Silicon Valley GirlWhat It Really Takes to Build a $3 Billion Business
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 7,423 words- 0:00 – 0:42
Teaser
- MMMarina Mogilko
started as a YouTube channel, and now the largest educational company in India-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... valued at around $3 billion.
- GMGaurav Munjal
We had, like, 1,000 educators creating.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Are you replacing some teachers with AI?
- RSRoman Saini
You should not think that you are the only one who can do it.
- MMMarina Mogilko
You're preparing for your IPO, right?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And you're still losing money.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Men usually don't talk about it, but the 50% of whatever crying has happened, happened in bad days. I was having a panic attack once a month.
- RSRoman Saini
That was quite terrible.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Uh, we were losing 150 million a year.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Have you ever had this conversation, like, "Let's just, you know, shut down the company, it's not working?"
- GMGaurav Munjal
You know, we just need a big win also again. Maybe we should build a Duolingo competitor, and it just worked.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Hello,
- 0:42 – 2:35
From YouTube blog to $3B edtech unicorn
- MMMarina Mogilko
everyone. Welcome to Silicon Valley Girl. I have two most amazing guests today. I've been trying to get you on this podcast because what you've built is just amazing. Started as a YouTube channel, and now the largest educational company in India, valued at around $3 billion.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
All right, let's talk about this. Can you walk me through this journey of like, "Hey, I'm gonna start this YouTube channel," to actually building a company on top of it?
- GMGaurav Munjal
So, uh, thanks for inviting us to the podcast. I think I was in college, and Roman and I went to tuition together. It's coaching for examinations.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
In India, test prep is a big market. So we used to go, uh, to this coaching center together, and then I went to Mumbai, and he went to Delhi. And then I think it was the third year of college where Khan Academy was super big. I was always tweaking around stuff. I started coding when I was 12. I was blogging when I was 17. So my parents, uh, got a $200 cheque from Google AdSense when I was 17, so they thought I'm doing some fraud or something like that. [laughing] So I think, uh, i- it's been an interesting journey where, uh, we have been content creators first, and then product people. And, uh, third year of college, launched a channel called Unacademy. This is back in 2010. Started creating content, et cetera, and then went on to do other stuff. I started a company that I sold when I was 23. Uh, but the channel was always growing, and at some point, Roman, who was a medical doctor, and he was the one good in academics. I used to just somehow pass my subjects. So he started creating content, and those got millions of views, and then we decided that we'll create Unacademy, which is like a YouTube for education. And, and we had seen Twitch was recently acquired by Amazon. So the thesis was that there is unbundling of, uh, YouTube happening, um, and if Twitch can be so valuable... And that's how Unacademy started.
- MMMarina Mogilko
So you thought it's gonna be like a separate
- 2:35 – 6:20
Why they focused on YouTube for education
- MMMarina Mogilko
platform just for educational content, not like a test prep, uh-
- GMGaurav Munjal
No, no, in the beginning, that was the idea. Uh, we eventually moved to test prep, but the initial thesis was: we want to build our own YouTube. I was a computer engineer, he was a medical doctor preparing for UPSC, and we had never thought of teaching. So the thesis was, can we get the smartest people to teach online? Because, um, they will never teach offline. They're too busy with their lives. And the way his videos responded, our thesis became, can we get more smart people to just teach? And what will happen with time is, is what happened to entertainment. That for every topic, you'll have top 100 teachers, and their videos will be watched by millions of people, et cetera. So it did play out the way we imagined, but the product was different. The product we eventually... uh, that, that does 100 million in revenue for us, which we are going to do an IPO in the next two years, that's a very different product, but it started out like that.
- MMMarina Mogilko
What fascinates me a lot about Unacademy is that these guys started as YouTubers. And, uh, you see how through discovering their passion on this platform, they also discovered the whole business that is behind standardized tests in India. If you've been watching this channel for a while, you know that I started my journey in the US with actually taking those tests. I took my GMAT, I took my TOEFL, and, uh, I applied for MBAs here in the US. I ended up not going to universities, though I got two Fulbright scholarships in, uh, University of Florida and Johns Hopkins. But we also got funding from 500 Startups for our company, LinguaTrip, and we decided to focus on the business. But if you're watching this video and you're like, "Oh, I really want to start working on my international dream," I can really recommend taking the TOEFL test because this is the test that is accepted in top universities, accepted by top companies, and by top employers. And I took this test three times and scored more than 110, which is, uh, above average, thanks to preparation that I did. And if you're looking to prepare for a TOEFL test, I think we built, um, the best app on the market. Mm, I'm, uh, very biased because I'm the founder, but we basically built this LinguaTrip TOEFL app that helps you practice as many times as you need, and also get feedback on your speaking part. Because the TOEFL test is writing, speaking, reading, and listening, and previously you had to pay someone to evaluate your speaking part, but now with the help of AI, you can just do it for many, many times and get instant feedback. So if you're looking to prepare for the TOEFL test, download the app, start playing with it. It takes you through the whole TOEFL preparation process. But if you're listening and thinking like, "I don't really need this test right now, but I really want to improve my English in order to start working on my international dream," as you might hear, I have an accent in English, but it's not really the accent I used to have when I wasn't working on it. We have a teacher, his name is Vanya, who actually taught me a lot of tips and tricks about American accent, and he just released a new course on pronunciation hacking. So if you want to sound like an American and learn the tips on how to open your mouth or how to say certain words in a more American way, I highly recommend his course because it's very, very practical, and it's coming from a non-native speaker who sounds just like a native speaker. Like, Americans never... Like, y- if you hear him speak English, you would never believe that English is not his first language, and a lot of my tricks are coming from him. I will leave two links down below, so if you want to take your dreams to the next level and you require English language for that, please check out the TOEFL app and LinguaTrip's American Pronunciation course. Let's continue our conversation with Unacademy. Okay, let's talk about AirLearn. First of all, congratulations. Six months, number five... I don't know, I haven't checked today, but, like, two weeks ago, it was number five educational app in the US, and I remember we talked about you starting this app. Fascinating. Tell me why English, why you went into this niche, and why do you think it's different, where,
- 6:20 – 9:20
How their AI app is disrupting Duolingo in just one year
- MMMarina Mogilko
like, AI can replace some of the tutors?
- GMGaurav Munjal
So again, going back to when we started the company, uh-... the company was started because we want to do on- wanted to do online education. And then post-COVID, because, uh, there were headwinds for the core business, online business, we had to open offline. But-- And that's a good business. Uh, we have a few CEOs of that business, et cetera. But our core insight and our core motivation is to still make sure that online education changes the world. And we are like: "What is that one category where, you know, AI can create a lot of impact?" And we realized, uh, we saw Duolingo. I've been a fan of their product for five, six years. In literally every podcast that I have done in the last five years, I've spoken about that I'm a big fan of Duolingo. So at some point, I was like, "You know, maybe we should build a Duolingo competitor," because I've used the product so much. Uh, I have-- I had 100-plus day streak on Duolingo, but I could not speak the language, so it's very good in certain areas. But I knew I'm a, I'm a product guy. I've, I've been building products since 12, so I knew, "Oh, what if they could tweak this? What if they could tweak that?" So we built, uh, AirLearn with a lot of tweaks, with a, a different pedagogy, and at this point, every third review is like: "This is better than Duolingo." Duolingo is over-gamified, so it will teach you... Like, if you learn Spanish, it will start with, it's called manzana, or water is called agua. But it would not tell you grammar. It would not tell you the difference between masculine noun or feminine noun, or when to use what. So we are like, "Let's try creating a new app with the stuff that we hate about Duolingo," and it just worked. I mean, our D30 retention is awesome. We have done $2.5 million. Now we are at a $2.5 million ARR in six months. So it just worked, and at some point, we are like, "Uh, this, this is the next biggest thing that Unacademy can build." And yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Do you think it's generally a good strategy in entrepreneurship to go and build a competitor to a huge company already?
- GMGaurav Munjal
If you are in your 20s, do zero to one, because you are not too worried about the risk of failure, et cetera. Um, but if you see, see how big industrialists think, they think about big markets, like how Reliance would think in India, or how, um, how the big, uh, big CEOs would think. Like, like, why, why would Mark Zuckerberg launch Threads as a Twitter competitor?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Because he knows it works. Why would Jeff Bezos launch Prime Video? Because, see, when you are in your early 20s, you wanna change the world, and, you know, you wanna do zero to one, et cetera. And I'm not saying zero to one should not be done later stage, but I'm saying at some point, and, and it happened with me, because you have achieved a certain success, you start... The, the fear of failure becomes high, so the need to do pure zero to one, which will take five years to figure something out, you can do sometimes that, but we did that in online education, and post-COVID, it just tanked to 50% of what it was in COVID,
- 9:20 – 10:17
The depressing phase: no sleep and panic attacks
- GMGaurav Munjal
and that was a depressing phase. For three years, I remember, um, uh, not sleeping without melatonin or having panic attacks, et cetera. So zero to one is hard because there were no examples. That was a new product that had seen a journey like COVID for the first time, so it was hard. So I was like, "We are very good at executing stuff. I will do zero to one also at some point in my life, but we are great product builders. We are great marketing people. We loved great design. So if there is a market in which incumbent is doing a billion dollars in revenue, can we create a product in that market?" So, so I think if you would have asked me this question 10 years ago, I would be like: "I don't care about big markets, I just want to change the world." Now, we have seen a lot of ups and downs, especially post-COVID, and it was a very tough phase. So we're also like, you know, we just need a big win also again, and yeah, that's-
- MMMarina Mogilko
No, I understand this. Interesting. Okay, and what was the best marketing tool that worked for you for the past six months
- 10:17 – 11:35
How they earned $2M/year with zero ad spend
- MMMarina Mogilko
for AirLearn?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Day one, we made a rule, no paid marketing, uh, zero paid marketing. The best marketing tool is a great product, so we first im- uh, improved retention, et cetera. Then, the same YouTube playbook that we had used to crack Unacademy, we did it... Because everybody is like, "Oh, you should hire 100 TikTok UGC creators, and they should talk about your app." Oh, I thought this... I got a deja vu moment because this is what we did in India with YouTube.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And this came easy to us. I had the teams ready, so I just-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh, so you did TikTok this time?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh, interesting.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And we, we are now doing 50 million views on TikTok a month, so-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Through UGC. So they create content-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... you post it on your TikTok, or they post-
- GMGaurav Munjal
No, we, they post on their YouTube.
- MMMarina Mogilko
On their... Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And they have incentives, et cetera. That's one thing that worked. We did some influencer marketing, but dedicated influencer marketing, people who would, uh, give unbiased reviews about the app, who would say, "Duolingo is better than..." "These things, AirLearn is better." And, uh, sponsored, they talk about that it's a promoted video-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... et cetera. And, uh, and, and k factor. So Nikita Bir is on retainer with us. The focus is product-led growth with Nikita, and he's helping us improve our k factor.
- MMMarina Mogilko
What... Like, you're preparing for your IPO, right?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And you're still losing money, right? I was looking at... You did-
- GMGaurav Munjal
No, I, I mean,
- 11:35 – 13:33
IPO prep while losing $150M/year?
- GMGaurav Munjal
um, we are almost operationally break even. At one point, we were losing, uh, 150 million a year. This year, we are going to probably burn 20 million, but that's also for CapEx, for centers, et cetera. We'll be operationally, uh, very close to break even, and we have 150 million in the bank. So, like, a full-year profitability maybe next year. Uh, but now we... I mean, we used to worry about the core business burning a lot of money two years ago. Now there is no survival risk. Now it's just, um, because it's an offline business with 40 offline centers, it just takes its own time to make those businesses profitable. So enough- maybe if you're burning 20 million this year, even if I continue that burn, we have a runway of seven years. But, uh, every year, we are reducing our burn by half.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Hopefully, next year we'll be profitable.
- MMMarina Mogilko
By laying off people? So-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Um...... by laying off, we laid off a lot of people post-COVID, because we didn't know that the online business is going to tank, uh, so much. Uh, so we did a lot of layoffs then, but that's one part of it, and that was tough because, you know, you had thousands of people-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Of course.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Um, but it's mostly operational efficiency. I mean, uh, i- it's like we have done a MBA for hundreds of millions of dollars. Now we know, uh, how to run a business better, and, um, it's marketing efficiency, it's sales efficiency, it's building a culture in the org that everybody's obsessed about EBITDA, so yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
And in offline centers, when you... Like, we are just two years old in offline, so it takes three to five years of compounding for the same-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Sure
- RSRoman Saini
... center to generate more cash. You don't have to change the cost structure at all.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- RSRoman Saini
So the same center can go to X without even spending anything on that. So it takes three to five years of compounding over there.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Have you ever had a moment when you were losing $150 million a year, like, waking up in the night like,
- 13:33 – 14:19
Did they consider shutting down?
- MMMarina Mogilko
"What the hell is going on?" How did you feel back then? [chuckles]
- GMGaurav Munjal
We had, um... I, I told you, I mean, uh, there were times-
- RSRoman Saini
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... where I was having a panic attack once a month.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
It, it, it was, it was tough.
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah, it was quite terrible.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Um, and uh-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Especially, like, you had careers, right? You're, like, thinking, "Maybe I could have had this normal life." [chuckles]
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
I mean-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... I, I, I don't know about him, but I wouldn't personally trade what we've-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... been through for anything.
- RSRoman Saini
I knew we- what we were signing up for. It's not like it was hidden. These are ups and downs.
- GMGaurav Munjal
I mean, we, we definitely [chuckles] didn't know.
- RSRoman Saini
Uh, that... Like, I didn't know it will be, like, that up and, like, this much down. At, like, Mount Everest and Mariana Trench, but-
- GMGaurav Munjal
I mean, uh, men usually don't talk about it at... But I have rarely cried in my life, but the 50% of whatever crying has
- 14:19 – 16:02
Men don’t talk about it
- GMGaurav Munjal
happened, happened in that phase. Because it's just so tough that you're waking up, you wanted to build an online business, now you have to build offline. And I love the business, it's good, it's helping a lot of people. But that shift, that mindset shift, and then suddenly everyone who used to tell you, "Spend more money in marketing," and so... I mean, at the end of the day, I was the CEO, I'll take the blame. Uh, but, you know, all your shareholders also shift perspective within six months.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
They're like: "Why is the burn so high?" So again, I'm not blaming them. At the end, it was my responsibility.
- MMMarina Mogilko
What about you, Roman? Were you... Like, have you ever had this conversation, like, "Let's just, you know, shut down the company, it's not working?"
- RSRoman Saini
No, no, never like that.
- MMMarina Mogilko
No.
- RSRoman Saini
Like, we had our moments, like, uh, it was difficult to sleep. I also was on melatonin for a lot of time. You have to... Uh, we started smoking during that time, like... So, uh, it's still, like-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Ne- never smoked until-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... till the age of 32.
- MMMarina Mogilko
[chuckles] And then you start a company and- [chuckles]
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... all things happen.
- RSRoman Saini
So it was, uh, really tough, but it was never about wrapping it up.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- RSRoman Saini
It was about, "Okay, you have a fiduciary duty, you have a du- responsibility towards us."
- GMGaurav Munjal
We are not going to give up.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
We were... We knew we were not going to.
- RSRoman Saini
There's no way we will give up. We'll figure out a way, become profitable, launch other products like airlearn.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
Well, at the end of the day, people want to learn, and that's never going to change.
- MMMarina Mogilko
What do you think about AI? Are you replacing some teachers with AI?
- GMGaurav Munjal
So what will happen is that, for example, language learning, where somebody is not so obsessed that I want to learn from this particular teacher, unlike test prep. Uh, let's say Roman's videos used to get million-plus views
- 16:02 – 19:14
Are they replacing teachers with AI?
- GMGaurav Munjal
each video because he was a medical doctor, and he had cracked these examinations himself.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So that becomes hope, that becomes that, "You know, I wanna study from this educator." Uh, but in categories like language learning or in categories like high school or middle school, the celebrity, uh, value of a teacher, you don't need, like, a big celebrity teacher, but you need more personalized attention. So I think AI will, uh, just disrupt that. In fact, I would say that I don't know how it will look or what the UI or the UX will be, but there will be an AI tutor who will essentially, uh, be teaching us everything. I hope airlearn becomes that. That's our goal. We wanna start with language learning and do, uh, things. But we, we still don't know how it will look like. It still hallucinates even today, even the best-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... models. Uh, because the more context it has... In fact, when Sam Altman had come to India, the same question I asked him. The problem is it starts hallucinating more, the more context it has. So for example, if you have been learning maths for one year, and it knows that these are the bad areas, but, but the context is now, let's say, of 10 million tokens, so it starts hallucinating.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting. But have you tried, hey, like, HeyGen, for example, for one of your teachers, and just-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Oh, no, my belief is that, uh, uh-
- MMMarina Mogilko
No
- GMGaurav Munjal
... in, in, in our core business, teachers are here to stay. That's my belief. What will happen is that if a class is happening, let's say you are teaching an English class, for real-time doubt, you can have an LLM respond to queries, et cetera, so that the flow of the entire class is not interrupted. Uh, but, but in test prep, I don't think, uh, teachers will be replaced.
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah, it will become a supplementary product. So I used to use a lot of Wikipedia and all that, so that I have completely stopped now. So a lot of learners, instead of going to a book, opening it, and figuring out that if you want to read about a small topic, you will just do a ChatGPT.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
So it's a very, very, very good supplementary product.
- MMMarina Mogilko
So you don't believe in replacing-
- GMGaurav Munjal
But for language learning, example-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... for, for school education-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting
- GMGaurav Munjal
... if you want to tomorrow-... learn how to code apps in AI. You don't need a celebrity teacher. You need somebody who will sit with you and tell you that, "Oh, my, I'm not even able to run the app on my environment. How do you, uh, fix the environment on my MacBook?" or whatever. So I think for a lot of use cases, an AI tutor will just change, change the world, uh, as we know it.
- MMMarina Mogilko
But not for YouTube teaching, not for-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Not for, not for test prep.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Not for-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Not for test prep.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Because test prep is not technically education. Test prep is a, like how Peter Thiel puts it-
- RSRoman Saini
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... it's a, it's a competition, it's a tournament.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So when you are preparing for, like, if it's cricket or badminton or baseball, the players want ex-coaches to train them, coaches who have been successful in that sport themselves.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, it's the mindset as well-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- 19:14 – 21:52
How they started
- MMMarina Mogilko
it like me. [chuckles] It has to be me." Now I understand it's not the truth, but when did you feel it like, "Hey, we can start hiring?"
- GMGaurav Munjal
So for us, I think when we... Even before we started the company, we knew, uh, that it's not going to be just a YouTube channel. I knew very early, I think I was in 6 or 7 standard, I was 12 years old, where I told my dad that, uh, uh, I want to start a company called Doors, because, uh, Bill Gates has launched Windows.
- MMMarina Mogilko
[chuckles]
- GMGaurav Munjal
So, so I think, uh... And he was a doctor, he was- he thought I'm crazy, and he sent me to a psychologist, that he has gone crazy and he doesn't want to be a doctor. So I think the journey has been interesting. We knew very early, uh, that YouTube is a stepping stone and not the end goal.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting. Roman, how, how did that feel for you? Like, you had this stable career, you passed all the examinations at first attempt, and then suddenly you're just going to a completely different thing.
- RSRoman Saini
So, like, uh, I knew Gaurav, like, for more than half of my life. We always, uh, stayed in touch on and off. Like, uh, it was very difficult for me to create content initially in 2011, 2012, because of so much softwares involved, editing, and we didn't have any help. So he had launched an app, uh, where it was very easy to create content using that. So it was kind of democratizing content creation. So I tried that, and I, like, h- was hooked on it, and we were using that to push content. I did that for one to two years on YouTube. We were in top 20, top 30 YouTube channels in India at that time, and-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh, by using that app?
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah, the-
- MMMarina Mogilko
What... Did it optimize or what did it do?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Uh, it was- what TikTok did to creating entertainment content, we had done that for education.
- RSRoman Saini
So you need like three, four softwares. You need an editing software, you need a screen recorder, you need a pen tablet. Like, it required a lot of investments and a learning curve.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
You'll make a five to 10-hour learning curve, with- and a lot of people don't have that kind of time. So we had created an educator app which democratized, uh, creating content.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting.
- RSRoman Saini
You can just put your whatever content is there, and you can do a voiceover. There was no face, so it was like Khan Academy style videos.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Ah, interesting.
- RSRoman Saini
And that's how it, uh, blew up earlier.
- MMMarina Mogilko
That's so cool.
- RSRoman Saini
And we were- like, I was a massive content creator in 2014, '15, when I was 22, 23.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- RSRoman Saini
But I had realized, on Quora also, both of us were-
- GMGaurav Munjal
He had become number one by then.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And so this, this app also allowed you to hire new people, because you already had the formula-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Exactly
- MMMarina Mogilko
... right?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Exactly.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Did you see a decline in viewership once you replaced yourself on the channel?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yes. There were times I would call him at 3:00 a.m., that views, our monthly targets are not being achieved, "So can you make videos?"
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So we, we used to do that a lot. Uh, that was always a backup plan, but at some point we had, like,
- 21:52 – 22:40
Decline in viewership when Roman stopped posting; 1000 teachers creating instead
- GMGaurav Munjal
1,000 educators creating.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Wow.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Uh, and at some point, some teachers started becoming big than him. Uh, that's when the power of the platform reached out.
- MMMarina Mogilko
So the secret to replacing yourself on YouTube channel is, first of all, standardizing everything, like the formula works?
- GMGaurav Munjal
But this was not YouTube, this was on our app.
- RSRoman Saini
Our own platform.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Ah, that was already your... But did you upload that content on YouTube as well?
- GMGaurav Munjal
No.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Or it was just your platform's-
- GMGaurav Munjal
In the, in the beginning-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Paywall
- GMGaurav Munjal
... in the beginning we did.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Okay, but-
- GMGaurav Munjal
When we moved- when we changed the business model, uh, then we did.
- MMMarina Mogilko
You changed to, uh, test prep-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Test prep
- MMMarina Mogilko
... right? And your marketing strategy became, uh... I remember you showing me this app where you managed, like, 30 plus channels, or it was more?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
How many was it, approximately?
- RSRoman Saini
It was more than 100 YouTube channels.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Okay, 100 YouTube channels. So you did the switch after you changed the business-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... model?
- GMGaurav Munjal
I mean, if,
- 22:40 – 23:55
Netflix for education: managing 100+ channels
- GMGaurav Munjal
if I were to go back into time machine, I would not have killed that product. It was one of our-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... best products. Because today, uh, we are angel investors in this app called SEKO, which is similar to what we imagined in 2015, and that's one of the fastest-growing products in India right now. They have gone to 60 million revenue in one year, because now in India, s- uh, subscriptions through UPI autopay, uh, are taking off. At that time, subscriptions were not big.
- RSRoman Saini
I think we were too early with-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, I think so
- RSRoman Saini
... we were too early with that product.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
Internet adoption and autopay were a huge pain.
- MMMarina Mogilko
So that, that startup was basically Netflix for educational content?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yes.
- RSRoman Saini
You can say like that, yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And like $2 a month subscription. With a $2-a-month subscription, that SEKO product is at 60 million, and that was... I keep telling the founder that, "This is Unacademy 1.0 from 2015."
- MMMarina Mogilko
That's amazing. Fascinating. Okay, so you switched to this strategy where you just started to start YouTube channels. Do you know or do you remember how much it costs to run one YouTube channel?
- RSRoman Saini
So in India, like, because we had democratized... Like, initially, the educators were decent, like you can pay them $1,000 a month, and you can hire, like, another $1,000, you can hire two, three people. So it's quite, uh, economical to run a YouTube channel.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- RSRoman Saini
But the problem
- 23:55 – 25:42
How much it costs to run a single YouTube channel
- RSRoman Saini
comes then when they become big, you have to 10X or 100X their salaries.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- RSRoman Saini
So you have to keep, uh, churning out, like how do they do it in Hollywood?
- GMGaurav Munjal
It, it's the news channel-... if an anchor becomes too big.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So, so you need to have a sort of like a creator academy, where you're always creating-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... some celebrities. So, uh, even I can say, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, the top 40% of educators in India became big on the free platform of Unacademy-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... the Unacademy 1.0-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Because they became super big-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... and, and those are still, uh, some of the top educators. And since essentially everyone else copied our product-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... um, we, we are proud to say that we were the ones who, uh, sort of took online education ahead.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
They would never have become content creators to begin with.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, of co-
- RSRoman Saini
It-
- MMMarina Mogilko
And you gave them the platform-
- RSRoman Saini
It- they would never have become
- MMMarina Mogilko
... you gave them the algorithm, the team. How does it work from the IP perspective? 'Cause I know, I've read somewhere that starting 2024, you do not allow people create content outside your platform. Is that true?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yes, it is.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And but that only happened in 2024. Prior to that, they would just leave, take the audience with them.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yes.
- RSRoman Saini
Exactly-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Okay
- RSRoman Saini
... this is the problem.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And now you basically sign a contract that if you guys work for us-
- 25:42 – 26:50
Their marketing strategy
- RSRoman Saini
sort of like Apple's flagship event. We do it two-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Wow
- RSRoman Saini
... two to three times a year.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Wow!
- RSRoman Saini
It's like a massive event. A lot of Bollywood celebrities, toppers, our own learners, our online educators, offline educators team, they all... Like, uh, Indian cricketers. A lot of people gather in one place, and we celebrate education at Unacademy. So we have started that, like, uh, we have done... We just recently conducted it, like a month ago.
- MMMarina Mogilko
That's amazing.
- RSRoman Saini
Uh, apart from that, obviously, like, very well-calculated performance marketing is also there. We have, uh... Now we have pivoted to offline because that's what learners wanted after COVID.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
Always they wanted to go back, so we have, like, uh-
- GMGaurav Munjal
So, so not pivot. We have an online business, but offline is-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah, online is still the main business, but we had to because learners demanded that they wanted to study offline as well. So now we have an offline vertical as well. So these are the major ways we acquire learners right now.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Do you know for... Like, I've seen some of your channels, some videos get, like, 200, 300 views, a lot less than they used to. Do these videos still make sense? Like, you- do you track analytics on every single video? Like, "Hey, here we lost money, here we didn't," or it's just an overall branding thing?
- GMGaurav Munjal
So
- 26:50 – 28:00
Why videos now get only 200–300 views
- GMGaurav Munjal
what happens is that, uh, we have 600 educators, um, and out of them, 100 are upstarts. They are new educators. So, um, uh, if we only get educators who get 100,000 views, that's too expensive for us, so we hire these interns. We have an internship program, et cetera. We'll pay an educator $500 a month, which is huge in India, um, to begin with. Uh, and then they start with 300, 400 views, and then eventually get to... But I'm surprised, because in most online categories, we are either number one, number two, or number three-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... um, between Physics Wallah and some other competitors, so yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
But as we were discussing, you need a constant supply of educators.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
So what Gaurav said, that you need to, like, give them platform, let them have some breathing space. They might start with 500 views, that might be their first video-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- RSRoman Saini
... and then it'll go to 5,000-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Now I understand the strategy
- RSRoman Saini
... and 50,000 from there.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Okay. When do you cut the educator off? Like, they've done it for X amount of months, no views. When do you say, like, "Hey, it's not working?"
- GMGaurav Munjal
I think, uh, it's rarely performance-based, because they are the ones who leave us. We try to retain them.
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So I don't think if the teacher is good,
- 28:00 – 29:27
Laid off teachers
- GMGaurav Munjal
they're going to get less views. Either the content is bad, that- in that case, if they're not teaching well, you know, we give them three warnings or whatever, or they are not disciplined.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
It's rarely a case that if somebody was doing 100,000 views, now they are doing 50,000. We just motivate them, we just ping them. Because in education, uh, the, the long-term value of a creator, unlike entertainment, which is like a six year or seven years where you see the peak, in education it compounds very well. In education, if you have been creating content for 15 years, uh, then your brand is even bigger-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... uh, because-
- MMMarina Mogilko
'Cause more people know you-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... they've grown with you, yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And it's a hopeium business.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Like, people want the hope that, "Oh, this teacher has been teaching for 15 years, and that teacher has produced ranks." So it's rarely performance. It's either, uh, their teaching quality, uh, is not good or has reduced, or, uh, it's discipline, or, uh, Physics Wallah poaching our educators, so.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So somebody, some competition poaching our educators.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Got it. But you come up with topics for them, right, for those teachers, or they come up with topics?
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah, we have a-
- MMMarina Mogilko
You-
- GMGaurav Munjal
We have a team here.
- MMMarina Mogilko
That... Yeah, that's why. Okay, now I get it. To wrap up the YouTube, um, topic, what would be your advice for creators like me, for example, who's been on YouTube for 10 years? They're like, "I love this, but I also wanna slow down on some particular topics." What would you advise? Like, hiring more people to run a channel? Starting another channel?
- 29:27 – 30:12
Advice for YouTubes
- RSRoman Saini
I think for most of the creators, they're, they're really happy with the... If you just want to sustain it as a lifestyle business, and you don't really want to burden yourself, for 70 to 80% creators, they don't need to do anything, actually.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- RSRoman Saini
You can just create whatever you want to create, like four videos a week, two videos a week.
- MMMarina Mogilko
I just talked to a lot of creators, and like, "I've done this for 10 years, I want to retire, but that's my source of income," like...
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah, so you need to plan well in ahead. You can't... Like, you- if you want to replace yourself, I think you can put a lot of faces, especially, I'm see you are, like, uh, doing that on your channel.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Playing with that.
- RSRoman Saini
So-
- MMMarina Mogilko
No, we started multiple... Af-
- RSRoman Saini
Exactly
- MMMarina Mogilko
... after a meeting, after a meeting, we just started-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... multiple channels.
- RSRoman Saini
And-
- MMMarina Mogilko
And, oh, my God, thank you for that. [chuckles]
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- RSRoman Saini
And I saw what you have done, and you were asking about how to, like, contract them, so that they get logged in and all that. So you have
- 30:12 – 31:35
Leave your ego behind: let others do the work too
- RSRoman Saini
to be curious about it. If you want to replace yourself, you should not think that you are the only one who can do it, and, uh-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, I think that's the number one thing, [chuckles] because a lot of creators are like, "Oh-"
- RSRoman Saini
... uh, you should not have that much ego, I guess. Like, I, I had been there, done that. So, and if you can pivot to some business where you can sell some product, I think that can be really, really good. It can be a course, it can be a physical product, it can be a D2C brand. So I think depending on what kind of distribution you have, if you can separate your revenue stream from your views, uh, as you rightly pointed out, she has the only income source, whatever, and, uh, it's very difficult to retire now for her because she has to continue doing that. Because it'll get boring after five years, 10 years, depending on the person. It's very, very difficult to churn out content regularly, 52 weeks a year. It's, it's quite difficult. So if you can separate revenue stream from... either you can become a prolific angel investor if you- like, in your case, you'll be meeting a lot of founders. So depending on the kind of distribution a YouTuber have, I think they can, uh, pivot, uh, to separating their source of income and the views.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Let's talk about what's gonna happen in five years. Are you gonna move to the US or in- because now US is your primary focus, I guess.
- GMGaurav Munjal
I, I think we love living in India, but we are going to be in US for, let's say, a couple of weeks every quarter. But who knows? I mean, at some point, uh... but,
- 31:35 – 33:50
Moving to the U.S.
- GMGaurav Munjal
uh, you know, our network is there, our friends are there, et cetera. And, and like you are visiting New York, we also come packed back-to-back schedule-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- GMGaurav Munjal
... and then some time for Central Park or some time to maybe visit a jazz club in the night. Uh, but that's about it, so. Uh, and in five years, you know, edtech has always been a services business. Even, even Rosetta Stone in, uh, US, which was the precursor to Duolingo, which was an offline traditional company. And across the world, across the globe, edtech is a services business. I mean, I remember that, uh, Khosla Impact fund had... like, this is back in the day in 2016, they had sent us a mail, uh, that they're investing, but last minute, uh, Vinod Khosla, uh, said, "No, that edtech will never make money." Uh, we met him last year, and we told him that, so he was-
- MMMarina Mogilko
What did he say? 'Cause he's like, "We're gonna replace all the teachers, all the doctors."
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yes, yes.
- MMMarina Mogilko
I heard him speaking about that.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So he was surprised that our core business was able to make $100 million. So but he had a good view, uh, that historically, edtech had not made money. In fact, what we did in India, Unacademy, Physics Wallah, these are the companies that changed the game for the world. We made edtech interesting. So my view is that it will become a product business from a services business. Um, if-
- MMMarina Mogilko
With AI, right?
- GMGaurav Munjal
With AI. What will happen is that, uh, whether it's language learning, whether it's test prep, maybe supplemental test prep to begin with, or whether it's school education, you would not need your next-door teacher, again, services business, for homework help. So homework help is the biggest market there ever is, because parents are busy with their jobs. Uh, so, so usually what happens in India and other parts, I don't know about US, is, uh, the parents would send somebody to the next-door neighbor who would do tuition classes, again, one to four, one to eight batches, but again, a services business. So I think that will change a lot.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting.
- GMGaurav Munjal
It will become a product business specifically for edtech. But, uh, it is very tough to imagine what will happen to the rest of the world with AI. Uh, it's very tough. I mean, I don't think our human mind-
- MMMarina Mogilko
You know, plan so far ahead
- GMGaurav Munjal
... can comprehend.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
For example, I definitely think that in five years, robots will be cooking
- 33:50 – 34:50
What will happen in 5 years with AI
- GMGaurav Munjal
30% of the food in the world.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Please.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Uh-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Please. [chuckles] Like, I, I need a robot in my house. I can't just manage the whole household anymore. [chuckles]
- GMGaurav Munjal
So yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
So... or, or, or we'll see more vertical use cases of robotics like that, what is called Roomba? Uh-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- GMGaurav Munjal
... yeah, something like that.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
More vertical use, use cases of that. And then, you know, we already have self-driving cars in, uh, San-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Crazy. San Francisco, a lot of my friends, they just switched to Waymo just because it's so much more convenient.
- GMGaurav Munjal
I heard it's 27% market share in, uh, San Francisco now.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, and if it continues at that pace-
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... it's gonna replace 200,000 drivers in the US.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And the speed of innovation is so fast. You saw what happened with those Ghibli images or whatever it's called.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh, my God. [chuckles]
- GMGaurav Munjal
So-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Well, let's wrap up with this thing. Can you give advice to anyone who's starting a company for the first time in 2025? What should their mindset be? Pivots, I don't know, AI. Let's talk about that. Roman?
- RSRoman Saini
I think keep the team really lean. Uh, a lot
- 34:50 – 36:17
Advice for first-time founders in 2025
- RSRoman Saini
of things can be automated. I have met a lot of AI founders, like more than 20 of them. The... most of them are single-digit team. So figure out what the, like, customers really, really want, and, uh, try to, uh, think through little futuristic. I think a lot of things which you are building now might not be relevant after two, three years, is the kind of pace it's changing-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Two, three weeks sometimes.
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
You're building a product, uh, OpenAI releases something, you're like, "Ah-
- RSRoman Saini
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... pivot." [chuckles]
- GMGaurav Munjal
I'll just add one thing to it because of the phase that we went through. Uh, earlier, I used to think market is the most important thing. It's still super important, but now I think business model is the most important thing.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Uh, if your business model doesn't have retention, if your business model is a utilization business, you're still going to succeed. I mean, there is still one or two airlines which make money, but it's going to be a tough journey. That's why, uh, Y Com- like, Y Combinator, somebody was saying 80% of their investments are B2B SaaS.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Because the business model is so good.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Retention.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Retention.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- GMGaurav Munjal
Um, or DoorDash, or Zomato in India, or Zepto, because the frequency and the retention is so high. So if you're building an internet business or a tech business, retention is super-duper important.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, love it. Thank you, guys, so much. This was really inspiring. I hope everyone who's building something in education watches this, 'cause this is a lot of knowledge. Thank you so much for doing this.
- GMGaurav Munjal
And thanks for inviting.
- RSRoman Saini
Thank you. Thank you so much.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Thank you.
- RSRoman Saini
Thank you.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Thanks.
Episode duration: 36:17
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