Founder and CEO of Classle
Founder and CEO of Classle
Classle, a Social learning platform, is breaking all geographical and economical barriers as it brings students, teachers and professionals under one digital roof. Founder and CEO of Classle, Vaidya Nathan talks about overcoming challenges and future plans for Classle
What was the idea behind starting Classle?
Classle Knowledge Inc. is an India based start-up which offers social learning with specific focus on empowerment and success through education and learning, regardless of urban or rural setting. Established in 2009, the objective behind the company is to bring productive personalized learning experience to students, customers, employees or general learners. There are more than 1,800 courses authored by experts and professionals from around the world in diverse range of subjects such as engineering, science, arts, finance, electronics, energy and spirituality.
Tell us about how Classle works?
Classle, the Social Learning Network, is a ‘One Step’ education solution and employment opportunity provider. Classle has an online platform through which students and learners interact with their peers, teachers, professors and professionals through different courses and modules. The modules, features, courses and content are accessed and delivered both online and offline and other means through mobile technology. Students can access content, attend online classes, review audio and video recordings, ask questions and consult experts on topics they choose. The registration is absolutely free, so cost is no longer a deterrent in education.
What are some of the unique features of Classle?
Headquartered in Chennai, Classle currently empowers 100+ institutions that have private Classle Cloud Campuses. 300,000+ student members have signed up for Classle Cloud Campuses. The company is growing rapidly and increasing the volume of usage for AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Start-ups often face cash liquidity problems during initial years of operation. How did you counter this problem?
Reducing the time to market, cost of infrastructure and cost of failure were three factors that made our cash lifeline substantially longer than otherwise. Also, AWS nurtures a very active ecosystem from where we were able to learn rapidly. This freed up our energies to focus on management and execution.
Since the transition, what have been the specific performance indicators?
There is business sense in using the cloud because Classle is able to offer greater efficiency to customers. Customers can buy two years of cloud services and get one year free. It is cost-effective, flexible and offers highest degree of data security. Adopting AWS has helped us speed up the development work and ensure rolling out of Classle’s innovative services very quickly.
What is your source of revenue?
We have three sources of revenue. First is Talent Analytics Services, second is through the paid courses and third is via subscriptions for Private Cloud Campus for companies.
What are your expansion plans in terms of geographies and product features?
We are working on multimedia apps and aiming at a target of 5 million students in 18 months. We expect the ripple effect to spread to the rest of the world. In another 3-4 months, Classle will be moving into ‘lifelong learning’ backed by robust academic analytics and domain learning services.
Also, over next 12-18 months, we are looking to rapidly expand across Pan- India, SAARC and APAC countries. Feature wise, we will be adding access capabilities which will make it ubiquitous
