Pavan Chauhan is the co-founder and Managing Director of MeritNation.com. Prior to launching Meritnation.com, he completed several projects in the field of education, gaming and assessment. He also worked with several global brands such as Castle Rock Research, USA, Microsoft Inc, Ministry of Education, UAE to name a few. He brings with him over 15 years of experience in the education sector. Pavan has taught and counseled thousands of students over the years. In an interaction with India Digital Review, he talks about his motivation behind the venture, plans of expansion and key focus of the organization.
You have more than a decade long experience in the education sector with both private players like Microsoft, Castle Rock Research, USA, and Government set-up. What you find lacking in the system that motivated you to launch ‘MeritNation.com’?
I had several experiences in typical classroom kind of set-up. My basic take was if you look at a class room setup you have a teacher and 30-40 students in a class and all of these students have different areas of strengths and weaknesses that they bring to the table. As a teacher I have a limitation as to I have to peg myself to an average level but those students who are smart get bored while those who are weak lag behind. My idea behind launching MeritNation was to bring a customized approach to learning. We started off with working on Adapt Assessment engine which could precisely do that. So, technology played a big role in customizing learning for students of different caliber.
It’s been four years for MeritNation since its launch in 2009. How has been its uptake among student community?
When we went live in January 2009, there were lots of questions that we had. We did not know whether students will come and spend time on the website and we were not sure whether parents will allow students to do the same. When we started off, we had faith that this could turn things around but there was also skepticism with respect to how its uptake will be. We are extremely surprised with the response we have got. Today we have 2.3 to 4.2 million registered users on our website and we get 1.7 lakh visits every single day which is very encouraging.
What are some of the current challenges that you face at MeritNation?
The product is really complex. It can be sliced in number of ways like on the basis of boards, subjects or classes. Giving an intuitive UI to the student and ensuring that the navigation is smooth is a challenge we are still dealing with. Second challenge is, we have customers who are students from Grade I to Grade XII so for lower grade students we have to talk to their parents as they take the decision for them so here the consumption is parent driven while for higher grade it is student driven. Another challenge is to understand the customer and customizing the model for them. These are the complexities that we are facing while going forward.
The company claims to have 4.2 million registered users. How many of them are paid users? Is the venture profitable?
This year we would be looking at generating 3X of the revenues we have generated last year. We are looking at 200 percent increase in the revenues. We are operating fairly close to breakeven. The number of transactions are same as number of paid users.
There are many e-learning ventures currently. What stands you apart from them?
Our product is extremely complex and the biggest challenge for us is to drive the engagement of the users. MeritNation has scored well on this we have a loyal user base this has come from the fact we have a team which has a rich experience in the education field. As a business, I would say again it is slightly different as during exam time there would be a lot of traffic also the needs across the grades are very different. Another big concern is there is a tendency among parents that they are ready to spend exorbitant amount of money on tuitions classes’ offline but online they want things to be free so keeping the pricing competitive is also crucial for us. These are the things that we have figured out and apart from having a lot of content. Obviously, our competitors are working on the content part and they will try to catch up soon.
MeritNation has also forayed in the profitable test preparation space by adding online IIT-JEE and NEET courses to its portfolio. What else is on cards? How these packages will be priced?
A fraction of amount spent offline by students goes to competitive exam preparation and it is a lucrative market. It is a pre-established need and we sincerely believe that what we are offering in these packages cannot be provided offline. First is we can offer lot of text content to the students, we can leverage collaborative learning much better than an offline class. We have an ‘Ask and Answer’ forum where thousands of school students ask questions everyday and get responses from fellow students. Collaborative learning, providing rich content and bringing customized efforts to learning are some of the things that offline model cannot provide easily. As far as pricing is concern it will be fraction of what students pay offline so a IIT-JEE product is priced from Rs 3,000 to Rs 15, 000 depending on the duration of the course.
You just received second round of funding from Info Edge India, how do you plan to use it?
There are three areas that we will use the funding for one would be product then since we are a content company so we will be investing on content. The third would be brand building
How do you see MeritNation using mobile as a platform to reach out to students? Any spends going towards this medium?
We are witnessing that the percentage of students accessing website through mobile is increasing and we expect this is to grow exponentially. So, we are preparing our content which will be mobile ready and a lot of investment will go in this direction.
MeritNation has presence in seven countries. Do you plan to expand further?
We are focusing a lot on state boards in the country and subsequently moving ahead we will be looking at different geographies.
What would be your broad targets for 2013?
The focus area for 2013 would be Test preps and state boards. We have covered boards but it largely focuses CBSE and ICSE so we look forward to go beyond that. In terms of revenue, as I have said earlier, we are chasing a target of 3X revenue growth from last year.
