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Meet Kal Raman: Indian Born Education Entrepreneur Hopes to Make a Difference in India
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On a humid friday evening, i ventured out to the Hare Rama Hare Krishna Temple in Mumbai to meet an interesting gentleman who goes by the name of Kal Raman.
Kal Raman is the Indian Born CEO and founder of GlobalScholar.com and hopes to establish the online education platform for teachers, parents, and students in the country of his birth. Kal told me that he is in India to select a CEO for their India Division, which is based in Chennai and already has a head count of 100 employees. Global Scholar was in the news recently because it raised $27 Million in its Round B funding.
So what is GlobalScholar.com anyway - well for starters its quite an interesting concept. As far as i have understood, they have 3 aspects to the business. Learning enabling tools in schools, tools to supplement learning after school at home, and tools to help students beyond school. So essentially they are focused on the K - 12 sector (Kindergarten to Class 12).
Their platform for schools helps them create, manage and align content within schools so each students has a personalized monitor with special recommendations for each student. As far as i understood, they also try and get parents in the loop by sending them updates of what children are learning constantly and also supplementing those updates with material that might be useful - so its sort of a home education eco system of you might.
Along with that there is also the online tutoring platform which allows students to connect with teachers from all over the world. It’s an interesting interactive white board system with text based and voice based chat.
If you want to know more, check out this video. Quite an interesting interactive system for web based distance learning. The only thing that’s lacking i think is video. Can we think of a similar way in which millions of Indians can be educated? - on a not so personal basis though!
India has 250 Million children currently under the age of 18, so Kal believes that there is a huge market to be explored. According to research by GlobalScholar.com, other competitors such as Educomp and Everon have only been able to penetrate about 1% of the market and thus there are opportunities for many players to co exist in this industry.
More than GlobalScholar.com, i was more inspired by Kal’s story. Kal Raman hails from Mannarkovil, a village in Thirunelveli District, TamilNadu that till today is not able to provide electricity to 25% of it’s population. He grew up in tough economic conditions where his mother had to raise 5 children on a mere Rs. 420 of pension money every month. By his own admissions, he could “not afford a pair of shoes or even notebooks”.
Kal hopes to contribute effectively to the system that provided him with a foundation that enabled him to become what he is today.
“We are creating the Global Scholar Foundation where we would hope that lot of people will contribute. GlobalScholar.com will contribute largely by licensing it’s technology to the foundation for deserving people who cannot afford quality education if blessed with the opportunity by the Government.”
“Eventually we (GlobalScholar.com) hope to not only provide technology but also certain foundational assets to the Government in the sphere of education.”
Quite an amazing story - reminded me of Swades :)
Kal has an equally impressive resume - he started off his career at Wal Mart where he was the CTO and as he will tell us in his WATCast that there are 2 things he learnt there - something that Sam Walton used to tell them:
1) The Consumer is always right.
2) If you think the consumer is wrong, go back to rule no.1
Kal then went on to become CEO of DrugStore.com after which he was a senior VP at Amazon.com.
Also, here’s a little something for fans of the mobile revolution to cheer about. While speaking to Kal, i also asked him about distribution of the service in India where internet penetration in India is restricted and he said that “The long term solution for India has to incorporate much more than a computer.” They are thus working hard to “reach the devices that parents, students, and teachers all have access to, which is the mobile phone”. More on that when i get updates.
Also, do check out Kal on WATShow in a few weeks from now! When i went to meet Kal with Aamer, our WATShow Host, we both left the room pretty inspired by this man who once worked in Mumbai for 8 weeks and on his 1st day in Mumbai, slept on the platform at Dadar East Station. A man who grew up with almost nothing and till today is so humble that he feels like he has nothing. I doubt he will change education in India but i am sure - just seeing his eyes that he will make a value addition. Aamer and i sincerely hope that we will be able to convey the inspired experience that we had through the show.
Hope + Discipline + Hardwork is Kal’s key to success.
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Inspiring story this is.. and very well written too.
Thanks Vinayak!
Inspiring.
Good Work, Harshil.
There are a few more interesting insights that Kal offered, and that should come across in the Show or the Cast. One thing of interest was Kal’s role as CEO of DrugStore.com - its important to note that at one point of time, drugstore.com was valued at aprrox $68 and it finally became a penny stock. Kal, maintained his cool at that time in all the hoopla and he often told his co workers - “we all have beautiful wives, A/C cars, and great homes, i grew up in a situation where food was doubtful for days” - in a sense his background helped him but, i think he also identified the frenzy that was around him at that point of time. And i think his upbringing guarded him to eventually be more rational.
Im reading up quite a bit on investing etc. and the common mistakes that investors can make and the forms of frenzy that came up during the dotcom bust. So hopefully il be able to add that perspective in a few weeks. Ankit - do keep that ‘weekly feature coulmn’ yaar!