This IIT engineer is building a 'Toppr' of an app in the edtech space

Zishaan Hayath would rather build his enterprise ground up than go for an acquisition

The edtech space has seen unprecedented growth during the times of the ongoing pandemic, and a slew of merger and acquisitions this year so far. But one entrepreneur in this space is a firm believer of ‘build’ as against to ‘buy’. 

Toppr, the edtech start-up founded by Zishaan Hayath, has built six products in its seven years of its existence, with two rolled out post Covid-19, and has spent almost $40 million of the $80 million it has raised so far in the development of these products. It has channelised the energies of its 250 strong R&D team, which forms 25 per cent of its total workforce, towards this.

“We are just focussed on building our own products. So far our approach has been to build versus buy. We have built all our products internally and grown our categories,” says Hayath who is also the CEO of the firm. The IIT-Bombay alumnus started the company in 2013 with the idea of making learning adaptive and has turned it into one of the largest edtech apps in the country with a 30 million user base of which 2 per cent are paid users. 

Earlier this month, Edtech decacorn Byju’s acquired 3D virtual laboratory startup LabInApp, an app which enables K-12 students and teachers to perform curriculum-based science experiments in a real-time 3D computer graphics environment on desktops and mobile devices. The company has so far acquired half a dozen apps in order to diversify its offerings in the edtech space. 

Not only Byju’s, even Facebook-backed Unacademy has also been on an acquisition spree this year. It acquired Coursavy last week, a platform for UPSC test preparation. In 2020 so far, Unacademy has also acquired Kreatryx, and PrepLadder, besides investing in Mastree, and taking over the custodianship of CodeChef.

Hayath says, he is not an educator but an engineer who is trying to solve problems in various sectors via technology starting with ecommerce and now edtech. “The only way to create disproportionate outcomes is through technology,” said Hayath who took up two jobs before beginning his entrepreneurial journey in 2008. He built an ecommerce platform Chaupaati Bazaar which was later acquired by the Future Group for $10 million. From ecommerce, Hayath switched to edtech with the vision to build a comprehensive app along with cofounder Hemanth Goteti, to fulfil all the education needs including the learning aspect, the practicing aspect and one's ability to ask questions. 

Toppr‘s primary app is an adaptive learning platform that focusses on exam preparations for 9-12 grade while it has another platform called Toppr Tutor on which live tutor led group classes are held for grades 3 to 8. Toppr Answr is an AI based app which can answer any question thrown at it and Toppr Xplor holds live classes for hobbies and activities. Its latest offering has been Toppr Codr which is a one-on-one coding platform that teaches young students how to create their own apps, websites, games, and other interactive platforms using creative and playful experiences from their daily lives. The company has also launched Toppr School OS, which is an end-to-end platform for schools to run classes online. The platform has seen the registration of 150 schools with around 300,000 students attending classes on it.

“We want to consolidate these six products now and deepen them further as there is no end to product development,” says Hayath.

In the medium term, the company, with a current annual revenue of $35 million, wants to breach the 50 million annual active learners mark with at least three million of them paying for the product. “If that happens, Toppr can be a billion-dollar revenue company,” says Hayath.