BUYING MYED: THE LEARNING APP

Abstract

Rakesh and his wife Sumitra were looking for quality education options for their ten-year-old daughter

during the global pandemic. Their search ended with Myed, a Pune-based educational technology platform

that provided online tutoring and coaching to students. With an aggressive sales force, Myed became one

of India’s most valuable startups, with a valuation estimated to be around $12 billion. Their sales

representatives are called ‘Academic Counselors’ who undergo a two-month-long rigorous sales training

program. Rakesh was onboarded by Vinay, an academic counselor who gave the family a two-hour demo

of the Myed App and converted the lead successfully. How did he convince Rakesh and his wife Sumitra

to purchase a $1307.33 product in a virtual setting?

Keywords : Online learning, virtual sales, consumer buying process

It was a Thursday afternoon of July (2019) when Mr Rakesh received a call from an unknown number from

Pune. Though he was busy, he picked up the call. The voice said, “Good Afternoon Sir, I am Vinay, an

Academic Counselor calling from Myed.” Rakesh was about to disconnect the call when the caller said,

“This call is about your daughter Sneha, and I wanted to share that she has been doing well on the Myed

App.” That caught Rakesh’s attention, and he started listening.

Vinay continued, “There are many people in your colony who have bought this app and have been using it

for the last few months. We have been tracking your daughter’s performance on the app. She is among the

top 10% of the users in terms of performance. We want to extend a special offer where you can buy the

app’s paid version. Can I show you the working of the app and all the features in the paid version?”.

Rakesh was hesitant said, “COVID is still raging, and we are not allowing anyone at home.”

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Vinay responded, “No sir, I am not asking for a face-to-face meeting, if you have a laptop, we can do it

online, but I will need two hours of yours. It could be done on Saturday or Sunday when you and your wife

are available”.

Rakesh said, “Online is perfectly okay with us as Sneha’s school is online, and my office is also on zoom.

We can do the meeting on Saturday evening between 7.30-9.30 pm.”

Rakesh’s daughter Sneha was about to enter the fourth standard. A couple of months back, they had

downloaded the trial version of the Myed app. Sneha had been using the app, and even though it had a

limited amount of free material, she still enjoyed using it. Both Rakesh and his wife Sumitra were frustrated

with the low quality of teaching at their daughter’s school. They were on the lookout for an alternative

school. They were also unhappy with the city’s status of primary education in general. They found that the

app’s trial version was good and let Sneha work on the free app. The app was initially meant for kids from

fourth to twelfth standard only and had recently launched a version for children from first to third standard.

They used the trial version and planned to buy a full-paid version for the fourth standard.

A couple of months back, Sumitra shared that her close friend and neighbour had bought Myed for her

daughter in the seventh standard and found it helpful. Mrs Gupta’s comment that her daughter Deepa was

becoming more independent in her learning and had started learning on her own made Sumitra interested

in Myed.

ONLINE EDUCATION & MYED

Online education has become an exciting space with many players entering the industry. The overall market

is expected to reach USD 1.96 Billion and 9.6 million users by 2021, with primary and secondary

supplemental education being the most significant category1 (KPMG, 2017). Moreover, this was before the

1
Online Education in India: 2021 A study done by KPMG and Google, May 2017, accessed on May 5. 2021,
available at https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/in/pdf/2017/05/Online-Education-in-India-2021.pdf.

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pandemic hit the world, leading to the closure of most of the schools. The one expected fall-out of the

pandemic would be more rapid and surprising innovations. 2

Myed is a Pune-based educational technology platform started in the year 2015. It provides online tutoring

and coaching to students and runs on a freemium model. The main aim of Myed is to provide coaching

through online video lectures for students of first to twelfth standard and for people who prepare for

competitive exams like IIT – JEE, NEET, CAT, GRE, and GMAT.

According to Myed, the company believes that it has one of the best technology-enabled learning platforms,

the best teachers, and engaging content. Moreover, this is backed up with personalized learning journeys,

which means that every student buying a subscription from Myed would be assigned a mentor who keeps

track of the child’s progress and guides the parents. The latest prices of the various courses being offered

by Myed are shown in Table 1. Myed has become one of India’s most valuable startups, with a valuation

estimated to be around $12 billion after the latest round of funding.

The space has many more players like Dexler Education, Educomp Solutions, and Edukart. The industry is

expanding rapidly and has more than 100 million registered students. Space could be broken down into

education support for competitive exams like CAT, Law Exam and NEET.

SALES AT MYED

Myed, though it was an ed-tech company, internally, it was a hard-core sales organization. Sales were

central to the organization’s success, and almost 70 per cent of its 2000 strong workforce were salespeople,

though they were called “Academic Counselors.” The strong emphasis on sales was reflected in the fact

that half of their sales team were involved in training at any given point in time. Before the salespeople

were inducted into the company, they would undergo a two-month-long rigorous sales training program,

and at the end, they would have to make at least one sale to get a confirmation.

2
World Economic Forum, 3 ways the coronavirus pandemic could reshape education accessed on Feb 10, 2021,
available at 3 ways the coronavirus pandemic could reshape education | World Economic Forum (weforum.org).

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From a lead generation perspective, the company spends a relatively large amount of money on

advertisements on television, sponsoring sports events and celebrities. Each of these communications would

end with a clear “call-to-action” to download the trial version of the Myed App. The trial version could be

used for 15 days. While downloading the app, details like mobile phone number, child’s class, and location

are collected. The marketing campaigns had been quite successful. The leads generated through the

marketing activities would range from 15000 on a typical day to up to 1,50,000 when there was a major

sports event like a cricket match.

The leads were top of the sales funnel for Myed and were handled by a sales operations team that was 300-

400 people strong. They also had one of the most popular software used to handle the leads and process

them further. In the first step, the leads were filtered by removing either repeat customers or those who had

done it by mistake. The second level of processing would be done by classifying the leads into various

groups K3, K 9, CAT based on the app version they had downloaded and their shared data.

Next, there was an internal system for scoring these classified leads. The scores were based on three

parameters. First, the lead engagement was determined by examining if the user had watched the video (5

points) or taken a test (10 points). Second, the type of device on which the app was downloaded, whether

iOS or Android and the mobile’s price. And third, the syllabus for which the student was studying

(CBSE/ICSE Board). Based on all these three, a consolidated score was generated. The lead was classified

as a high, medium, and low-quality lead. Then the data would be mapped to the pin code from where the

download had happened.

After cleaning and filtering the leads, each salesperson would get 50 new leads to be followed up every

week based on their location. The week of the salespeople would be from Wednesday to Sunday. From

Wednesday to Friday, they would call the leads and convert them into demos for Saturday and Sunday. The

weekend was preferred as it would allow them to meet both the parents while giving the demo of their

product. A good salesperson could get at least 6-7 demo appointments. The salesman would also be paid

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reasonably well, with around USD 9151.30 per annum starting package. However, a good salesperson could

earn close to three times the salary as an incentive.

THE SALES INTERACTION

On Saturday morning, Rakesh gets a call from Vinay, confirming the demo appointment. Vinay also

confirmed the availability of a laptop and a good broadband connection which was essential for the demo.

After confirming the demo, Vinay feels more relaxed as the conversion and dropouts in the online context

have increased enormously. He knew that the conversion rate in an online demo had fallen by 60 % versus

their face-to-face demos. He was also under sales pressure because the demand for online education had

skyrocketed after the advent of COVID-19 and the lockdowns.

At 7.00 pm, Vinay sent an email sharing a Zoom invite and forwarded it on Rakesh’s WhatsApp. At 7.30

pm, both Rakesh and Sumitra and their daughter Sneha joined the zoom call. Vinay started with his

introduction; he shared his photo id from Myed. Then gave a background about Myed and the company’s

journey until now. He told them that one of their key strengths was making learning fun.

Mr Vinay started engaging with the parents to determine which school Sneha went to and what the parents

were doing. He also explained how he was from the same city but had gone to Pune to do his MBA. He

also shared that many more parents had bought the app in the colony where Mr Vinay lived. Sumitra was

very keen on knowing the best schools in the city, and Mr Vinay shared his insights and opinions. He also

shared how the school where he had studied many years back used to be the best, but today many new

schools are doing better.

Then he focused his attention on their daughter Sneha. He started asking her about how she studies and her

timetable. Then Mr Vinay asked Sneha if she knew about photosynthesis, for which Sneha said yes and

started to explain. Mr Vinay listened to her patiently and then gave her an alternate explanation.

He asked Sneha, “Do you like Maggi?” She exclaimed, “Yes, yes!”

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Vinay said, let me explain photosynthesis using Maggi and how it is cooked, “What do you need to cook a

Maggi?”

Sneha said, “I put some water into a pan and heat it.”

Vinay said, “The same way photosynthesis also needs water and heat which comes from the sun. Then what

happens?”

Sneha said, “Then I cut the Maggi packet and let it boil.”

Vinay asked her about the essential element to carry out photosynthesis.

Sneha exclaimed, “Chlorophyll!”

Vinay asked, “What can you relate to in Maggi, which is similar to Chlorophyll?”

Sneha said, “Masala.”

After the conversation, Mr Vinay asked the parents if he could set up a test for Sneha; the parents said yes,

and Mr Vinay switched to a test screen and set up an exam for Sneha. He asked her to give the exam in

twenty minutes. It was all multiple choice, and Sneha quickly learned how to do it and started doing it. The

parents and Vinay took a break and came back after 15 minutes to find that Sneha had finished the online

test.

THE FINAL SALE

Pleased to find that Sneha had finished the exam within fifteen minutes, Mr Vinay said he would require 5

minutes to sync the test answers with the central server and get the results. He started the syncing process.

After 5 minutes, Mr Vinay said, “Congratulations, your daughter has done very well in the test, and we are

happy to offer a 50 percent discount on the Myed offering. She has scored 80% marks in the test.”

Both Rakesh and Sumitra were happy to hear this and were keen on understanding the overall offering.

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Vinay talked about the offering. There were two packages they could opt for; one was up to the tenth

standard, and the other was up to the twelfth standard. Based on the package they would choose, the

discounts would be offered.

Rakesh asked if the offer was not valid for single class material, for which Mr Vinay said, “Only a combined

offering, so it has to be either till class tenth or twelfth. Furthermore, this includes the tab which is given

along with the course.”

The package was expensive! The tenth standard deal cost them close to $1,490.00, and the one up to the

twelfth standard cost $1,832.00. This pricing was after the 50 per cent discount offered to Sneha for her

excellent performance in the test.

It was not a small amount of money, and they started thinking.

Sumitra said, “You are asking me to pay for study material which my daughter will use after seven years;

what is the guarantee that Myed will be around till then? It is a startup; if funding were to stop at some

point, whom should we ask?”

Mr Vinay said, “Yes, Ma’am, you are right, that risk is there, and even for me, I work here, so that risk is

there for any startup. However, we are also optimistic about the future and hope to grow stronger with time.

And when you receive the tablet, it will have all the material till 10th standard loaded into, though we will

keep updating the material with time.”

“Over and above this, you will also get physical reading material and a personal counselor who will be in

touch with Sneha and follow up on her progress.”

Still seeing the doubt in both their eyes, Vinay said, “You need not pay the whole amount in one go. We

can split into 12 months EMIs, which would hardly come to $135.00 a month. These days if you go out

once in the evening, you will end up spending at least $34.00, so though it might look like a significant

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amount. Still, when you break it into monthly payments, it will be a small amount of money, and it will

also protect you from any potential increases in the future. The promise from our end is that any additions

made in terms of course content or additional courses will be offered to you in the same offer, so you are

insuring yourself against any future price increase.”

Mr Rakesh said he was okay with the EMI option and was willing to give the $68.00 to confirm the offer.

Then he asked,” Can I use my credit card to make the payment?”Mr Vinay said, “If you have a credit card

and eligibility, you can make the complete payment on this, and it will be on no-cost EMI, and your payment

will start only after 45 days, and you literally will not pay a single dollar to buy the product. Also, there is

a 30-day no-charge return policy, so if you are not happy with the product, in all practical terms, you will

get a free-of-cost opportunity to try the offering.”

Rakesh got convinced and got his credit card, and Mr Vinay helped him with the transaction after getting

the details from his office.

In the end, Mr Vinay asked Rakesh to fill out an online registration form in a simple one-page format, and

he said we are given a limited number of these forms so that we do not get into a selling spree have a

minimal target too.

It was close to 9.30 pm when Mr Vinay closed the zoom call and said thanks. He shook hands and went

towards his car, which was waiting. He had shared his business card and told Mr Rakesh that they could

reach out to him any time in case of issues, and the starter kit and the tablet would reach them in a week.

After Vinay left, Rakesh wondered how he bought more than $1307.33 worth of product in a two-hour

interaction? Or was it that?

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Table 1. The rates charged by Myed for various offerings
UKG to Class X
Class Subjects Amount Per year (in USD)
UKG All 540.00
I All 540.00
II All 540.00
III All 540.00
IV Math & Science 350.00
V Math & Science 350.00
VI Math & Science 350.00
VII Math & Science 350.00
VIII Math & Science 350.00
IX Math & Science 350.00
X Math & Science 350.00