Online courses have been picking up steam for quite some time now. But the pandemic has accelerated the trend as more people have time on their hands to either create courses to share their knowledge with the world and make money, and for those who want to learn and become better. It’s no surprise then to see the growth of online course platforms such as Skillshare and Udemy. However, when it comes to what course creator needs, each market is different and that’s the insight that led Sandeep Singh to offer an easy-to-use course creation platform for the Indian market in the form of Spayee. We caught him with via email to talk about his journey, the company’s evolution, its growth strategy, and more.
PS: the interview has been edited for the sake of brevity.
Table of Contents
1. Hi Sandeep, before we begin talking about Spayee, our readers would love to know your journey into the world of SaaS?
My journey started in 2014, when I met my current co-founders during our work tenure with a US-based software company. Spayee began as an attempt to build India’s first intelligent e-book platform. But with the advent of Jio, the consumption of video content boomed in India. And we quickly realized the need for an end-to-end content delivery platform, which should be affordable to customers of all sizes.
By 2018, Spayee had launched its SaaS-based course platform. We raised an angel round of USD 150K in 2019.
2. What insights led you to launch Spayee?
While building Spayee, we realized that the market for online course platforms in India was almost completely dominated by global brands. This meant that there was a gap for a company dedicated to recognizing and resolving the unique challenges faced by content creators in the Indian ecosystem.
Also, most of the content creators in India were not tech-savvy, they did not have any idea about marketing, payment gateways, or user engagement so they needed an easy to use, all in one platform which can offer them everything they need to run their online academy within a single platform. That’s the gap we aimed to fill with Spayee.
3. Could you share the evolution of Spayee since its launch?
Our journey started in 2014 when we got incubated and funded by TLabs – Times Internet. We started as a B2B company offering an intelligent eBook Platform to educational institutes & publishers. While working with our early customers, we realized the need for a platform which wouldn’t just support e-books but play host to the entire gamut of multimedia content.
Over the past two years, Spayee has grown rapidly and today has more than 1,000 paid customers using our platform to launch and sell their courses. Spayee has helped its customers generate over INR 200 crores in revenue through the sale of an enormous array of courses. Our customers have launched 25,000+ courses which are being consumed by more than 3million users.
4. EdTech is a red-hot space right now, what makes Spayee different from the rest?
Spayee is a platform for anyone who can teach and anything that can be taught.
We are focused on the B2B segment. Having an all-in-one online course delivery platform allows us to also go beyond EdTech. We have customers from different segments of learning like test prep, skill development, financial institutes, yoga and wellness centers, films & music training companies, individual coaches, corporate trainers, Youtubers, and other niche categories
We believe that we have positioned ourselves quite well in the market as a premium, turnkey solution, and that is why we have been able to stand out among the competition.
5. How many users are using Spayee? Which are your biggest markets?
Over the past two years, Spayee has grown rapidly and today has more than 1,000 paid customers using its platform to launch and sell their courses.
47 percent of our revenue comes from the creators, selling general learning courses, 27% comes from college to job courses, 16 percent comes from school to college exam courses, and the remaining 8 percent comes from employment courses.
6. Could you shed a light on your marketing strategy to reach out to potential users?
The course platform domain is dominated by global players. But none of them specifically focuses on Indian course creators. We position ourselves as a leading knowledge commerce platform which specifically revolves around the challenges of Indian creators. We shed light on our USPs while running paid ad campaigns and content marketing campaigns which aims to educate Indian course creators.
7. How has the ongoing pandemic affected Spayee – both in terms of businesses and no of users?
Over the past two years, Spayee has grown rapidly and today has more than 1,000 paid customers using our platform to launch and sell their courses.
In 2020 alone, we impacted more than 2.6 million learners across different segments. Approximately 1.7 crore enrolments happened in the courses published through Spayee, with a yearly growth of 9.5X from 2019. Most importantly, our efforts have created 3,200 new jobs. Over the next year, we want to help our customers generate over 1,000 crores in course sales revenue and get 5,000 paid customers onboard by the end of 2021.
8. How do you expect the EdTech market to evolve post the COVID-19 crisis?
Online education through EdTech platforms has been around much before the pandemic. However, the global crisis became a major catalyst in enhancing the teaching process for educators. Student enrolments as well as investments into the sector have surged rapidly too. We are expecting EdTech to further evolve so that customers will convert faster while the trend will continue as users get comfortable with digital learning.
9. What’s next from Spayee? Any new features that users should be looking out for?
We want to become the go-to platform for Indian course creators, who want to monetize their course content. We believe that we have a great value proposition in the global market too. We are planning to take Spayee global by early next year.
On the product front, we are working towards creating an exclusive B2B marketplace for Spayee customers, where content creators can collaborate among themselves and generate more sales. Over and above, we have recently launched the membership site option on the platform, which users are thoroughly liking.
10. What are your favourite SaaS products out there?
Zoho is a “Made in India” platform that has made our lives easier at Spayee. We are truly inspired by Zoho. Hubspot is another platform we personally use and is one of our favorites.
