's free it's you can just be at it you know that if you just keep doing it you will have a fancy job at the end of it why could you not finish right and the problem statements were very reasonable to begin Ed it's easy to just brush it off that oh people are just not motivated but it's deeper than that right most people they will like for example if you go to a engineering college or for that matter any University right there might be 100 things wrong about them but one good thing about a traditional College still is that there is a cohort that is studying together right in India for example if under like even B for examp example in third year he wanted to quit engineering college but he didn't if 100 people start a degree 98 of them most likely end up finishing it unless there's a extreme severe situation that comes up right now if I on the flip side online learning is mostly just studying alone right imagine that if you there's a college where you just go and sit in the whole classroom alone and there's a video that is playing in the class you will most likely drop off from that right second is if you get stuck with something if you are on a steep Learning Journey it's very natural that you can get stuck right again if you're just alone how do you unblock that you probably have no Mentor no friend to discuss and unblock yourself with so that is how in a way idea of escaler was born right that while we like we challenged ourselves that could there be a solution which marries the scale of online but at the same time achieves the completion rates and the learning outcome of Offline that is how he Skiller was born would you argue that at least with online life is a very powerful distractor and like people just have other more important things to do and this is cognitive effort uh you know I learned this when I don't remember which I think this was upgrad if I'm not wrong right where somebody had asked uh somebody had upgrad said that um you know it's not like a movie you can't go in Finish 50% even in a movie you can't stand up and be like give me a refund and a movie is not cogn cognitive effort you don't have to put thinking in right like the director is doing that for you but in a course especially an online course you have to put in the thinking you have to sit study learn make notes I'm watching a scaler tutor I have to figure out what he's saying finish complete the assignment there's effort on me and you know life is such a powerful dist like my washing machine is beeping you know U my girlfriend called my mom wants me to get this everything suddenly becomes higher priority because you are doing that cognitive prioritization and it's actually lazy when you're saying this is more important than this no that's because that's how we've grown right when we were kids our parents took care of everything right there was no self motivation that I have to make my own bed but you know it's also a cultural thing like sometimes when I sit on my computer and I'm just learning something sometimes like my mom especially when I was younger be like no don't do that do this like help me around the house right feels culturally bad to not help yeah and we went to school like my job is to go to school school's prob to teach me the right skills and get 10th grade and then at same philosophy to college saying now I've joined the college I did my bit now college has to make sure that I study and I graduate so we've always been groomed in such a way that we rely on someone else to keep motivating us to reach a completion self motivation extremely hard unless you have a very strong ambition and a goal post that hunger that I really want to get there because that means so much to my life so

### Impact of AI on software engineering [23:20]

in all of this right I want to touch on something now a little bit different this is back to SST and scaler right I think we've seen a lot shift with AI I think two years ago this wasn't even a topic of conversation right we had AI but it's a very different kind of AI suddenly GPD came out you know everyone's like okay nobody has any idea what's going to happen over the next two three years and I think recently we've had Devon come out right there's been a I mean there's one thing that's very clear the Enterprise is going to be transformed okay Engineers are absolutely and everyone has different thoughts on it there's some people who are like software Engineers are gone right and there's some people who are like no nothing's going to happen to software Engineers this is all this Deon is a scam then there's a middle ground that's like actually software engineering jobs are two parts one is the actual you know writing the code Monkey job the other job is the problem solving and the thinking of what needs to be written in the first place should I even write Cote should I use like a existing library or framework right it's more like I would say this person is a little more Junior to this person but actually if you meet a software engineer most of them have both of these combined in them and as they get more senior I think the problem solving ability goes higher and uh the decision- making the uh writing code reduces because you now have a team to do it that's my thought but I know that you've probably been asked questions about de Devon 100 times now right what do you think yeah no so I think I'm a native to you know programming I like uh like I grew like I have been writing code for 15 years today I often write code uh if I ask you this question like even when I am in a hardcore full-time developer role M what percent of time make a guess I spend writing code yeah like 2 three hours a day but it varies like there's some periods where you write a lot of code there's some periods where you're just like okay build like what do we need to build in the first place so but I do agree that over time it's reduced no I can tell you that you know like the Lesser ratio between writing code versus not writing code and like important that even when I'm not writing code I am working as a software engineer enger typically for any good software engineer it is only 10 to 20% of the time when you are actually writing code yeah 80 to 90% of the time you are working as a hardcore software engineer but you are not writing code people anyone who is in a job where 80 90% they are only writing code that means they are not really working as a software engineer uh now the second part that if only 10 to 20% of the time is actually spent writing code rest figuring out what needs to be built you know a product manager would tell me that you know this is the business problem statement this is the metric that we are chasing this is the kind of product idea that we have right however then breaking it down that what needs to be built what is the most efficient way to build that is where actual software Engineers spend most of the time right uh and even if I further take it down to you know very abstract problem statements you know data structures and algorithm for example right even there if I read a problem let's say if if I talk about let's say 8 9 10 11 years back I might have given an interview and even when I coach the uh you know students at scaler that uh what is the way to have high performance even in a programming interview that when that problem is thrown at you if you jump into writing code immediately most likely you are rejected right there you have to start with first making sure that you understand the problem correctly then you build the solution then you cross verify the solution probably in a 60-minute coding interview you are supposed to spend only 5 to 10 minutes writing the code that is when it is considered a high quality interview be it Google's interview be it Microsoft interview be it Amazon's interview right that is what software Engineers really do right and then come Davin two parts to it what I feel is that one of course even D even right now is not in public betab it's kind of a control environment it will take years to get there but I'm optimistic it will get there where it in reality start behaving how that those demo videos uh today it is not right second is that even then what it makes is that basically it makes a software engineer maybe 5x or 10x more productive because that 20% time sometimes I might have to just write boiler plate code where I just don't have to think but I still have to write it right or I have to copy paste it from some and we've seen this with abstractions right like I used to write a lot of Ruby code in the beginning everyone's like writing authentication by themselves today nobody does that they'll just pick up a in Ruby it's called gem yeah so you just pick up a foration and you'll just be like my job's done so anyway we've seen that with abration and because a lot of code is boilerplate code now you only have to solve like the most high value important different problems than anybody else is facing but you were saying yeah so second layer you know one part is that definitely it's it is another level of abstraction if I compare with let's say even 20 25 years back people were using you know languages like Fortran like even before people used to use Punch Cards so these abstractions have come in right the productivity of a developer back in say 75 probably became 10x by 95 it probably became further 5x by 2015 by 2025 probably it will again increased by 4X 5x there is so much more technology to be built and then each developer can become so much more productive right this is one level right what it will mean is that it will give tools to the developers who learn these thoroughly to become much more capable second is then some people might argue that okay but that 80% thinking part the AI is developing so fast that what if it takes over on that as well right that is I think where it gets very interesting that are we saying that see the work that a software developer do in that 80% of the time is actually thinking about a lot of trade-offs different options what in watch particular real world scenario what kind of trade-offs are right to choose that's a very smart way to put it right and that is what even a CEO of the company is doing and then if we are saying that if AI gets so smart that it can replace that 70 80% thinking part that's a very different question then probably we get to a world where no one has to do anything it's not just the software developers then probably not even the CEO doesn't have to do anything which I think becomes then a philosophical question that even whether that is even possible or not I have a theory around that I don't think I mean companies will still have CEOs somebody still needs to be accountable and AI can't really be accountable today right and you as a CEO for example you don't have the bandwidth to sit and solve all the problems are in the company so even if an AI can do it on your behalf you'd still want somebody to allify it you might hire less Engineers but you'll still be like you're an engineer you solve whatever problem comes our way you make the decisions because I don't have the context to do 500 things a day so smaller teams but still you know more productive teams but

### Future of business with AI [30:11]

I do think that fundamentally um business will get reshaped yeah that was my next question actually like if all this is going to happen and your Dev suddenly become 10x more productive and they're able to build 10 times more things and you know your time to production is like 2 months then what happens to like a business yeah is every business a tech business in the future yes in the future every business a tech business and the business that's not a tech business will likely struggle to keep up with the growing demands of the consumer so I fundamentally believe that technological advancements including you know AI or geni for that matter will fundamentally reshape The Way businesses done in the future just like many of them have already changed if you just look at the journeys of all businesses that have happened over the last let's say over 100 years they've transformed every few decades because of certain new technologies that have come in whether it's Industrial Revolution that's new tools that have come in whether it's computers that have came in uh gadgets that came in they fundament reshaped businesses and that's likely to continue as well which is why I think like an example of a gen right as an example like you could be a business leader and today if you want to prototype something and do a little bit of AB testing in the market your current way of doing that is right now go to a team of Engineers and saying can you build these this prototype for me I want to do a Ab testing and you'll take that to the market but you're still dependent on the tech team to take bandwidth out to build this prototype for you today you're a business leader if you have a basic understanding of how jni works and how jni can help you in your business you can build a quick and dirty prototype it may not be very polished be a dirty prototype quickly take it to Market do a quick AB testing so time to Market significantly faster quick feedback then you know exactly is this working not working and now I take bandwidth from a tech team to build a product full-fledged so you what you've done is you have learned much faster you've got feedback much faster and you've used your resources a lot more efficiently than you would have otherwise have in building something that may or may not would have and now ai is going to help you do that much faster as well so fundamentally a lot of these aspects of business will change back in the day you think about marketing to be limited purely to ATL right ATL marketing then BTL marketing can you explain that for the audience so above the line marketing which is your traditional advertisements then you're below the line marketing which is kind of events that you do or you know a brand campus that you do at localized events and then you now have Performance Marketing right now future Business Leaders that are evolving in the space of marketing will have to stay a breast with all the new different devices and gadgets consumers are consuming you know I on Instagram today you and I on YouTube today we on LinkedIn today whether it's Snapchat or many more that will come and there be different gadgets and different tools are keep coming as well as a marketing person I need to know where are my consumers and what are they using and what algorithms these platforms have for me to Target this consumer properly would you argue and you know this is something I'm picking up from what you're saying would you argue that it's getting easier and easier especially with Gen to build products but it's getting harder to get users would you argue that or do you think that both are equally important and you're trying to you know yeah I think both are equally important solving two different problems all together right here what J is doing is helping you in business decision- making take products faster to Market learn quickly before you build a full product an example or build components of but if everyone else can do that then your marketing costs by Supply demand and hence this is where you have to become smarter as a marketer right who is my audience how do I get a better understanding of my consumer preferences how do I then Target that user and the using the right Channel with the right Roi with the right uh you know in and you have Ro in marketing terms well how do I get that and which platform do I use to get that out as well which is why I think future Business Leaders will not need to just be a business leader and know the core fundamentals of business but we'll also need to know the advancements and Technologies really well like I don't imagine a business leader of the future of a large scale business in India or anywhere for that matter not having understanding of how technology works because they don't they're not going to be efficient but those who do will be 10x more efficient and applying the technology to grow the business faster at scale and do you feel it's going to be disconnected from time like in the sense today you want to do more things you need to spend more amount of time right but I think with like my personal opinion of the is maybe we'll work 2 days 3 days it's more about now effective decision making and that's what I was telling about Twitter as well right like effective decision making has disappeared because most people are now going with whatever the public thinks is correct or wrong correct and that in real life businesses it's almost all wrong yeah right do you feel like effective decision making it's not about running the ad yourself right at some point Facebook will like I think Facebook already kind of automatically runs ads but what to run and why the how rather than and the why rather than the how you feel the why has become more important absolutely 100% And I think which is why if I just

### Role of Scaler's programs in the AI era [35:10]

go back to and just connecting back a little bit to what we're doing at scaler also you know the entire thesis behind scaler School of Business that we're just launching right now which is a 18-month program um the entire thinking behind that is to teach you by making you do things so this aspect ECT about effective decision making uh the why behind it learning consumer preferences then applying technology to take your product to Market so how do you think of a business idea how do you take from concept to reality then how do you build an MVP reach out to Consumers generate Revenue know what the business fundamentals are going to be and what the economics then go and Pitch it to a VC do you give uh the students in ad budget so yeah as part of the project right so when they when they're building a project what they end up doing is so we have something scaler Innovation lab which is on campus itself that's a shared space between our students from SST scal Sol technology and scal solo business nice so it's like a vinator it's like a V com inov exactly and what you basically have is business students collaborating with Tech students almost you have your in-house Tech team design team and your marketing team in some way I think rocket Labs is the better this good example yeah good parall out there as well students come together work on an MVP in The Innovation lab itself build that product take it to Market maybe take a marketing budget start getting some Revenue out of it so the tech guy tells the marketing guy you will get users and the marketing guy says I trust that you'll be able to build the product and we'll take it to Market not only that Scala will then bring top VCS and investors in a room and the value prop in this is when these two are talking to each other like the developer in the market here all the usual problems of startups are going to start appearing right like one gu that guy said he'll be here today he wasn't here and no Theory can teach you that thing is no traditional Business program no books no Theory can teach you any of that stuff conflict right what up when you're there and you're building it yourself in the middle of the action or you're taking a real world project let's say I get you a project from to give example at skill so technology we have projects that we are doing with some pretty large startups like I think some of the names we can take is like Zolo as an example Urban company recently a project for the government of India bashini project when you take that project you start building it you start realizing the complexity of building it the you can study right you never get the understanding of what it takes to build it real time now imagine Business Leaders while in the B school doing this with in collaboration building the product and taking to Market all the real problems is this even a problem does the customer want this solution that you try to sell right uh taking quick feedback iterating on the product very quickly going back to the consumer again taking feedback itting quickly right managing customer support then marketing for it sales for it and then how the pnl comes together and then taking this should be very hard to pull off offline on online can't be done online like I would say so far I have not figured out how it could be done especially like you showed me a video of that Hardware thing right where people are building that right fire fighting drones yeah very tough to pull like five people together make them ship burning them burning the midnight oil s together in the classroom ideating on a whiteboard together prototyping quickly try it out on the ground come back again prototype again righted on the ground why aren't traditional

### Challenges faced by traditional colleges [38:28]

colleges doing this it like traditional colleges are also fairly smart I mean and there's a lot of revenue for them to lose right like I don't know why they're just like letting the opportunities slip uh my thesis is I think it's a quality of professors right if you get somebody who's been successful 20 years ago many of these professors haven't even been successful they've just been teaching all throughout right so uh why do you think they they've not caught up to the opportunity I'll give my three reasons maybe we can add later I the first you already touched upon I think the fact that they limits El to professors who come with strong theoretical backgrounds or research backgrounds unfortunately have not spent time in Industry so theyve not been there done that the big difference that we want to make sure with both the School of Technology and the School of Business is to make sure that every part of the program is developed moderated and even delivered in some cases by industry leaders themselves so for example if you're doing a case study and let's say the case study is about logistics or transportation for that matter can an existing leader of uber India come on campus and review your case study and your outcome and then basis that maybe even offer you PPI right there itself that real experience does not happen so that's number one because the professors that you have come from more Theory and research versus but why don't they have the access they either limited and that's my second point right so they're either limited by um the aspect of evolution that I need to evolve right because I'm not being challenged so the complacency kicks in and that was my second point I think complacency plays a big role I've been around for 30 40 years it's been working the way it's been working I've been getting students the way they're coming right now ofes a year I'm getting thousands of croses every year what do you missing out right now is business is evolving so rapidly technology that unless you're able to get those students up and running outside I mean look at the stats out there right now whether it's engineering stats whether it's MBA stats employability of every single graduate is questioned right I mean you have terrible stats right now one out of four MBA students are employable right one out of 10 engineering students are employable the reason for that is because you're not learning from the industry you're not staying up to speed of the industry complacency and third is the curriculum itself does not go through significant ramp see the cost of constantly changing the curriculum and hence bringing new professors who can deliver that from the industry is very high it's not low cost it's pretty high right some of the colleges are not able to understand the how do we keep evolving the curriculum and bringing the right quality to keep teaching that so they're stuck in that same curriculum that's been prescribed and running the way it is like even today if you go to some of the engineering college for that matter they still make you do mechanical filing in the first of engineering I did that yeah you're a c student yeah I did Le and all that yeah right I mean if you go today to a business school for that matter you're still stuck in learning the four Ps and the 3c's yeah world has moved far beyond that sure you need to know the four Ps and 3c's so you have to have the understanding of the cord business fundamentals but unless you've taken that and applied it in your period of there when you Expos to the real world suddenly happens especially conflict you can't teach organization management I mean think about how the companies are going to be structured in the future with the ad of AI a lot of the company structuring is going to change right customer support as a function is going to change sales enablement right uh so how do you stay in touch with that a lot of Legacy institutions are not able to keep up with it versus I think the new age programs are coming in business programs or tech programs and I think that's where I think we want to be at the Forefront for both with technology School of Technology and the School of Business is to ensure we're constantly evolving our curriculum so we are very uh adaptable tomorrow after a year a new technology comes in which becomes very critical for our students to learn we're able to incorporate that almost immediately so we are always preparing you for the future hence when you graduate you are still relevant for the next decade or more versus what's happening in traditional colleges you graduate you're still relevant for the last decade not even for the current time unfortunately there's also a very

### Lottery ticket dynamics test prep market in India [42:22]

strong like test prep market right that actually it's like I can see the complete picture now right like there's a college that you end up obviously the Highlight colleges the iits or like nits or whatever they're on top and bits and whatnot right and then there's like a tail end of colleges that you know can go from sort of good to like you know just real estate company where you're paying rent uh I feel like to enable that there's now like a test prep race there are a bunch of exams and the exams are like sort of regulated so you know there's no scam going on there but the test prep thing I feel is like very unregulated I've also seen that you were telling me it has sort of lottery ticket Dynamics right can you explain that for us like how does it work if I start with some numbers right uh every year about 1. 5 million 15 lakhs people uh buy the J form fill it and then I think about 2. 2 million to 2. 2 million people who buy neat form and then if I go to higher education about 3 300,000 three lakh people who buy cat form and fill it all right well India is a country of scale right these are the kind of numbers which when I talk to my friends in Europe and us like holy cow like what kind of numbers are you talking about that a single exam on a single day or maybe spread across two days two million people are going to write that exam right uh so in India I think that thing does exist similar thing also exists for upsc for example right that there would be few hundred people who are going to get selected and few million who are in that race uh India is of course a developing country right and uh second layer of interesting uh stats and distribution I can talk about if you on the Google Trends search about that in which area is the high search frequency of terms let's say upsc you will see that it is inversely proportional to the per capita GDP of the state highest search density of upsc is in Bihar in Rajasthan while in Gujarat maharash Tamil Nadu the sear frequency of theem will be much lower right so these test prep exams kind of become a kind of only ladder for Upward social mobility in areas where are no other opportunities a Gujarati 70 17 18 20 year old kid would say I don't need to be in that rat race there are so many plenty of opportunities around me if I put that much hard work there I would have a fantastic career you know B probably you would have never given IIT J uh fun fact I don't know what jwe was when I was staring Engineering in Bombay I know what JW was me on the other hand where I come from because in my Village there is no other way for me to you know kind of do anything for me preparing for J or preparing for NDA was the most important thing when I was in school right so I think that first is that is the only kind of upward social Mobility right now when we talk about this the level of competition that exists now let's say if I the numbers are so crazy if I simplify let's say there are a million people writing an exam and if I want to study in a top Institute in India computer science then my all India rank need to be more like thousand or so right when I went to Tri Hyderabad I was in that range now thousand top thousand rank out of a million people who are writing the exam is 99. 9 percentile it's as much as almost winning a lottery right now if I want to win this Lottery there are two levels of ticket that I have to buy the first level is of course 1,500 rupe k j form fill it what a business right and just 15 1. 5 million into even 1,000 rupees right that's $150 million if I am doing the math right uh or 15 million uh the second part is then that is one you know that's one opportunity the other is then comes to the coaching institutes because just having bought the form is just entry into the raffle now to really increase any odds then you want to maybe either do a coaching and then second level when coaching is a very high effort right uh the second level is that you know there are let's say uh 5,000 6,000 rupe app program that you can buy now the fascinating number is that about 1. 1 1. 5 million people every year buy those as well if you might as well buying the farm buy it yeah you're buying a 2,000 rupe form so maybe you buy a 6,000 rupe course and maybe you get lucky right if you look at the completion rates or real outcome of those it will be even less than 1% that's all just impulse buy you know like it's just like you're buying the lottery ticket and you're hoping that maybe it will happen but you know it's actually worse than buying a lottery ticket because like we've discussed in the previous in the beginning right some of those people competing against you out of that 2 million 10 million whatever the number is Right are freaks of motivation the freaks of nature you just can't see it in their muscles or their body you can it's in their brain and they will sit burn the Midnight Oil till like they don't sleep they sleep like 4 hours and that's why and it's also like uh if you watch some of these movies right like 12th fail and all there'll always be like one or two characters who are like freaks of motivation who get by in the first round right but I feel like the entire this is so hard to kill in India like test prep simply because there's just so much money made it's illogical to kill it I think what I see is it's a cultural and also socioeconomic Evolution that will happen uh the reason for example there is not a huge test prep Market in Gujarat because there is so many opportunities in business right even in us for example if I take another extreme example in us while almost all the kids give SAT but there is no huge s coaching business there people prepare they study they give an attempt they get some marks they figure it out not having scored great in s would never be cause of making a kid Sude or you know even think about that my life is over unfortunately in our country it becomes so much that you know maybe make movies around few hundred th000 kids would feel that if I do not scale well SC score well enough in J then my life is over I'm a failure for life and that's the biggest that someone can believe in right but the society makes that happen yeah the paral pressure and so and the movies yeah well fail yeah no and I think one thing that I would emphasiz is that get one clearing or not clearing exams working hard for them definitely worthy like it's respectable thing but thinking that result of that exam is going to Define your life is absolutely not right unfortunately a lot of our web series and I think movies Etc sometimes they are even funded by the businesses which benefit by the you know coaching industry but I think that sets that uh theme in the whole society and that's why you feel because it's like it's making so much money it's like very hard to disrupt it right like and the minute you charge too much uh I know that for example with SSB right like with skill school business and even SST they're reasonably much more expensive than going and doing one of these but I feel like a lot of people will anchor you to that price in a way they'll be like the other course is like 5,000 rupees right to get into a competitive exam or to whatever why is yours so much more expensive they get the offline part and all and they understand there's some you know uh extra expense for that but why is it so much more expensive without understanding that the completion rates are there are quite low if my understanding is correct right I think the difference is between whether you are buying a lottery ticket or are you really you know kind of investing into your learning and you know real outcomes it's almost like a probabilistic odds right you have to multiply the 6,000 rupees into 1% to see the real price of that you actually have to divide it by 1% to see the real price and also I think two other aspects to it one is that you're also investing and having an experience that was will stay you with you for much longer right your test prep done results come done I know it's an unfair comparison but that's an unfair comparison right but you're talking about a program let's say you take the skills Business program now in those 18 months while you're investing 20 lakh in fee in that 18 months the experience that you're gaining interacting with industry leaders having top CEOs come on the campus talk to you having you know case studies that are being um doctored and reviewed by indust leaders themselves build building a product while you're on the campus um pitching to top vs and investors that experience that you're pretty much cramping in a 80- Monon period is now going to benefit you for many decades to come that exam that you just did was a onetime at that point of time requirement of a successor failure that you had this experience now stays with you for the next many decades so that when you transform yourself from maybe just a average associate in a particular company to a manager or a senior manager or move up or pivot or maybe become a Founder for that matter and start your own company you know a lot of students when you think about at least the program at SSB we think about students that are going to come in are likely going to have three parts are they going to Pivot which they'll change the field that they're in maybe they're in the tech field but they want to go to consulting or marketing or they're going to build they become Founders right grow which means they go from like a marketing associate let's say Performance Marketing Manager irrespective of the path you're going to take the learning that you going to have cramped in that 18 months is going to stay with you for decades and like I go back even today to some of the things I learned back in during my B school days right and okay this is what I learned back then this is still useful for me out here now so it's obviously unfair comparison to test prep in general but when you're spending that amount you're spending it for the experience the exposure and completion rate like main thing is completion right like it's so easy to quit any of these things that is like just having some peer pressure there and people there saying finish finish is a very big deal I mean and of course there's one additional aspect to which is Roi right if I'm spending that 18 months and spending 20 lakh rupees what I'm expecting is an outcome of it what are the outcomes I assume there are jobs at the end yeah so I mean like I said I think you know there are tech jobs and the non- tech jobs both open up as avenues for you after you complete this pgp and management technology here so for example if you go for non-tech jobs like I said you could be a marketing associate you want to become a Performance Marketing Manager you're a sales associate you want to become an Enterprise sales manager now these are typically significant jumps in your salary as well right I mean those can not pay you as much as 30 lakh rupees or higher in some of these positions you want to maybe go into becoming a category manager for an e-commerce company or for the other maybe you want to switch over to a startup and join the Founder's office as Chief of Staff so you need to have understanding of strategy but you need to understand also all the different facets of business because in the Founder's office you need to know the entire business by itself right and all the different facets of it uh or for that matter maybe you want to switch over to um in the tech side of it I want to become an engine ing manager or a product manager or a technical Pro program manager so this program what it's supposed to do to you is give you this 18mon experience of applying all your Concepts in the real world expose you to the industry and land you to a position where you either want to Pivot or you want to grow build

### What makes Scaler School of Business different from other players [53:46]

you know I've seen this in my own Behavior Uh at least when we hire people right like 3 4 years ago you know to hire for a business role like we were very unclear we' just look at a resume and we'd see whatever right today but we hire a lot from alt mbas we don't we still don't hire too much from traditional mbas because we feel they're far behind the curve but especially alt mbas we've had a good experience of hiring a few people in fact one of the guys who runs one of our units is like damn good and he's from one of the alt mbas in fact that's the next question right like there are some of these popping up now yep I think there's you guys there's Master Union there's sta there's a bunch of others how do you differentiate versus them yeah um I'll take a stab first please jump in but so I think firstly I think all of them are good in their own aspects right they all are the safe answer no I I'll answer uh further down also right like see ultimately what they're doing is they all have understood there's a gap which is very evident yeah which traditional colleges are not able to fulfill because the skill requirements of the industry and the skills imparted during your time on campus that I agree with are far apart and H they all have identified their uh the difference and they say okay we want to play a role in minimizing that Gap as possible so they all addressing it different so one I think they all have own kind of strategy for it in that aspect just like how you were for traditional MBA programs you would probably say for if I want to specialize in HR here has a college that I think is better if I want to go for finance I will likely end up choosing a college in Bombay right like nursing good example if you want to go Finance as an example if I want to specialize for example in operations and strategy maybe there's an MBA college that I have reference towards same also will happen to the alt mbas or the New Age MBA programs that are coming so they start specializing in specific specializing now each one will play their own kind of Advantage right what we fundamentally believe and why we got motivated was launching skills full of business is fundamental belief is that future Business Leaders will need to have an understanding of how technology Works got it so that's why the SST like that's why the fact that SSB is on the SST campus and the collaboration happens which is why industry leaders come in grade you on that as well give you case studies to work on that as well you work on a project and we also include things like deep analytics now future Business Leaders will need to know how deep analytics works so when we say Tech enabled curriculum we're not talking about coding here you don't need to have prior coding experience be from the tech background nor will we teach you coding in MBA program we are still going to focus on the core fundamentals of business Theory as well as practical across all facets with an industrial advantage of a tech part because one we are Tech Pioneers we've done that before Future Leaders will need to know Tech technology that's a given actually there's an interesting observation that I think AB should Shar about we were discussing this in the car on the way here about businesses in top 20 businesses in the US China versus India maybe he'll talk about that in a bit but incorporating this entire skill inovation lab teaching you deep analytics and tools required for analytics or you teaching you how to use genni to do a quick prototyping and dirty AB testing are important aspects what are future Business Leaders going to require and that's why we want to bring in skill SCH of business because I think we are uniquely positioned compared to all the other names that you mentioned because we have this Innovation lab we have skill technology You' be more like a tech uh business sort of hybrid yeah we are at the cusp or the intersection of business technology because that's where we believe all the business Trends are evolving and some interesting observations you want to talk about no so it's a very interesting thing that U I think India is like I'm very bullish on India for various reasons that maybe later I can talk about and as right now it's election going on uh so you know like there is a very clear mandate and kind of directional set that India is going to be 30 trillion economy right now if you look at there is us which is already ahead of that there's China which is getting there uh I strongly believe that in maybe in few decades India will get there as well now if you look at that what kind of now this 30 trillion economy or a 50 trillion economy is primar driven by the organizations the private companies which are kind of scaling fast right if you look at top 10 or 20 companies in us more than half of them are technology companies right if you s if you look at China if you look at top 20 companies more than half like at least 30 40% of them are already technology companies and it is very clearly predicted that in next another 5 seven years more than half of them will be technology companies like hell I think top five are all technology companies in us right in India on the flip side right now if we look at it if you look at top 10 or 20 companies in India none of them probably are technology companies today now this 30 trillion economy Journey that is going to happen it is bound to come from very large technology companies being created now who builds these companies right in us as well if you look back at if you go back time machine and if you look at that what were the top companies in 1960 1970 it was very similar to what India has today most of them maybe an oil company maybe a Transport company maybe a career company maybe a bank right now you need a Eric Smith to build Google right found might do 0 to 1 to 10 but you need these people who live at the strong intersection of the cusp of technology and management I mean Uber is another good example of that Founders are great at 0 to one but they're not very good at build Uber but D is the one who made it you know a very profitable Large Scale company uh Google was built by the two Founders L page at um that's like crazy random energy they did fantastic 0 to11 to10 but then Eric Smith came in and then built Google to put on the path of a trillion dollar company right India would need a lot of such you know management talent but do you think it's not the founders in many cases like I've noticed this a lot and in some cases it is Zuckerberg is still there right but I think it's because the understanding that both have to go hand in hand you can't be only a technology person and not understand what organizational culture is how do I motivate teams how do I manage my people what kind of divers diversity do I require what does diversity inclusion really mean if I look at marketing what are the different facets of marketing how consumer behavior is changing you're still in The Silo of the tech world you're still seeing code around you you're seeing apps around you you're still seeing new technology around you but you're losing perspective of what the consumer out there is actually looking for if you're only business you're essentially thinking of business always the way it was traditionally done right and you're losing on the aspect of again how technology can advance business much faster make me 10x more efficient so fun to belief and that's why I'm seeing uh difference between some of the other MBA programs that you spoke about and why we still went ahead with launching Skill School of Business and looking for this founding cohort is because of this fundamental belief and after serving the entire Market we realize that we are the ones who are uniquely positioned to offer this unfair advantage that we have because we have skill SCH technology because we are Tech Pioneers because we have skill Innovation lab and because we are as a company and the program is designed by folks who' been and done large businesses I ran Uber Builder to a billion dollars you have Manish pansari who's a senior executive at Scala he was the XCX on mintra uh leading operations to $400 million of minra Alan you ABI Manu and Animan who build businesses that are worth $700 million right now at Scala so when you have people at the helm of this supported by some of the biggest names in Industry whether is dender goyal or B bansel or Rajan anandan you essentially get getting an industry together to build this program and then the unique advantage that you can have and what the benefit you can give the students only multiplying compounds from there no I think that's pretty fascinating and I think I mean I can now see I was a little bit of a skeptic but I can now see the advantage that comes from having SST and SSB on the same campus right if you come into my company already having managed Engineers that's already a big win mhm right whereas it would be very hard to hire somebody who's not had that experience and get them in I'd have to look for a employee at a company who's done that previously had like few years of workx and brought that person in so there's no fresher market for this what you're talking about and I think I can see that it potentially evolves is this for like young students or is this like for people who are already working professionals one job and two jobs in who's it for yeah I mean I think we expect almost about 80 to 90% of our class to be made up of folks who are already working and looking for this shift that I spoke about either they want to build they want to grow or they want to Pivot uh so I expect 80 to 90% of our classroom to be experienced folks who've done one or two jobs have understood post their bachelors and undergraduate that I require business skills and these are gaps I have you won't usually understand the gaps you have unless you've been in the business yourself and experien that okay you know what this is what I'm lagging behind and now a b school program can help me so usually it's always better coming into a pgb program with some years experience having said that I do expect about 10 to 20% of our classroom to be potentially be freshers but then they have to be exceptional either exceptional academics or strong achievements in any olympiads potentially have done you know amazing projects in the past maybe already been a Founder while they were you know in college kind of building stuff and tinkering stuff um so I think we want the diversity also right uh diversity in form of gender course experiences backgrounds of gender

### Diversity in Student Goals and Gender [1:03:20]

like what what's your goals see I think fundamental belief again uh and I'm a product of that myself is that when you have diversity in gender as well your learning experiences increase exponentially uh not just because you meet like-minded people and from both genders on campus that you can interact with uh you know get to know uh but you also get different perspectives which are often missed out in fact that's why there's enough stats out there that suggest that leadership uh teams that are diverse typically are more productive take better decisions and have a higher market cap than those leadership teams that don't have any diversity okay I have one last question

### Placement and recruitment process [1:03:58]

for you important question right like I think ultimately if somebody's spending 20 lakhs or 30 lakhs or 40 whatever it is right I think there will be this added burden of not burden but a responsibility of giving them a job so what's the placement Network like who are the people that are involved uh what kind of companies can people expect I think that last end of the education process I want to know from you know both SST as well as SSB I know that because scalers been around for a while and I know you guys have like a good set of recruiters you have relationships and one thing we have learned is that it's a very relationship driven business right like do you know the person can you call him up and say Hey you know these five guys are really good you should interview them uh and there also needs to be somebody on ground batting for you right some placement person who's sitting talking to your person saying you know I'll talk to the recruiter extra okay I'll figure it out so how does that process work like what can people expect so like you said skill has been around for a while right and through this entire Journey uh of the online business that we had Skiller Academy and Skiller dsml we basically got a chance to place our students in own 900 companies across India and globally name the top tech companies in the country and chances you're going to find a Skiller Al there already now what that does is it helps us continue maintaining relationships with all those n plus companies who are already rooting and batting for us in fact back couple of years ago scaler Academy ended up placing more students into Amazon than all the ID combined so we've already buil credibility with employers along with that our own placement team which is more than 50 people by the way so it's a pretty large placement Team all the 50 people kind of working on a placement team maintain relationships with these 900 plus companies on an ongoing basis right looking for opportunities looking for what are they looking for in terms of skills right how do I make sure that I invite these companies on campus so for example at SST since we spoke about SST as well within one year we've had I don't know by now over 15 to 16 companies come on campus and do presentations already you're talking about basically one company every two weeks is coming on campus and doing presentations for our students for them for the student to join yes for students to join just employer branding what do they do what kind of work is it what can you expect when you join us what skills are required what skills be assess for so students know what to prepare for that same network carries forward to skill of School of Business as well so you have a large placement team you have existing relationship with large number of employers already besides that you also have a strong Network now we are funded by Peak 15 light Ro they help us over Network my background I have a reach of certain companies ABI Manu has a certain reach of companies Anum mandas and we all take it upon ourselves as our own personal kpis and kras right it's my own personal kpi to make sure that every single student of scal of School of Business gets placed or every student skill technology gets placed in a job that they would want to get placed in with as high probability as possible if I can impart the but you can't place 100% of students there'll always be one guy who just stops coming to college or whatever right I think driving adherence of course students effort is necessary if someone just says that you know I'm not going to do anything then probably we'll say that you know this is not the right place for you can just maybe leave the campus right uh but as of even as of today for example in every single class of schar school of techn SCH School of Technology we see at least 90% attendance and again it's rooted a lot in the culture right when there are hundred kids who are all passionate about it even two who might be feeling little bit you know I'm not really feeling that up but when everyone else is doing so much the probability of that reduces right now what I do understand is that more for Skill School of Technology people will discover a lot of things they will evolve in different ways someone might say that let's say I want to build a avionx company I don't want to be a data scientist I want to maybe build you know maybe defense drones or I want to you know kind of set up a startup or I want to do freelancing right we would rather encourage them to explore different kind of paths in their life right uh and that is why the you know the hope and dream to build a v combinators like thing in India through Innovation lab right so people will take their different paths as long as there is rigor curiosity so for example at in our schar school ecosystem we have this concept of Rise right which is our ice which is like respect Integrity curiosity and Excellence I think these last two curiosity and Excell L as long as that is integrated like see you are not in a job I am but I think we are doing decent enough uh for the world around yeah I think the goal is not 100% employ like 100% placements the goal is 100% outcomes of what the students desire yeah if they want to be an entrepreneur they if 95% want a job they get a job if 5% want to go become entrepreneur they get become entrepreneur maybe some of them even want to maybe go pursue Masters or PhD if they really choose to or I want to go abroad and maybe just Tinker with something have that option our goal is can we provide 100% outcomes of what you desire interesting I have one last

### Counterintuitive insights about students [1:09:00]

question for both of you guys and this is more like a rapid fire type of question right which is one counterintuitive Insight you have had about students which nobody will agree with you on and which you don't want to tweet about from each of you um yeah I don't know if it's very counterintuitive or not uh but I do see that students today are far less satisfied with their own achievements than I think you and I used to be I think even a small win for you and I we would celebrate that a lot and I think social media is playing a role in students feeling that I need to do more constantly so this constant belief that I'm not happy yet and I'm not good enough yet I'm not satisfied yet which actually works sometimes in their favor of just pushing harder working harder and getting better results also it's like the pure pressure environment you're creating in SSB that's almost playing out on social media it's like oh Elon has done this other thing again now I got now I have to do my next project at least yeah see the reality is the world is getting more competitive the reality is that the requirements of what it takes from Individual to be more successful is getting higher as well than what it used to be before um and counter to what you and I think sometimes that you know maybe youth today is traveling a lot more they're more privileged they watch more movies they spend more they have these expensive gadgets you know they far more privilege than you and I used to be like for me getting a cricket ball to play weight of 10 rupees or to like argue with my dad for like 10 minutes to get 10 rupes to buy a cricket ball Dr could play with today we believe they're privileged but counter to I think what social media also says they don't take this privilege for granted they are actually realizing that they're privileged and hence added pressure that are now I'm privileged I have to do more yeah what would you I think starting with the the learning mindset of the students right so often education system is very geared towards in a way if I may say beating the Fallen that the students who are not performing well it is immediately labeled that they are you know they are just not motivated enough they're not hardw workking enough etc uh what I feel is that generally that is always rooted in uh the education system not being able to generate the Curiosity in them the moment let's say I have to teach a subject let's say I want to teach students how to you know let's say uh build applications I want to teach them front-end engineering or backend engineering one way of taking the classes that I go teach them there's a lecture being given they're supposed to take notes then there's an exam going to happen and then I'll say that oh these people are just not motivated you know none of them are really doing anything and when you flip it over the moment you give them high agency you give them that what do you want to build you know and why should you build that right and then you give them like in the way you invert it that now you want to build it figure out how you could build it and I'm there to support you someone says that let's say I want to build a multiplayer game you know they where let's say there are four players who can just play this online from four different locations and then you probe them there's this Socrates method of teaching right that you ask question how would that happen how would four computers who are sitting across four different part of the world communicate with each other then you introduce there's a concept called socket programming to do that right then the learning changes massively but I think the counter counterintuitive thing here is that you have to trust the students and you just have to build curiosity in them and let them be you have to do what they are interested in not what the curriculum is right right you figure out and maybe first responsibility of the teacher is just to get them interested in into something and once that happens give them a lot of freedom and be their support to keep walking that path you feel the reason a lot of these students fail then according to you is because they also pick the wrong streams then absolutely or even the stream they are in they never know why is this important how is this relevant I can talk about myself in my school I was a good student I was super hardworking hopefully decent enough at brains as well I would solve the hardest of the problems in differentiation and integration but until I went to college I never knew what is the Practical of use of it the moment I realized oh integration could be used for so many industrial applications differentiation physics problems right it was a kind of mindblown moment for me if I was explained that in 10th class I would have enjoyed learning differentiation and integration so much more so you're saying it's poor quality teachers throughout all the way from first class to you know like having finished the engineering would you argue that like people who have not done anything useful in life go and end up being teachers oh controversal I'll tell you very controversial but uh at least I can talk about my journey right and this is actually a fact in most premium institutes as well the people who couldn't end up with anything else most of them would end up becoming associate professors at private universities that's a fact yeah I think and that's why I think one of the core principles behind building the scale of school both the School of Technology in School of Business is we are not getting your typical traditional you know theoretical writing on blackboard professors right these are individuals who have voted in the industry before they've for SST for example they've been VP of engineering at snap deal or they've been a senior engineer in one of the top tech companies fundamentally believe in the mission statement of skill technology that we need to revamp Tech education in the country and hence I have a passion for teaching the next generation of Builders because I want to create the next Su Pai or the next from India so they've left their jobs come on SK uh to skills technology and teaching here same host for skill scho of business as well right uh and which is why industry leaders associating themselves scaler campus for both the technology and School of Business yeah the only problem with getting like really good people to teach is it becomes very expensive because the smartest people wouldn't come work with you and hence the pricing of a program right to some extent is not on the lower end either it's not super expensive either right it's not the low end either right it's priced at a point to allow us to bring such C teachers to you so that your experience is not compromised in that four years of skill of SCH technology or in those 18 months of the School of Business your second Insight you had one more insight the other one is I think more on um the Collaborative Learning part right again often a common belief in India has been that you know that the unstructured time people spending together is unproductive people often say right but within scal campus that what I see is again it's a function of the right culture right students of course you know they are learning a lot in the classroom but I do see that lot more learning also happens outside of the classroom which be could be happening just in their hostel rooms it could be happening in The Innovation lab just on the ground and some people chitchatting I think just few days the night I was in the campus and some of the kids were trying out their drone they're doing the test flight of the Drone they are building right all of this is unstructured It's just exploration discovery iterations which is not curriculum bound but I think this unstructured exploration is a very powerful thing and which the impact of that the Whiteboard of course yeah and the third I think another counterintuitive Insight that I so also feel is more related to the selection process I think the selection process like with all humility I would say and I think that's the case with most institutes which Produce High Impact leaders it's not for everyone uh it does not mean that the person we are having to say NO2 is not capable it just means that scalar School of Technology or scalar School of Business might not be the right fit for them it best environment for them it's not one siiz fits all right I had this experience um so after school of course I was attempting trying to get through J into a good college and NDA right getting into National Defense Academy and he also has very this very interesting thing very steep selection criteria and on day Zero of your service selection board these are all 17 18 year old young kids who are going for service selection board five day long interview process right and the commandant on Day Zero will tell this that NDA is not for everyone the selection does not mean that there's a linear St ranking and only the best one gets in it simply means that there is a particular shape of the whole in which people fit perfectly you not fitting into that does not mean you are not good it simply means that the Institute is meant for a particular goal has a particular ecosystem which is best fit for a particular kind of people I think at s we follow that very yeah I think Shameless plug in here but I think for those who are watching this podcast I would say that applications for both skills of business and skill technology is currently open right we are looking for a founding cohort at skill of School of Business which classes commence in August I think when you apply you'll experience the do you feel some people might feel bad their OS might get hurt if you reject them cuz this happens a lot no that's what I want to emphasize very strongly yeah that it's a particular kind of program with a very particular kind of goal in mind rejection does not mean that you are bad it simply means an again the selection is a deep science it can never be perfect it just that the measurement that we have today feels it's not the best place for you yes it's not right fit for you or the program is not right for your requirements and your expectations so which is what like you know I think when you go through one of the applications through us you kind of experience some of the differences or nuances that we've brought into the process itself of the selection to ensure that we handpick the right students for the experience I was talking about earlier as well um yeah but I think if you go the traditional way of just writing a comparative exam you know studying day and a night for it uh you're likely to end up with a cohort that those who don't make it will feel they're not capable enough and those who make it were anyway like you said the freaks of nature in many ways they'll do well anyways right uh but they may not be the most cohesive uh set of students who will add value to the program or the program them for us that's the most important emphasis that I want to drive here that our entire application process that we have currently ongoing for both the programs is driven towards this can the students add value to the program and can the program add value back to the students lovely this is a very insightful conversation I learned a lot about education offline education uh it isn't as simple as it seems uh at least from The Outsiders View and congratulations on you know doing SSB and I think scaler you know I've been following for very long time every time I speak to you I get new insights about in general everything from test prep to like how education like how is it evolving and we've all seen it evolve like 10 years ago it was something very different now it's something very different I'm also pretty excited to see you know how you guys integrate AI into you know at least the usage of the tools into uh the program I want to see how that impacts Business Leaders right like interesting to see how business people will use uh AI so I think um yeah congratul on launching this and I you know hopefully I'm able to hire some people from you know the next batch or the batch after that and contribute in some way thank you so much bye