From earning 18k/month to losing my edtech business to Byju's/Unacademy

I never planned to be a founder. Back in the early 2010s, I was working in the back office of a coaching institute, managing excel sheets and student records for 18k a month. Today, I watch India's EdTech unicorns raise billions while knowing that a decade ago, we had a shot at being first. Here's what happened.

Working at that coaching institute, I noticed how students struggled with an entirely paper-based system. Their parents would call constantly asking about attendance, schedules, and test scores. That's when I had what seemed like a simple idea: what if students could check all this on their phones?

At the time, coaching institutes were still using notice boards and paper schedules. The idea of putting everything on a mobile app seemed obvious to me, but nobody was doing it.

I convinced my younger brother (a software developer at Infosys) to help me build a basic app over weekends. We launched a bare-bones version for our institute's students. To our shock, 380 out of 400 students downloaded it in the first week.

Parents started calling, asking if their kids' other coaching classes could use it too.

Within three months, three competing coaching institutes approached us to license the software. I took a massive risk - resigned from my job, took a ₹4 lakh loan against my PF, and convinced my brother to quit his job.

2011-2013 were magical:

• Expanded from test prep to K-12 supplementary education

• Built a team of 140 people

• Revenue grew from 4cr to 40cr annually

• Started getting acquisition interest from bigger players

The problems crept in slowly:

• Our tech wasn't built for scale, early decisions came back to haunt us

• We tried to serve every type of student instead of focusing on one segment

• Marketing costs kept rising as Unacademy started spending more and our eCPM shot up by 3x-4x for some segments.

By late 2016, coaching institutes started making Whatsapp groups for students. They would share PDFs, YouTube links, and practice tests there. Our paid features suddenly felt expensive and unnecessary.

Finally,

• User growth stalled
• Coaching institutes started building their own apps
• Our tech needed a complete overhaul, but we had no runway
• Last-ditch pivot attempts failed

By 2016, we had to shut down.

For the curious: No, I'm not broke. The business failed but we sold our tech stack and talent to a larger company (can't name them due to agreement). It was enough to pay back investors about 40% of their money and keep a modest sum for ourselves. Not the outcome we dreamed of, but not a complete loss either.