TutorVista readies Indian rollout

To raise $15 million to address bottom of the pyramid.

TutorVista, the firm that has pioneered online tutoring to students in the West from India, is coming home. It is now rolling out a major Indian business plan for which it will raise $15 million, virtually the same as the $15.25 million which it had raised earlier for its global rollout from the likes of Sequoia Capital.

With this it is seeking to exploit the business potential that exists at the bottom of the pyramid. "India has the largest under-20 population in the world, 449 million, greater than even China's 407 million, and the propensity of Indian parents to spend on education is number one," says K Ganesh, who has founded and runs TutorVista.

The funds to be raised will enable three initiatives: ramp up Edurite, the learning content firm TutorVista acquired in November; launch a network of technology-led brick and mortar learning centres across the country; and offer an integrated learning platform, much like what it is delivering to students in the west.

Edurite, now subsumed in a 100 per cent subsidiary of TutorVista, began seven years ago and has 120 people. It has been engaged in educational content creation in multi-media, based on Indian curricula, with customers among schools, publishers and the retail public.

Around 300 learning centres will be set up in B and C class towns, mostly on a franchisee basis, with TutorVista managing them and controlling quality. This will seek to address the gap in such towns for quality tutoring which cannot be accessed by those who do not have a PC and Internet connection at home.

The teachers in these learning centres will carefully follow the process scripted by the multimedia content, with the same text, examples, tests and assessments deployed all over the country.

The third offering will bring content, technology and services together under the same kind of tutoring that students in the West get via a shared monitor screen and instruction imparted by the teacher via voice and text.

The student will not see the tutor but speak to him and hear him through a headset, and the two will use a computer screen whiteboard, half used and written upon by the student and the other half by the teacher. The rates have not been frozen yet but Indian students are likely to be charged Rs 25,000-40,000 per year, for eight hours of coaching a week.

TutorVista which began 26 months ago now has 10,000 registered students and 850 employees who include 600 teachers operating from 23 Indian cities.

About 90 per cent of the students are in the US, 500 are in Korea learning English and the rest are in the UK.

"We aim to triple this to 30,000 students by the year-end and also break even by then. We can be in the black even now but have chosen to be in a rapid expansion mode. In this period of brand building and upscaling, online consumer marketing through search engines is the single most important item of expenditure," explained Ganesh.

US students are charged $100 per month for unlimited tutoring. Ganesh declined to give a turnover figure but assuming that at least half the number of students is enrolled at any given time and some promotional discounts are offered, TutorVista should have an annual run rate of $5 million.

TutorVista is a rarity in that an Indian company has built up a brand in the West sitting in India. It has a B2C model, serving the US consumer direct without an intermediate entity.

Till now, all off-shoring and outsourcing has been B2B businesses. An Indian company like Infosys or Wipro will have a US corporation as a client and provide services to the US company or its customers. But TutorVista deals directly with the parent and student.