What we learned in the past 12 months.
2017 for us in Millionlights was an extremely interesting year and I wanted to share some thoughts around the #edtech, skilling space in India. I will focus on what worked and what did not.
The good part :- We figured out a long term revenue model and managed to get traction. We constantly experimented with tech, content, certification, reach, partners and now have arrived at a product mix that works.
1) The Millionlights Centre of Excellence — Enabling Employability at Scale
Our idea of enabling employment got a boost when we launched our first Millionlights Centre of Excellence at Glocal University
Having learnt from the first batch of trainees, we are now scaling this up across multiple universities.
2 very important takeaways from this implementation
A) A business has to constantly work on speaking to its customers and tweaking its product / service — our team did it brilliantly to come up with a product that works seamlessly across all stakeholders.
B) Execution is key — a must learn for all startups — learn to execute well and the rest will fall into place. Our entire perception of delivery / costs / outreach has changed after completing our pilot.
2) Pure Online Education and Skilling — tough sell and tougher learning outcome
Giving content online and not creating touch points — did not work for us. We had to offer mentoring, trainers, live lectures and labs to make sure we get the desired learning outcome.
Our metric — certified and skilled candidates that can be directly employable by our placement partners, increased 100% once we did the above intervention.
This important pivot came about when we figured out that thousands of students were registering on our platform every month but not completing the course or buying certifications.
What we learnt— a hybrid model of online content and offline training is essential for transfer of skills and a tangible learning outcome.
3) Partners
Our Partner programme gave us rich dividends — we are now the largest private education channel in India.
We reached out to partners who had built mammoth distribution digital networks for eg Jio
We run our Millionlights channel on JioChat and on JioTV
The Jio partnership allows us to go directly to the end learner on their mobile and have a conversation with them. I will not get into the numbers but they are in the millions. We are enabling learners in the interiors of India know about better job opportunities, new careers and the way to a better livelihood. We are now laying down a pathway for these users to complete courses and join the mainstream through personalised learning — (using AI and machine learning)
Its an extremely positive start and the feedback has been encouraging — thus driving us to create better content and courseware for this market segment.
4) Team
Nothing can be built in isolation and by a single person. I have been extremely lucky in having colleagues committed to the Millionlights cause. We as a team face hardships everyday but that has not lessened our resolve to helping drive skilling at scale.
A big shoutout to all my colleagues — I could not have achieved this without your support —
Wish us luck.
