AMA about Edtechs

Working for one of the leading EdTech platforms. Ever wondered what goes on here or want to know things from the other side AMA and I’ll try answering as much as I can.

Most Edtech startups seem to be providing very little value, and are pure sales machines. Learning is super important, and I’m beginning to realise I’ve not done any structured online learning in the longest times (Coursera early days, Bucky Roberts on YouTube etc.) Wanted to know if any of you have tried out online courses somewhere and have had a genuinely good learning experience?

Graphy has forced a 30% salary cut on each employee to achieve profitability this year. This cut will be applicable from February onwards until 7-8 months. Truly a sad time for the Edtech ecosystem.

Except my name and designation

I have been on this journey for a long time now. Lots of failure comes with loads of learning. Each step or initiative I took has helped me grow as a person, the business guy (ed-tech, media space), and also in terms of technicalities (full-stack product management, hardcore hands-on into technology and I love user experience) Ps: currently running an edtech startup in pre-seed/seed stage Feel free to ask anything, would be happy to help even personally

I work as a Product manager at a series A well funded startup. This company is run by a solo founder/CEO. This is a wannabe tech and product startup that does not care about their product at all. The internal review meetings get 5 minutes on product and 55 minutes on business and operations on a good day! All they care about is how to run operations and tech just works on automation instead of building the product for the end user. Every OKR cycle runs for two months where OKRs are set for product but we end up building internal tools because things get "re-prioritised" and operations "can not miss targets". The worst part is that the strategy changes every 2 months and every week, the CEO keeps adding new "wants". Almost like a baby seeing shiny new toys. At this stage, the product has become a mess with no identity at all! This baby always says "But is that even do-able" acts critical and tries to seem smart in front of their employees while lying to the investors and board every other week that we are a tech and product company. I don't know if this happens at other startups in India. Would love to hear what y'all have experienced.

Do you think that most of the edtechs for College students and professionals just dump a ton of web developers, who have also crammed up DSA. Once, a Scaler sales person called me and we talked for almost an hour. I said that I'm already working in a product company and was making a decent (decent only, not in par with the usual SDE salaries in tier 1 tech companies). He still wanted me to sign up 😂 I said that, I'm willing to sign up only if they have a detailed course on a topic (development using Java, and Kotlin). He said that they do web development only because it's a vetted curriculum and easy to learn and get a job. I asked why do they charge a ton of money while they've made the curriculum public, and the response was that it's for the faculties and the mentors available. It doesn't make sense to me, as we can connect easily with most of the people from any of the companies (and usually a good number of people are just waiting for someone to reach out to them). Where will this end? A ton of web developers who are just there because of the salary? Some says that India is not yet home to good deep tech companies, and I believe that this is the reason for the same. I strongly feel that a good number of the software developers are just there because they got into it without exploring further options, and because of the pay (not everyone)

I joined this job 3 months back. Things haven't been good. Part of the problem is that the people I am reporting into have little to no experience in the segment they are entering into and are not willing to listen to someone who has worked in this segment for 15+ years. I am a little bemused.... I don't really need the job. But the money is nice..... Any suggestions on what to do.....

I’m really curious to know what exactly the Marketing Team does cause in the previous two organisations that I worked at , The Marketing Dept was kinda meh. So I wanted to know if it’s the case everywhere or does an actual good Marketing Team exist as the ones I’ve interacted with their lead generation and marketing was trash.