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Economic Times (ET): Where did the idea of SpeakIn germinate and what did you want to achieve?
Deepshikha Kumar (DK): I was born in a typical Delhi middle class family in which you aspired to a 9 to 5 job. If you were lucky, you got into engineering and if you were even luckier, you became a doctor. And if you failed in all of that, you tried your hand at running a business of some sort. We were very siloed in our thought processes in those days.
As I grew up, I realised that life is not just a function of what you know, but also who you know. Your network and your exposure to different people, how they think and what they do, tell you what else in life exists. That opens up your mind and your horizons and aids the learning process. That is where my fascination with networking and learning from achievers started.
As I went on to study at ISB and thereafter worked globally, I realized that is the mantra of growth and personal success. Also, I never fancied voluminous books and fancy degrees. No, I was never into the rat race for marks—securing 99.8%. Books were no doubt a great reservoir of knowledge, but I fancied the idea of learning from people who had achieved milestones and success in their lives.
So, as I went on in my career, I wanted to create a larger entity, something of my own, and that is where a marriage between learning of the kind I believed in and what I wanted to create culminated in SpeakIn. The idea was to enable learning for those who had the desire and the passion to learn and have them learn from the best. If you want to be a doctor, it should not just be about the eight or ten years of studying to be a doctor; it is, or should be, equally about learning from an eminent surgeon, the best in the world. The same holds good for a corporate leader, lawyer, or a bureaucrat.
The joys and depth of vicarious and experiential learning are almost limitless. That is the thinking that has led to the creation of SpeakIn, which is providing experiential learning to people all over the world.
ET: And where did the name come from?
DK: Well, this is a platform where experts speak and you can speak to experts in eight different languages on some 500 distinct subjects and, of course, it was born in India. Hence SpeakIn.
ET: How would you describe SpeakIn and what it does?
DK: SpeakIn is an online educational technology (EdTech) platform where you can learn from the best of thought leaders, subject matter experts, and CXOs using different formats. You can see videos, hear their podcasts, read their blogs, you can meet them one-on-one virtually, or during a live learning interaction. Or you can meet them in person for learning that is completely customised for you. We have over 18,000 experts drawn from various fields from all over the globe. In fact, I would say the days of long-drawn theory are over. You get to meet the top global and regional experts, whether virtually or in person, and you can get to ask them questions and learn from them personally.
We work with over 300 clients spread across the world who have had the privilege of learning from the best of the best. To name just a few: Mohammad Yunus, Shashi Tharoor, Nandan Nilekani, Aditya Ghosh, Bear Grylls, Paul Dupuis, and many others.
ET: How are you different from many speakers’ forums that exist?
DK: SpeakIn is not about speakers and speeches. We are about learning and mentoring. As a speakers’ forum, we are a business-to-business education technology platform that provides enhanced and elevated learning to business professionals. Also, most e-learning in India is very West-oriented. There is no organised player in that space in India that is creating highly customised ‘glocal’ content on that scale for B2B buyers. So, for example, if you are training an organisation in the media space in India, an example from CNN may not resonate in the same way that one from Times Now will. You want examples closer home and more contextual. In fact, I would say barring the West, this is true for the entire East. We see a tremendous market potential for APAC countries, from Japan to Vietnam, where companies have not invested in creating content for business consumption in their own geography.
ET: So, you see SpeakIn as L&D partners for businesses? Large companies, of course, have separate L&D units…
DK: Absolutely. We are 360 degrees learning partner for any business. Our focus currently is on blue chip companies, but we are a mega support system even for the MSME sector and want to work with them. The biggest challenge with learning management systems in organisations is that of adoption. The problem is these LMS systems don’t have content. They don’t come with content, but only with technology. And the other challenge is adoption. How do you get HRMS to be used? As a result, when adoption is negligible, the HR teams become jaded. They see no ROI. If managers are not using it, they are not learning and the investment has gone to waste.
ET: How do you identify your expert trainers? What is the method you follow?
DK: What SpeakIn does is to bring an array of experts together on one platform. This helps experts in monetising their content, thought leadership, and expertise. Credibility of this learning also comes from the level of curation of every single expert. We work on the concept of Speaking Quality Index, which is on a ten-point scale where 48 different variables are evaluated and we give every expert a rating on a ten-point scale. A person who crosses 7 on that scale is automatically taken by the platform itself for a manual evaluation. It weeds out anyone who scores 7 or below.
Curation means we help these experts in digitising their capabilities. We give them a platform to host their content, their sessions and their learning and make money from it. And, of course, with SpeakIn they get continuous marketing exposure, resulting in more opportunities and therefore more business.
ET: How old is the business and what are your expansion plans?
DK: The business was set up three years ago in response to a $330 billion global opportunity in B2B EdTech and a dire need for organisations to upskill employees across the hierarchy. SpeakIn is raising money to scale and has received $500,000 in seed funding. We are currently growing at 600 per cent quarter on quarter and have an ARR of $1.4 million. We are clocking almost 30 per cent net profit and operating at a gross margin of 77 per cent. The management team comes from Accenture, EY, Infosys, etc. Investors include Aditya Ghosh (Former President of Indigo Airline), and Richard Rekhy (Former India MD of KPMG) and more.
Having served over 350 clients in eight countries—including Samsung, Visa, BCG and more. The newly launched 1-on-1 expert coaching and mentoring platform is building a captive set of clients where 70% are coming back for a repurchase. We are now expanding to markets outside India. The three markets we have entered are Singapore, Lower Gulf and the United States.
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