Unacademy

If I had to invest in one company for 10 years, I would invest in Unacademy, a recently launched online learning platform. The infrastructure in India is not sufficient to provide quality education to entire student community. As a result, a number of young talented minds are stifled. The reason for choosing this venture for investment is the extent and amount of social capital that this venture is capable of attracting. In a span of 6 months, over 300,000 students have benefited from over 2,400 online lessons and specialized courses on cracking various competitive examinations, on their platform. In a country like India, where quality education is not affordable to all, this initiative has a huge potential. With the advent of Jio the internet service providers have become very price competitive which have further helped in the expansion of Unacademy. As of now, Unacademy provides their services free and provides an option for voluntary decision. In future they might come up with a revenue model in which some of their products will require a payment. Overall, it’s an investment worth making because if not financially, this project has a potential to provide huge turnover in terms of social benefit.

If I had absolute political power over India for one day, I would like to overhaul the entire education system and the education budget. Only 3.7% of GDP is spent on education, which is in reality the most important sector of any socio-economic setup. Finland whose education system is considered to be the best in the word spends around 6.5% of their GDP on education. I would increase the education budget to about 5% of GDP. Our education system has many flaws, one of which is extreme focus on memory based learning. As Albert Einstein rightly said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand”. I would make all the examinations open book and analytical. Instead of incentivizing students to come to the school, I would try to make teaching as a profession lucrative even to talented students who recently complete their education. Along with this, I would give a timeline to existing teachers for a test in their respective subjects and those performing below a predetermined level will be asked to retire voluntarily. Their pension and retirement benefits will be as per the actual contract. These are a few things that I would like to do.