07: Abhay Saboo | Colearn
Co-Founder at Colearn | Empowering Students Across Indonesia.
Ingredients for Success:
Not all money is equal. Abhay has worked tirelessly and is fortunate enough to have top-tier investors. He goes so far as to say he’d give up his MBA and cut his valuation in half to be a part of the Sequoia Surge program. He’s understood that resources, networks, and support systems are not commoditized.
Reverse engineer your product roadmap. Product is king, at least when starting out. For Abhay, he understood that high customer acquisition costs and a low willingness-to-pay were the largest impediments to Colearn’s success. With that in mind, he took a first principle, student-centered approach in understanding how he can most effectively build out the most formidable product with high retention.
Quantify goals to keep you driven. Upon inception, Abhay was clear on what he set out to achieve: to get Indonesia in the top 50% of PISA rankings (a metric that gauges high school progress across students). With the country currently in the bottom 10%, this goal is what keeps him grounded, and what pushes him to give his all every day. Quantifying progress and goals are a practical way to keep founders and teams motivated.
Hope - a strong word; one that propels us forward, that encourages us to grow, that gives us the belief to think that we could put a tiny dent in the world. This tiny dent manifests itself in different ways for different people. For some, it’s the hope to travel the world as a writer or musician. For others, it’s to win the Nobel Prize in Physics or Economics. And for Abhay, it’s the hope to make consistent, tangible impact. “I’ve always been clear that I wanted to be a founder. A vision of building something in an industry that impacts people, daily, is what gets me excited.”
And that’s what Abhay is doing with Colearn – one of the fastest growing EdTech companies in Southeast Asia.
You Catch the Bug?
Colearn wasn’t Abhay’s first venture. Let’s rewind to 2008, where Abhay was in his second year at business school. The introspective and reflective journey of the MBA encourages you to think, and that’s exactly when Abhay caught the ‘entrepreneurial bug’. “Funnily enough, when I was thinking about building a business, I was looking at India as the market; its sheer depth and large size is attractive for any founder. We had brought on a good Board and were ready to start the venture. But, having grown up in Indonesia, I felt a ‘pull’ and love towards the country. I wanted to build back home.”
Rightfully so, being a local in a growing market like Indonesia and deciding to start out in the region is a calculated, smart decision. For Abhay, however, it was more than just an emotional choice.
“At the time, when I was evaluating the various companies coming out of Indonesia, most of them were involved in e-commerce and ride hailing. The startups across these two verticals are all about making people spend money. The question I asked myself, as a rebuttal, was: can I build something that could help Indonesians make money?”
Abhay’s idea of making a ‘dent’ – building a product that creates impact at scale – led him to start Viva Health. The goal: to provide high-quality, affordable healthcare to the people of Indonesia. After leading the company in becoming one of the largest private healthcare providers in the country – serving 8 million people – Abhay set his sights on a new goal.
When one door closes, another opens. For Abhay, this other ‘door’ – Colearn – turned out to be bigger, better, and more impactful than he’d imagine.
Don’t Waste a Crisis
In Indonesia, where 50 million students - the 4th largest education system in the world - don’t have access to high-quality education, there is a clear opportunity for technology to pave the way forward. What drove Abhay to launch a venture in education was just that. Despite the sheer size of the pool of students, Indonesia falls in the bottom 10% of the PISA rankings – a metric that gauges reading, math, and science knowledge of high school students. “We were confident that technology could democratize distribution. We also realized that the ‘Ed’ of EdTech shouldn’t be compromised; how we delivered the curriculum was the crux of how users viewed our solution. All said, we launched with the eventual goal of having Indonesia in the top 50% of PISA rankings.”
With the original idea to work as a complementary tool to tutoring centers, Colearn has since early 2020, shifted to an online-only model. ‘Never waste a good crisis’ is apt for how the firm has adapted and come out stronger during COVID. For context, the offline model allowed Colearn to work with 200 students in a year, while the hybrid courses grew the audience to 10,000 kids in 6 months. But both of these achievements seem minuscule in light of Colearn’s growth in its online offering – a whopping 2.5 million users in 4 months!
There are also structural advantages to this growth in online. Picture this: you’re a K-12 student, having spent an exhausting day at school. The sun looms above at its brightest, yet another scorching afternoon engulfed in Jakarta heat, as you make your way to after-school tutoring sessions through the cacophonous, incessant traffic. Doesn’t sound pleasant, right? Wouldn’t it be easier to sit, in the comfort of your home, and learn at your own pace? This is the sell for Colearn’s online offering.
But it’s not always been sunshine and rainbows. “It’s been a busy but incredible learning experience over the past few months. But it still comes with its fair share of challenges.” For one, Abhay highlights the high customer acquisition costs (CAC) – a pillar of almost any growing B2C business. The second roadblock - friction when it comes to paying for the product. “Within willingness to pay, we have to convince two stakeholders: kids and parents. For students, we plan to continue building our interactive content offering; a more concise, personalized journey to help understand concepts. For parents, they are paying for outcomes; is Colearn helping their kids be more confident?”
There are two things I noticed about Abhay. One – he’s the last person in the room to be dissuaded by a challenge. And two – which in many ways, connects to the first point – he’s always looking for ways to find a solution. “We are building our product to address high CAC and low willingness-to-pay.” I smiled, unsurprised by his tenacity in figuring things out.
Eyes on the Prize
Painkillers and vitamins: the crux of Colearn’s product. Not the actual meds, but how Abhay describes his approach to creating a formidable, defensible solution. “Our ‘painkiller’ is the automated doubt solving feature. Users can take a picture of a question, and using machine learning, we provide a video explanation of the solution. It’s simple and our students love it. The ‘vitamin’ is more of a supplement (no pun intended!) to offline tutoring. The live classes replicate a student’s experience in the classroom.”
In coming up with the initial features for Colearn, Abhay took a more proactive, researched approach. “Through Sequoia’s Surge program, we learnt the importance of maintaining a laser focus; they taught us that achieving product-market fit (PMF) is paramount; that it’s critical to not be distracted by other variables in building a business. There are founders that want to go out and hire Growth teams, but we’ve learnt to get the ball rolling only once we get the product right. Our approach has been simple: we use first principles to figure out what features our users would find most useful. That’s held us in good stead thus far. We choose to not be too reactive; I find that by doing so, one is simply following the competition.”
That said, it’s not that Abhay completely ignores competitors. His analogy captures Colearn’s approach perfectly:
“In basketball, when you’re going for a layup, it’s important to look around and make sure that nobody is blocking or tackling you. Meaning: we are aware of the competition from the side of our eyes, but our focus remains on the basket. That’s how we score.”
It Takes Two
By the time our conversation turned to discussing how Abhay views culture, I expected a comprehensive list of operating principles. It’s a function of how I was forming a view on Abhay’s thinking, appreciating his commitment to making calculated decisions.
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised with Abhay’s response. His simple two-pronged approach to building a robust culture highlights the succinctness that runs through most management decisions at Colearn.
First – a belief we commonly hear successful founders harp on – is encouraging employees to keep making new mistakes. “We want to have a culture where our team isn’t afraid of making mistakes. At the same time, it’s important to not keep repeating those errors. We want to hire and retain those who learn from their mistakes.”
Second, the notion of “I think” is looked down upon. When evaluating and pitching for a course of action, it’s encouraged that each employee validates their ideas with students. “We want to ensure that user insights back each of our decisions. Instead of thinking about initiatives, we promote an environment where each pitch is backed by student interest or a need.” This idea of speaking directly to students hits on an underlying cultural principle. It places value on a flat hierarchy, where creative thinking isn’t confined to the top, but across all layers of the company; keeping everyone’s voice valued and nurturing empowerment to maintain a cohesive team.
Decisions, Decisions
Do you want to be rich or king? It’s a question every founder asks themselves when fundraising. For Abhay, optimizing to become rich isn’t the end goal. “I’ve learnt that not all money is not equal. The right investors truly make the difference – sometimes it’s even worth taking money at half the valuation if you find the right investor. In fact, I’d rather give up my MBA to be a part of Surge – the program has grounded us and provided us with the support we need.”
A complementary co-founding team, a product that users love, and a supportive investor base are a few things propelling Colearn forward. For every student that has a query solved, Abhay is one step closer in making a dent. With over 2.5 million kids on the platform – 5% of Indonesia’s student population – and over a million questions received from students, it seems like things are moving in the right direction for Colearn.
I, for one, am excited to see where things go from here.
Hello abhay, you are great. Keep it up. Wish you all the best