Interview with K Ganesh-CEO , Tutorvista-Extending the offshore services model

On 27th March , I had written about Tutorvista and how it has extended the Offshore services business to education services . At the end of the post , i had promised an interview with K Ganesh -CEO and the conceptualizer of the education services business . Ganesh was travelling and in spite of his hectic schdule has given this interview exclusively for my blog .

Profile of K Ganesh

Ganesh is currently CEO and Founder of TutorVista (http://www.tutorvista.com/ ) – a new consumer Internet company in education services space that aims to bring twenty first century technology to education space by combining content, scientific pedagogy and on-line teaching.
He is in the panel of Venture Advisors of UTI Venture funds and a charter member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).

His last venture, CustomerAsset was started in mid 2000 to address the international Call Center / BPO Sector. In May 2002, ICICI (NYSE listed, India’s largest bank) acquired CustomerAsset for over $ 22 Mn Post the acquisition, Ganesh headed the Contact Center Business as President, ICICI OneSource handling over 4000 people and annual revenue of $ 30 Mn.The company now renamed FirstSource is publicy listed in India.

Apart from founding and successfully growing the three ventures, Ganesh has worked as CEO of Bharti British Telecom – a British Telecom JV in India and in HCL Ltd., where he held several key managerial positions.

Ganesh is a post-graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Question 1: When was TutorVista started? How did it come about?

It was started in July 2005. The service for US went live in November 2005 , for UK in July 2006.It came about when I was in US in early 2005 and realized that one of the top two topics of maximum concern to US citizens was - education and healthcare. Everyday I could see in media and newspapers education crisis was being discussed at length. The need for a solution to the education problem coupled with the fact that advancement in Internet , broadband penetration made it possible to offer mass market , affordable solution to solve the problem.
There is a full-blown education crisis in US as evidenced by declining test scores, low global rankings of US students in Math and Science, poor graduation rates, lack of basic reading and writing skills, and other well-reported problems. This situation has been reached because of a lack of opportunity for students to get personalized help at affordable rates and convenient place and time.Lack by parents and students, shortage of teachers especially in Math and Science, inadequate funding at school level, etc. The federal government has woken up and realized that US cannot remain competitive globally unless education is fixed; thus the billions being pumped into the NCLB program. Private individuals like Bill Gates, Fortune 500 companies and others are also actively trying to mitigate this situation.

The topic is such a hot one that George Bush in his last State of union address talked about it, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation are spending huge resources in this area (latest Business Week cover story), Oprah Winfrey latest show was on education: all across various media – lots of articles about federal government funding for education, current crisis state of affairs in education…

Question-2 How did you ensure that the transfer of learning in an offshore model, is as effective as a face to face tutoring session

Right from Day 1, we hired a US expert who spent 6 months here in Bangalore, used lot of customer feedback, improved step by step. Lot of resources is available on Internet. Our President Dr.John Stuppy has over 15 years experience in US test prep and Tutoring field. He brings the domain experience and knowledge. Also unlike many other companies, we sue Voce over IP and not just text chat to make the experience a real one,

Question -3: From a learning pedagogy standpoint I would assume that yours would be different than the classical face to face approach, it would be great if you could elaborate on the differences

Actually main difference is in the US/UK and Indian system of education that makes the pedagogy different. In India we learn by rote, repetition while in US they learn more by example, experience. This is something we cover in the training with the Tutors who are all great but are used to the Indian system. For e.g. we start with a formula, define the formula, then the law or theorem and finally give examples. In US they will start with four examples or illustrations, warm up to the concept, then slowly introduce the principle and finally the formula.Face to face vs. online is also covered in detail in training – tutors are taught to use the power of technology, use animations, content, interactive to make the learning better

Question -4: How do you ensure that your tutors are fully aware of the requirements of the local school district and use appropriate teaching material during a session?

This is part of the training and certification we do.

Question -5: Your model seems to be an extension of the offshore model that the IT service industry in India has pioneered, however if there are some differences , would you like to highlight some of them

The business model at one level is similar but there are significant differences.

1. Unique example of creating an Internet company in education services space. The web has seen ecommerce, search, content and community sites but this is the one of the first services website where a valuable service (tutoring) is being done over the web.

2. TutorVista is the first B2C company focused on the US market from India. Till now, all successful business models were B2B companies from India focusing on US companies. We target the consumer directly; sell to them directly from India. Will this be the start of non-US companies using the web to sell to US consumers directly?

3. TutorVista is in the new wave of Web 2.0 leveraged start-up

So the fact that we use tutors working from home , can scale without having to build centers , bring people to one place makes scalability easier than T/ It services. But, compared to pure portal or content play scalability will be limited. But compared to IT/ITS/BPO etc this is far more scalable. For example when one of our students from US wanted to learn Chinese, we got him a tutor from Hong Kong within a week! We have tutors in 23 cities in India + a few in other countries

Question-6: Are there any US/UK government regulations that have an impact on your business and if so what are these regulations

No, there are no regulations. But for getting Government funded, supplemental tutoring contracts which are awarded through states – some state s have requirements like Tutors have to have a social security number, FBI background check etc which we cannot do. But this does not affect us since we do not go after Government funded market but focus on tutoring funded by the parent / student / school

Question -7 :What is the future of this industry? Any predictions on growth pattern?

The online education industry is huge. The size is over $ 16 billion. Of this we are addressing the supplemental education or assisted learning market which will be around $ 8 billion.
With advancement in Voice over Internet technology, higher broad band penetration, lowering of PC prices this is set to explode.