March 28, 2025 • 54 mins
How do you scale a product to 70M+ users without spending a dime on marketing?
Deepak Joy Cheenath (Co-founder of Quizizz) reveals:
✅ The moment Quizizz found its viral growth loop
✅ How teacher-driven adoption fueled massive organic scale
✅ The mistakes they made along the way—and what they learned
✅ Why they held off on monetisation for years (and why it paid off)
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
02:15 – The early days of Quizizz & WizenWorld
05:40 – The teacher-driven insight that changed everything
09:10 – Scaling to 70M+ users with zero marketing
12:30 – Why Quizizz delayed monetisation
20:20 – The lean team behind a global product
28:30 – Key challenges & lessons from scaling
36:50 – Competing with larger EdTech players
45:15 – The power of community & word-of-mouth growth
49:30 – Key insights & takeaways for founders
Prime Venture Partners backed Quizizz early, helping them scale from a startup to a global EdTech leader.
🎙 Key Takeaways from This Episode:
📌 Growth isn’t always about paid marketing—sometimes, organic adoption wins.
📌 The right users can be your biggest growth engine.
📌 Delaying monetisation can lead to long-term success.
📌 Simplicity scales—more features don’t always mean better engagement.
💡 What’s the biggest lesson from Quizizz’s journey that applies to your business? Drop your thoughts in the comments! 👇
🎙 This episode is packed with insights for founders, product leaders, and anyone scaling a startup. Don’t miss it—watch or listen now! 🚀👇
Follow Prime Venture Partners:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primevp_in/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Primevp_in
#Quizizz #EdTech #StartupGrowth #ZeroMarketing #ProductLedGrowth #FounderLessons #ScalingStartups #TeacherDriven #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #SuccessStory #UserAdoption #MarketingStrategy #PrimeVenturePartnersPodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
They have caught lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Pre-pandemic, we were at roughly you know, I think 25
million monthly active users.
Today we sit at around over 70million monthly active users.
Looking back, I don't think weknew anything about anything.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
How come you guys are not thinking about monetization
.
And then we'd come out of themeeting saying, wow, they're
growing so fast.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Those, you know, five years that we weren't making
any money.
These were probably the winsthat you know kept us going
right.
Not a day that goes by, when atleast quizzes used in 150
distinct countries essentiallysummarizes, make learning fun
bombarded with so much, you know, stimulating content.
While we had built it for kidsto use was actually teachers who
(00:43):
were driving the adoption rightGiving teachers a fun way to
conduct an assessment with theirkids, but letting them feed in
the content.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Hi everybody, sanjay Swamy here, and I'm here with
Deepak, one of the co-foundersof what today is known as
Quizzes.
But when we met Deepak, heconstituted 50% of the company
and his co-founder, ankit, wasthe other 50%, a company called
Wizen World, and we met themsometime in early February.
(01:17):
They had this game and thenthey came back two weeks later
and said well, there's this newthing we have started and it
seems to be getting some moretraction and we think you should
take a look at it.
And that was the start of anamazing journey we have had over
the last nine and a half years,close to 10 years now.
(01:39):
So, deepak, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks, sanjay, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So maybe we can start right there.
Deepak, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Sanjay, Glad to be here, so maybe we can start right
there.
Deepak, right, what got you andAnkit together and what got you
started?
What was your initialmotivation to be in this sector
and how have you know, maybe thefirst part of the journey of
what led to Quizzes itself?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, sure, and I think, yeah, yeah, so me and
ankit, you know, we actually uh,met each other for the first
time in college.
You know it was quite acoincidence that, you know, out
of 800 kids, we got paired asroommates.
And that's when you know, uh,at bits, yeah, it's palani and
uh, we also happen to be in thesame branch, which is also a
(02:24):
nice coincidence.
It doesn't usually happen.
So so, yeah, we were togetherthe whole four years in college
and I think, you know we bothenjoyed, you know, playing
around with little apps and wedid projects together, and so I
think that's, you know, how weinitially got to know each other
and knew each other for likefour years in college and it was
(02:44):
around two years after wegraduated.
You know we were both working.
I was at Amazon, ankit was at acompany called Opera Solutions
and we, you know, ankit actuallycame to visit me, just
generally, you know, for acatch-up in.
I was at Hyderabad, he was inDelhi.
So you know we hung out andthat's when, you know, ankit
(03:06):
said you know, why don't youknow, do you want to think about
doing something together?
And I was like, yeah, why not?
You know, uh, you know better.
You know, now is as good a timeas any, I suppose, uh, and I
think, looking back, I don'tthink we knew anything about
anything.
So we, we were just, you know,probably pumped to build
something, and at Amazon,definitely while I learned a lot
(03:29):
from my short time theredefinitely not a place where you
can build anything.
You want pretty big company.
So I think I look forward tothat.
And so we actually didn't reallyhave education as the only
domain we wanted to be in.
We actually explored a bunch ofideas for the next couple of
(03:50):
months.
We would just chat on the phoneand uh, but interestingly, when
we, you know, hit upon, youknow, edtech and thought about,
you know, building somethingwhich you could essentially
summarize as make learning fun,I think that idea just appealed
to us, you know, I think it feltlike something we would enjoy
building.
We, you know, looked at whatwas out there in the market and
it felt like there was a bigneed.
(04:11):
You know, kids were beingbombarded with so much, you know
, stimulating content, you know,whether it's social media.
Oh, we never really felt therewas a big risk or anything.
You know, I think that was onenice thing out of, you know,
sitting in interviews, I feltlike I'll, you know, even after
a year, I think I can pass aninterview, you can get a job.
So with that confidence, we,and just with this seed of an
(04:33):
idea, we quit.
And I think we knew that wedidn't know much about this
field and I think one of thesmart things we did early on was
go to a school and, just, youknow, use that as our test bed,
right, so we would every weeksort of build something and show
it to a small group of kidsthere and I think a lot of our
learnings came from that.
(04:54):
Actually, versus you know,sitting in your you know
apartment or whatever anddreaming up big things, you know
, every week, you know, justmaking little progress and
showing it and seeing whatworked didn't work but okay so.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So that was like sort of the early discovery,
interacting with the end user,was the, the kids and and so on.
And then, um, how long was thatphase?
And then what led to you knowwhat the real start of of a
product?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
uh, the first really interesting learning was we saw
that, while we had built it forkids to use, it was actually
teachers who were driving theadoption.
Right, teachers found it and wecould see, right, like we would,
uh, you know, obsess over ourgoogle analytics in those days
and just see, uh like, oh,there's a new user in the us or
australia or whatever, and uh,we would always see them pop up
(05:45):
in like a group of 20, 25devices in one place, and we
could, you know, we were able toconnect the dots and see that
teachers are, you know, usingthis with kids.
And so I think, from that pointon, a lot of our journey was
really around empoweringteachers, right, and what we
realized is, while we had setoff to essentially, you know,
make kids eat their veggies froma learning point of view, right
(06:09):
, that, uh, we thought, you know, we'll make these veggies so
tasty that they'll come, and youknow skip the sweets and nice
analogy but what we realized isyou know, if you put somebody in
with the tastiest veggies andsweets and cakes and you know,
donuts, they will eat all of itespecially if it's kids who are
you know yet to learn the valueof you know some of these.
(06:31):
You know delayed gratificationin the other things, and so what
we realized is why do kids eatveggies?
is because their parents makethem and force the kids to eat
them, right, and so if we canmake that easy, right, like,
essentially, you know, give theteachers a few easy recipes,
then maybe that's what willreally work.
And so from that point on, westarted building it around
(06:55):
teachers and that's what reallyled to the pivot uh, for quizzes
as well.
Right, because with wise andworld and you know, you had met
us even in the Wizenworld daysand the big sort of bottleneck
to that product's growth wasthat we were the gatekeepers of
content In a way.
We were really limiting howmuch teachers could do with that
(07:16):
product and we were, in ourview, building it really fast.
We were doing automations andwhatnot.
But the reality is, lookingback, we had built probably,
like you know, 0.1% of what youknow, or not even that much of
what exists or probably existedon quizzes you know.
A year later, right, becauseunlocking it for teachers, and
(07:38):
that's when really the genesisof quizzes was giving teachers a
fun way to conduct anassessment with their kids, but
letting them feed in the content, right, and yeah, you know,
that's sort of the seed that Ithink you know very quickly we
could see that this was really agame changer, right Like just
opening it up to teachers andthen we just followed their lead
(07:59):
, you know, in terms of whatthey asked.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
At some point.
You know, I know when we met,we did a reference call with one
of the teachers, I think in theuk, and she used this
extraordinary expression sayingthey have caught lightning in
the bottle and I think at thetime quizzes probably had 20
teachers and maybe 400 kids onthe platform using it.
So it's probably two to threeweeks old at the time.
(08:24):
And recently I was talking withAnkit and he said that teacher
is still using quizzes and stilla big goal fan.
So it kind of felt likesomething magical was happening
here and, of course, when youuse the product, you could see
that it was just a lot of funand very playful in the way in
(08:45):
which it's done right.
And of course, as I mentioned atthe start of this podcast, it
was you and Ankit at the timeand I think when we invested, I
think you hired one engineer andthat also continued for quite
some time.
I mean, we used to keep sayingwhere is the rest of the team?
And we said, okay, we have onehire, right.
But what used to keep happeningis we used to meet almost
(09:07):
weekly I think at the time, andthese guys would have
extraordinary analytics andcharts and graphs and beautiful
visuals, which I think was acore competency that someone
between the two of you, you know, you all had.
Yeah.
Ankit is really great.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Ankit is great.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Okay, now we know who writes the code and who makes
it look good.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
But you know, I think there was something magical
about how you know that keptworking.
And one anecdote is you know,we used to always push the team
saying, hey, you need to startsome monetization.
And they would say yeah, yeah,yeah, we'll do that, we'll do
that.
And they'd come back the nextweek and say no monetization.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
but we grew 30% week on week and that would happen
week after week after week, andwe'd go in at the start of the
meeting saying, how come youguys are not thinking about
monetization?
And then we'd come out of themeeting saying, wow, they're
growing so fast.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But I think one of the keys was you kept the team
very lean and your coststructure really low.
Right, so you were able.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat thinking.
And that continued even postthe series a when nexus came in,
and I think for a good four tofive years you just stayed ultra
lean and just kept growing.
Share a little bit about those,the thinking there and and the
journey yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So I think, uh, I think, at least with me and
ankit, I think we always justran it in a way that made sense
to us first principles, right.
So when we were, I think we sawthe value in kind of the growth
we were getting for the littleburn we had right, and we felt
like it was a good choice tokeep that running as far as we
(10:45):
could do it.
But we also realized that weweren't making any money right,
so we didn't want to throw themoney away and essentially, you
know, we said let's stay leanand let's see how long we can
really be a product like growthcompany and we really did feel
like we had, you know, the rightsize team to build that product
right.
(11:05):
And I think, you know,initially we really struggled
with hiring.
But you know, I think within ayear or so we were around a 1520
member team.
Our second hire was a recruiterand that helped us get to that
you know reasonable threshold ina pretty short time.
And then we felt like we haveyou, you know, a solid team that
(11:26):
can do this.
And it was really a very younggroup, a lot of kids out of
college and uh, but I think youknow, we were all really
passionate about what we werebuilding and that worked well
and I think it allowed us toactually build, you know, even,
a lot of the brand we have today.
Of right, you know, being veryteacher first and I think that's
what you know carries us eventill now, uh, but, yeah, it was
(11:47):
sort of a choice based out ofthe constraints we had.
Right like today people, youknow, like one of our, you know,
nice claims is that we grewwith zero marketing and you know
, uh, performance marketingspent and the reason is we had
no money to do performancemarketing but we found ways to
then keep that growth happening,uh, but that definitely meant
(12:09):
that we couldn't waste money on,you know, things like that.
Yeah, so that journey, I wouldsay through until almost the
series b uh, was a good sixyears yeah, I'd say five plus
yeah, and I think the last twoyears of that five years, we
were actually working onmonetization.
(12:29):
So, you know, if you recall, wetried ad revenue.
We tried, you know, premiumcontent for students.
We tried even, you know,tutoring as a service,
connecting, you know, teachersto students.
We tried, you like, you knoweven gamification, you know,
seeing if kids would pay for,you know, like a fun element, or
parents would pay.
(12:50):
So we tried a lot of things butultimately we settled on, you
know, what ended up being ourcore model, which is the
subscription based revenue modelwhere teachers and now, you
know, schools pay for, you know,access to, you know, the full
breadth of quizzes,functionality.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So, deepak, maybe before we get into that phase,
let's talk a little bit aboutthe scale you all got to right,
even as a free product, I thinkour seed round was a little more
than half a million dollars,and then I think the series A
round was also not that big.
It was like three, three anda.5 million type of a thing and
you hadn't even spent probablymore than half of that, like $2
(13:30):
million spent over five, sixyears with an ultra-lean team
and no marketing.
But you know you were stillseeing a lot of love with the
teacher community.
I remember you guys would go toSXSW and you know the teachers
would be jumping over each otherwanting to show how they were
using quizzes and stuff.
So you know, during that phase,you know you saw extraordinary
(13:56):
growth.
Right, tell us a little bit sopeople understand.
You know what scale you wereoperating at.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, I think, you know, probably around four years
into it we had gotten to, Iremember, like you know, three
months into our journey, we gotto students solving a million
questions on the platform rightIn March, which was, you know,
just around the time you werespeaking, you know, just around
(14:25):
the time you were speaking andthose were, you know, pretty
insane numbers compared to whatwe had seen with, you know,
weisenwald, just because it hadjust opened up the floodgates
when we let teachers do whatthey wanted with it, right, uh,
but as you mentioned that, Ifelt I always look back at it as
we had a very steady butconsistent growth, right.
So, because it was largelydriven through word of mouth, it
(14:46):
wasn't that, you know, one daywe were looking at it, so the
growth happened, and next monthwe were focusing somewhere else,
so it, you know, dipped it.
We just really focused onbuilding the product and, you
know, rapidly improving that andthat led to, essentially, you
know, like every month it was abigger base that was championing
(15:07):
you Right, and so you know thatcompounding effect really added
up over the years and so, whileI don't think we ever had like
a viral growth, I do feel wewere able to sort of have this
very steady and, you know, uh,fairly good sort of, you know,
like a monthly growth numberthat we were able to really
maintain.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
What scale, in terms of absolute number of MAUs, did
you hit?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so you know, pre-pandemic, we were at roughly
, you know I think, 25 millionmonthly active users and that is
, I think you know, like a goodprobably, maybe you know 0.5% of
the total market you can hit.
And if you talk about likepeople with devices and all that
(15:55):
, probably you know 4, 5, 10% ofyou know the addressable market
in those days.
So, but yeah, that's where wewere and today we sit at around,
you know, uh, over 70 millionmonthly active users wow, so
maybe we can talk, step back alittle bit and explain to our
listeners what does quizzes do?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
yeah, right, so in fact, that's a thing that has
evolved quite a bit, yeah, butI'm saying at that stage right,
and you had the 25 million maus,and then we can come to the so,
uh, at that stage, yeah, Ithink our uh, you know, I think,
where quiz was really workingwas in the us in particular.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Right, where, even in those days, around half the
schools in the us had teachersactively using quizzes.
Right, at least some teachersusing our product, uh and uh.
So, yeah, what it didessentially was allow a teacher
to conduct an assessment withtheir students in a really fun
(16:56):
way, right.
And now, uh, I see assessmentand a lot of people might think
you know when, you know,depending on where you're from,
you know, quiz or assessment,all these things have different
connotations, but essentially itwas used in multiple ways.
Right, it was used as a, youknow, self-paced, you know
classwork assignment.
It was used as a homework, itwas used as a fun friday
(17:18):
activity.
It was used in all theseinteresting ways because, if you
really boil down, you know whathappens in a school.
It is essentially, you know,half of it is consuming content,
which sometimes the teacher isdelivering.
Sometimes you're reading a book, sometimes you're watching a
video, and the other half isapplying those learnings, which,
in more often than not, boilsdown to answering a question.
(17:40):
Right, and so that's where youknow, while it seems like such a
simple idea?
Uh, it actually is a thing thathappens a lot in every
classroom or anywhere wherelearning is happening.
Right is, you are applyingthose learnings, and that's
where quizzes came in,essentially, and became a real
mainstay for a lot of teachersgot it got.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So the first phase, I would say till that 2019-2020
phase, was really ramping up theusage for in-classroom for the
most part and then slowlybleeding to the home and, of
course, one of the biggestinteresting challenges you all
had was people did not haveconnected devices in the
classroom, although I rememberthe state of Texas was probably
(18:22):
the first one or amongst thefirst.
But I remember the state ofTexas was probably the first one
or amongst the first and wecould almost draw.
If you drew a timeline of wherequizzes was adopted.
It probably mirrored the adventof the internet into the
classrooms or connected devicesfor children.
So that was sort of the firstphase, largely US-focused, maybe
some more developed countrieshaving it.
(18:45):
But you used to seeextraordinary love from the
students, from the teachers.
You know you'd see Twitterstuff.
So explain a little bit of howthat made you all feel right.
Because none of it wasnecessarily solicited.
People are just sharing theirlove for the product and the
company.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, I think you know when we those, you know
five years that we weren'tmaking any money, these were the
wins that you know kept usgoing right, because numbers
will only motivate you so much,uh, especially when they're, you
know, non-monetary, so, uh, butyeah, I think you know what
helped us.
You know some of the you knowhard lessons we learned.
(19:26):
You know building those gamesfor students in the wizen world.
You know the year and a half wedid that.
I think that gave us a reallygood instinct, for you know what
kids like, right, and it wasactually very interesting
because you know, initiallyyou'll, you know you make one
game and then you know you makesomething simple and it works
and your obvious next thought ismake something more fancy,
(19:46):
right, like, add more bells andwhistles.
And one thing we learned reallyearly on is that actually
doesn't help.
You know, take a game likechess right, it hasn't changed
for you know, like thousands ofyears, right, and it's still
such a popular game and it'sbecause of the other person,
right, like that format supports.
You know, this greatinteraction, right, and that's
(20:09):
kind of what we learned withquizzes as well is really we are
there to create these momentsin a classroom, right, like a
moment of a kid answering aquestion and getting a kick out
of it.
You know, a leaderboard thatyou know brings some sort of
competition and we found ways tosort of blend, you know, uh,
like this fun activity withsomething that actually, you
(20:29):
know, solved a lot of the coreproblems that teachers were
grappling with, which was one is, you know, kids are just not
interested in doing this boringcontent, right, but the moment
you, you know, if you just tellthe kid, hey, run, you know it's
not really fun.
But if you put five kidstogether and say let's see who
gets to the end fastest, it's avery different feeling, right.
(20:52):
So that worked for some kind,some set of, you know, say, the
competitive kids, right, thenthere is a big segment of kids
who are afraid of, you know,maybe even being heard in a
classroom.
Right, this gave them a way to,you know, engage, right, like
it's very different when ateacher says you know who knows
the answer to this?
So always the same usualsuspects that raise their hands.
But this gave every kid achance to try.
(21:12):
Okay, if they get it wrong, youknow it'll show them a funny
image and say you know, tryagain, right.
And those were some of the coredynamics that really actually
teachers appreciate it Right.
We built in, like you know, veryorganic ways for kids to who
get it wrong, to reattempt aquestion and cover for that.
So it was never built as a wayto label a child but rather a
(21:33):
way for a child to practice and,you know, overcome some of
their hesitation and, you know,make it a lot more of an
inviting experience.
And I think that's whatteachers also realized and what
they really appreciated was thatenergy that they could see
right both from.
You know the toppers of theclass, if you know, if you put
(21:53):
it that way but along, but alsoyou know the bot, the other, you
know the main segment of theclass that is often not super
pumped about.
You know academics and theydon't necessarily see it as
their strength, right, uh, butmaking you know something that
even they found enjoyable Ithink was a huge unlock for
teachers because otherwise itputs it's a lot of pressure to
(22:14):
try to create that yourselfright, and that is one of the
places I think education reallysolves that need of helping.
You know, I think if there's oneteacher and one student, you
don't need quizzes, you know alot of tech really is not needed
.
You can do well with just awhiteboard, but the moment you
have five kids itself it'salmost an impossible task.
(22:34):
You know.
Two kids itself is twice astough.
But 25, 30, 50 kids, that'swhen it becomes really just
impossible and that's wheresomething you know, that's where
technology can actually come inand help that teacher.
Really, you know, engage thisbroad group at you know their
own level in a way.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, so that sort of summarizes the first phase, um,
the second phase was, let's say, a little bit about the
monetization phase, or the earlymonetization, the experiments
you did, etc.
And then probably the thirdphase, which is now, is probably
just this whole advent of AIand how we all have been
(23:13):
leveraging it, and then we cantalk perhaps a little bit about
the future.
Beyond that, and the secondphase sort of also sadly
coincided with the pandemic, andyou know, obviously that was a
very exciting time from aquizzes product and, you know,
opportunity perspective, butobviously a lot of other
(23:34):
challenges.
How did you all make the switch?
I do recall one anecdote whichwe had discussed, that you know,
of course the parents will payfor this, but when you try to go
down that path, you know youwere told, well, you know this
is only going to favor the richkids and you should not think so
.
That became a sort of anon-starter um.
(23:55):
And so tell us a little bitabout how you know you did some
experiments and how did youarrive at a viable you know,
financial model for the company?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
yeah.
So I think, uh, when it youknow, yeah, I would say even you
know, uh, when it you know,yeah, I would say even you know,
till date, you know, havinginfrared devices, internet in a
classroom is something that is arequirement, you know, to
really use quizzes.
But I think, yeah, so thepandemic definitely, you know,
really flipped the tables in away, because suddenly everybody
(24:27):
had the internet and devices,because they were at home and or
, if they didn't, then they wereessentially not there, right,
uh, but people did, you know,thankfully, you know, most
people were able to somehow, youknow, get, even if it's on a
mobile phone, uh, access to, youknow, their kids to learn this
(24:47):
way.
And that is where I think wewere also lucky that, as you
know, engineers and productbuilders, I don't think we ever
anticipated I mean, I am sure wedidn't anticipate a pandemic,
but we, we had actually built itin a way to support these
diverse needs right.
So we always built it in a waythat if a kid is at home, it
should work, you know, justbecause I think, as engineers,
(25:10):
we thought, you know, we shouldsupport it right.
And that really served us wellwhen the pandemic happened,
because suddenly we were justready to, you know, capitalize
on that.
You know this what we call thenthe new normal right, and so
teachers all over the world wereable to just pick it up.
And the other thing that wealways focused on was which it
(25:31):
should be super easy to use.
Teachers should not need anysort of training, and again,
that helped because of all theoptions they had, teachers found
that quizzes at least is usableand so it picked up like crazy,
you know, like you know, say, atypical school maybe has you
know, 50, 100, maybe a fewhundred teachers in those days,
(25:51):
I think every week we would have, you know, around 20 000
teachers sign up on quizzes.
You know new teachers and youknow we had essentially one
person doing support and thateventually became all of us
doing support with that person,because it was just crazy, right
, the amount of like every day.
It's like, you know, like acouple of hundred schools are
(26:14):
picking up your productessentially and not, you know,
and it's actually worse than acouple of hundred because people
from every country, every youknow background you can imagine,
and uh, so it was, yeah,definitely like a very
challenging but I'd say superexciting time for all of us.
You know who, who doesn't.
It's a good problem to havePlus.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
you also, as a team, are certainly working remotely
and distributed and all of thatstuff.
So one thing I don't mean tosay anything to jinx you all,
but I've never heard anybodycomplain about oh, there's some
downtime at quizzes, or thesystem is, you know, not
functioning to things, etc.
Or the system is, you know, notfunctioning to things, etc.
Some you know this is notsomething where a company with
(26:56):
like 50, 60, 70 million monthlyactive users right, typically
will go through some ups anddowns.
So what did you all get?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
right, I think that was probably just a consequence
of having engineers at the helm,right, I think we always you
know, uh, you know, for whateverdownsides it might have.
Right, it took us five, sixyears to monetize and things
like you know, little issueslike that.
But uh, we, uh, that wassomething we were always, you
(27:29):
know, very much in control of,right, and we had our eyes.
I mean, we didn't have to workreally hard to know what it took
to have a stable system.
And, to, you know, build thesescalable systems came very
naturally to us.
And you know the new teammembers, you know you're able to
work with them and you know,because we were very frugal and
all of that, right, like youknow, we didn't.
(27:51):
You know, cloud hosting wasn'tan expense for us for a couple
of years.
Right, we just managed on freecredits and we were, you know, I
think, the kind of things wewere doing, though at the scale
we had, probably a lot of peoplewould spend five or even 10
times you know the amount oncloud hosting.
But I mean, like you know, whenyou funded us, I think maybe a
(28:13):
month before, that was when weactually switched from our free
tier, which is like the smallestyou know machine.
You can have like that,whatever T1 micro instance of
AWS.
But till then the Wizen worldwas running totally on two free
accounts of AWS, right, and thatitself had like 50,000, you
know, registered users and allof that.
(28:35):
So we were, I think we knew howto you know build those systems
and I think we've, you know,tried to maintain that.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Very cool, you know, but still, these things you know
can be taken for granted, butthey're not insignificant, right
?
There's the system stabilityand uptime.
There's the data issues dataprivacy.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You're having learning information around,
millions of children around theworld, Even being able to
support these many users forfree right Like only could
happen because we were quitelean.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Very cool, very cool.
For free, right like only couldhappen because we were quite
clean.
Yeah, very cool, very cool.
So, uh, the monetization uhexperiment started also around
the same time as the pandemic,when you're seeing crazy growth,
growth at number of users.
I recall there were a couple offinancing rounds that happened
back to back at the time, which,um, would have also been a bit
of a distraction, would probablyuh, helped, um, so what's the
model now?
What's the financial model ofthe company?
How would have also been a bitof a distraction, would probably
(29:32):
help.
So what's the model now?
What's the financial model ofthe company?
How does it make money?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, so essentially we sell a subscription product
to schools, right, and teachers,and when we first started it
you know, soon, like on theheels of the pandemic pretty
much, which was actually a coinlike or a thing we were working
on.
In fact, you know, from thebeginning of that year, 2020,
even before the pandemic reallykicked in, we had sort of
(30:01):
decided that we will do this youknow subscription model and we
had timed it for basically, youknow, september 2020, which is
when schools open up in the US.
So we said we'll be ready forit for the new school year with
this subscription product and sothat you know, we decided also
that we won't take anything awayfrom our free product and we'll
(30:23):
only add new things.
So then we were furiouslybuilding enough so that people
found value in you knowupgrading and then launched it
on you know the timeline we haddecided and.
But the great thing was, I think, from day zero I mean, I think
basically I could say a weekafter we launched this product
(30:44):
we were profitable, you know,and we've been able to be
profitable since then.
I think probably by the end ofthat year, we had recuperated
all our funding till date.
Till that day, uh and uh.
You know, uh, and we also had alittle money in the bank, so
you know we were in good shapeand we could see a path to
growing it and all of that, uh,but yeah, essentially today,
(31:05):
what has evolved since, you know, 2020 is that we built out sort
of the school side of thisproduct as well, and we continue
to build that, and so today,the majority of our revenue
comes from schools and evensometimes governments you know,
ministries of educationessentially buying quizzes to
support all their teachers.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, and are all the customers, the or the paying
customers, uh, still in the us,or do you have also
international customers?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So we've actually been able to diversify that as
well, and I think we're reallybullish on the potential of
quizzes outside of the US aswell.
Right, so I think in our earlyyears, I think two things have.
You know.
It's been, you know, nine plusyears, so I think even the world
has evolved a little since then.
But in those days, I think, andeven till today, the US is very
(31:53):
, you know, is very fertileground, I'd say, for like a
product led growth company, youknow, especially in edtech.
But the pandemic was sort of,you know, you know the jolt that
a lot of, I think countriesneeded to look seriously at
technology in the classroom andyou know it exposed a lot of
people to the benefits as well.
(32:14):
I think countries needed tolook seriously at technology in
the classroom and you know itexposed a lot of people to the
benefits as well.
And so, while you know again, alot of them went back to their
old ways.
After the pandemic it was still, you know, multiples more than
was pre-pandemic right, andsince then we've seen a steady
growth Now with the you know,advent or you know, popularity
of AI since 2022 and 3, eventhat has again forced a lot of
(32:37):
people to think about that.
They need to equip theirschools and students and
teachers with the righttechnology if they expect to be
relevant in the future.
So I think, uh, we've had some,really, I think, sort of.
What is very heartening to seeis a lot of our success again
(32:57):
has been on the back of, youknow, this product working right
.
It's not been a lot ofmarketing or, uh, you know, in
fact, most of our marketingefforts go into community
development, right, we just tryto, you know, be there with our
teachers, you know, try, youknow a lot of that helps us both
learn from them about theirevolving needs are, uh, but also
(33:20):
, you know, helps us create anice buzz around you know, what
we're doing and that, you know,being present at events and
things like that has been, youknow, the backbone of our
strategy and even supportingteachers to actually organize
learning events in their schoolsand that drives a lot of our
growth and a lot of you know say, for example, one of our big
success stories is, you know, astate in Brazil that pretty much
(33:43):
, you know, exclusively usesquizzes for all their
assignments and homework and ithas been, you know, a tremendous
success there, right, one ofthe few edtech implementations
that has not only met but farexceeded their expectations.
And you know, today we are inconversation with multiple other
states, in brazil as well, onthe back of this success.
But you know they've well over,you know, I think, doubled or
(34:08):
tripled.
You know, the expectations theyhad in that state.
Wonderful, yeah so.
And you know now we are seeing,for example, you know, good
growth in Taiwan, for example,and in Indonesia.
You know UK, you know Canada,Australia.
So while quizzes fortunatetoday to actually be, you know,
present in pretty much, you knowthere's not a day that goes by
(34:30):
when, at least you know quizzesused in 150, you know, present
in pretty much, you know there'snot a day that goes by when, at
least you know quizzes used in150,.
You know distinct countries, youknow, by teachers there, and
you know, I think you know, asyou mentioned, right, we're, you
know, we've always been good atgrowth and we're still learning
.
You know how to monetize andyou know find the right products
and you know in differentcountries, you know find the
(34:51):
right products.
And you know, in differentcountries, though, the
monetization strategy we'verealized will vary, right and uh
, while bottoms up works reallywell in the us right, where
teachers have a voice and theydrive a lot of these decisions,
uh, but even in the us, forexample, a lot of decisions are
also top down right and so sortof you know getting closer to
administrators and so sort ofyou know getting closer to
(35:12):
administrators and building outsort of a product that really
solves important needs for themas well is something that you
know is evolving at Quizzes andwe believe will be a big part of
you know our global growthstory.
But we're already, you know,I'd say, seeing you know 15
percent, 20 percent of ourrevenues coming outside of the
(35:35):
us.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, in terms of usage, where does india stand?
And you know how has the growthbeen in in india itself.
I know y'all don't make aconscious effort on any specific
geography, perhaps other thanthe us, um, but yeah, I love to
hear you know.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
So India has been interesting.
I'd say India is probably oneof the countries that we've made
multiple attempts at growing,you know like, in different ways
.
Sure, yeah, of course, right,we would love to see quizzes
being used more.
I think quizzes it'sinteresting, like recently I'd
gone to, you know sort of ayoung entrepreneur budding
(36:13):
entrepreneur event at you know,my alma mater, BITS in Goa, and
there were around 190 kids whohad come for this, you know,
from schools all over India andprobably you know good schools,
I'm guessing.
And you know, before I spoke, Ijust thought I'll ask them how
many of you have heard ofquizzes and I thought maybe you
know five.
I spoke, I just thought I'llask them how many of you have
(36:33):
heard of quizzes and I thoughtmaybe you know five.
Ten will raise their hands butinterestingly, I think at least
80 percent of the kids raisedtheir hands and all of them said
we used it during the pandemic.
So that's, I think you know,maybe a summary of our sort of
story here is, I think, postpandemic.
Most schools have gone back tosort of the you know traditional
(36:54):
ways.
We, you know pen and paper andall of that and I think india is
still sort of, you know,finding its feet in terms of how
to leverage technology.
I think it gets used in a lotof other, like basically on
admin and you know, for markingattendance and maybe sharing
reports, but when it comes toactually learning, a lot of that
(37:15):
still happens.
You know the old way and sothat's sort of my observation so
far, and you know we'veactually built out, you know,
unique technologies to actuallysupport classrooms that don't
have devices.
You know, you might know aboutsort of paper mode where
essentially kids can answerquestions with, you know, QR
code itself and teachers can,you know, quickly scan that and
(37:35):
while it works pretty well, Ithink it is more of a mindset
thing, I feel, more than infrathing.
I think you know the Indiansystem is still sort of very.
You know we are so resultoriented, right, that I think
what works works and you know we, you know people are a little
(37:56):
hesitant to try things and Ithink for good reason, because
there's so much at stake for,you know, these competitive
exams and all of that.
Until we have that sort ofsystem, I think you know people
will tread lightly with, youknow, experimenting, whereas a
lot of other countries where,say, your performance on a test
is only part of your, say,ticket to getting into a college
(38:17):
.
Right, there is your you know,your projects and your you know
score in your you know school,you know, you know assessments
and so many things that you knowan essay and all these things
that go into it, Whereas inIndia it's so you know, focused
on you know, just like sometimesone exam right and so people
then you know.
Maybe the right thing for thatsystem is to really zone in on
(38:41):
what that needs.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, so last couple of years has been an interesting
time also with the advent ofGen AI, and I know you used to
do a lot of controlledexperiments around it.
But you know, suddenly therewas a strong impetus and we have
(39:03):
seen a lot of exciting demos.
Maybe you can talk a little bitabout how the product has
evolved in this whole AI world,and in some ways you know AI
world and, uh uh, in some waysyou know what.
What are some of the new thingsy'all are working on?
And and?
Speaker 2 (39:17):
so on.
Uh, so I think, when you know,I think the whole world got
really excited about AI whenchat GPT came out, Right I think
.
I don't know years ago, yeahright, yeah so, uh, I think we
saw that and I think all of usrealized that.
You know, if we don't be at theforefront of this wave, then
(39:38):
we'll, you know, be going under,right, that wave, and you know
that still, I think, is a verystrong sentiment.
Uh, at quizzes today, right,where, I think, a few months
after that, you know weessentially, you know sort of
you know listed down all theseways that AI can, you know,
support, you know what we'redoing at quizzes, and I don't
(40:00):
think there was anything whereAI didn't feel like it could be
a game changer, right, whetherit's creating content, whether
(40:22):
it's adapting content that'sthere whether it's grading,
whether it's, you know, studentsupport, whether it's
differentiation, like and Ithink it again stems from, you
know, the core problem of oneteacher has to cater to 30, 40,
50 kids, right, and that is, youknow, impossible for a human to
do, right, and that's where webelieve, you know, ai is going
(40:42):
to make a huge impact in allthese aspects.
And so I think a big part ofour early journey was around
content creation.
And you know, you know building, building, you know this AI
tool like functionality in a waythat empowered a teacher to
adapt what they are doing.
Right, it wasn't really, again,you know, like, while in the
(41:02):
early days, and you know, evennow, I think AI does a great
demo, right, like you can make avideo, that's mind, you know,
like with SORA.
You know, these AI generatedvideos are mind blowing, right,
a lot of these.
But ultimately, you know, it'snot that that video is like the
ad that you put out at the SuperBowl, you know, or even on TV,
(41:23):
yeah Right, there is a lot ofwork to get it ready and I think
we all see that in a couple ofyears, that'll probably all be
different, right, but today, andyou know when I you know, even
in 2023, I think our realizationwas that we need to help
teachers to use ai.
That's again, you know what isthe need, because it's only a
(41:43):
teacher who will be able to makeit fit the syllabus.
It's only a teacher that'sgoing to be able to know what
you know.
A kid who is struggling reallyneeds to be seeing you know, or
what they need in their classtomorrow.
And you know, I think webelieve that quizzes is really
in a sweet spot, because we'vegot these millions of users and
(42:03):
we've got this technology thatreally needs them to make it
work and, as you know, we getbetter.
I think you know we'll usethose learnings to make it
better and better and we'll seehow things evolve.
But really, today, that's whatwe are pumped about.
Right Is, how do we make thiswork for teachers and, you know,
leverage their help to actuallybring this to a classroom?
(42:27):
Right, because today it's notthat anybody is making their
textbook from ai, that thistextbook is still there, and
it's about, you know, using aito pick from there and create an
assessment, create, you know, alesson plan for tomorrow, and
that's where you know we arefocused on.
You know what can save teacherstime and leveraging their
(42:47):
judgment to know where to youknow, pick up the reins from ai
and, you know, take things intotheir own hands.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, and I'd seen some early demos of you know
point to a YouTube video andthen you can use the quizzes
database to like, if it's atopic on American history or
something like that, then youknow you can read the video and
then immediately look at yourdatabase and come up with an
awesome relevant quiz and thingslike that.
Then you can read the video andthen immediately look at your
database and come up with anawesome relevant quiz and things
like that.
Very cool.
So that's sort of the journeyso far, which has obviously been
(43:18):
super exciting, and I think itwas fascinating as I was
entering the building to seesix-floor building, almost all
the floors having quizzes onthem, and it's been quite a
journey.
But of course the best is yetto come.
So, uh, what is the strategic?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
direction in which you see quizzes evolving, um,
yeah, so I think, in fact, thebiggest change that we've been
working on for the past in factyear or two, right, is that, you
know, we've realized that we've, you know, built a core
competency in terms of how tomake, you know how to bring
technology, you know, make itaccessible for a teacher and a
(43:58):
student, right, and you know westarted, and you know I think
there's a lot of depth in the,you know, quiz assessment, you
know, practice space.
But we're also looking at how dowe support other jobs to be
done, right, like how do we takea lesson and make that
something that you know isenjoyable for a student to
consume and that you know allowsa teacher to maybe take a, you
(44:21):
know, maybe, what wouldotherwise be a one-way broadcast
and, you know, pull studentsinto that experience, right.
So you know deliveringinstruction, different
modalities of learning, right,like sometimes you learn from,
you know, text, right, like apassage or an article.
Sometimes you learn by watchinga video.
So how do we support theseformats?
(44:42):
And, again, you know, you knowbring that fun element and that
interactive element to it sothat, you know, even if they are
veggies, at least you knowthey're made, uh, you know, uh,
lightly fried and tasty, astasty as you can, yeah, yeah
right, and so that's been a lotof the last year of our journey
(45:04):
is, you know, supporting newformats, supporting really all
the ways in which a teacher youknow tries to deliver
instruction.
And then you know sort of thatwhole how we describe it as you
know the teacher, you know theyhave an I do, a we do and a you
do.
So first the teacher does it, Ido it, I'll show you how it's
done.
And there again, you know youcan bring a bit of interactivity
(45:28):
into that as well, so thatyou're not just having kids zone
out after 30 minutes ofsomebody talking to them but,
you know, pop in a littlequestion, interactive activity,
so that you know they are pulledback into the instruction.
Then there is the we do where ateacher is maybe going through
a problem and showing them howit's done and then handing
(45:49):
slowly, you know giving thereins to the kids, but you know
supporting it.
And then there is the you dowhere a teacher says, okay, now
you know, do your best.
And that's when a teacher needs,uh, basically eyes and ears on
what's happening, right.
And again it's a thing wherequizzes can help, right, where
spotty kids doing, you know,their own assignments on their
(46:09):
own screens spotty kids doing,you know, their own assignments
on their own screens.
A teacher can, uh, kind of seewhich five kids really need help
and go work with them, whereasthe kids who are, you know,
doing really well quizzes, youknow, and that too, and now with
the help of ai, can actuallymaybe give them another
assignment.
And the kids who are, you know,sort of on track, you know, it
works for them.
And now a teacher can just befree of all of that and focus on
(46:30):
these five kids which no ai canteach, you know, on track, you
know it works for them.
And now a teacher can just befree of all of that, yeah, and
focus on these five kids which,no, ai can teach, you know.
But they really need to notjust show them the material but
probably, you know, work withthem emotionally as well, right,
like, encourage them a little,you know, give them a little
treat to you know, get them toyou know, give something a try
which you know they probablyfeel like they can't do.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
I also noticed you've added like accommodations and
lots of capabilities in theproduct as well.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah right, A lot of ways for teachers to support the
varied learning needs and theways that students want to, you
know, express themselves.
So you know, universal designfor learning accommodations.
These are things that, again,we really believe.
Tech is a big enabler for itand I think we see ourselves as
being at the forefront of thatwave as well.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
yeah, cool so, uh, look, I think all this has been
awesome.
Maybe we can talk a little bitas we uh wrap up on the, the
culture of the team, the company, how we all have uh fun.
You know how you stay so closeto the customer despite being,
you know, neither the theprototype customer nor in the
(47:35):
same geography, and a little bitabout you know you and ankith
have become avid runners.
Uh, you know the culture that'scome into the company around
that.
You know, um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
So I think, uh, I think one of the big unlocks for
us early on, you know, wasreally how, if we just listen to
teachers, you know, a lot ofproblems get solved.
Or, you know, listen to ourusers, you know, teachers,
students or, you know, now evenadmins and principals.
So I think that has really beenclose to our hearts, right.
Even when we hire and look forpeople who will be leaders, we
(48:09):
look for people who haveinternalized that right that if
you are guided by your users andnot by, you know, trying to do
something cool or showing themhow it's done, it is really, you
know, a service mindset in thatsense, and I think we invest a
lot in terms of opening up newchannels, right, I think, being
a, you know, product developmentcompany, largely, you know,
(48:31):
sitting out of india, out ofIndia, I think we've, in fact,
gotten a lot of leverage fromactually having some people on
the ground as well.
We have a sizable marketing andsales team in the US that keeps
bringing in.
Most of those people areactually people who were
teachers earlier and we'veintensely tried to keep it that
(48:51):
way, and so we, you know, likebeing close to our customers is
something we very actively workon Right, so we've, you know,
every year I think, we come upwith new ways to get you know,
evolving it for our evolvingcompany as well.
Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very.
(49:11):
You know, evolving it for ourevolving company as well.
Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very.
You know every ticket everybodyknew about, right, because
support person would make surethat.
You know that happened and I, Ithink, more than a support, I
think they acted as a championfor users, right, and we all
really listened also, and youknow, so that was our main
(49:32):
channel.
For example, right, even fromday zero, you know we would work
all day and then we would be upat night doing support chats,
you know, and that gave us mostof our early conversations and
you know the person you spoke toin those days.
You know we, we had that personbecause you know they had
connected with us over this, youknow, for a support query,
(49:53):
right, and so, uh, but over theyears, you know, like, as we got
bigger, we realized, hey, weneed to find a way to get the
aggregated opinions also ofpeople.
Right, we'll never.
You know, support is good toknow their pain points today,
but what do they want tomorrow?
Right, like so then we madelike a forum where teachers
would vote on what they wantedand you know, so you'll put an
(50:14):
idea and others can vote on it,right, so now we have this great
resource where we can see whatare the top requests from
teachers, you know, aggregatedover months and years now.
Similarly, you know, then westarted having, you know, calls
with users, right, so thatunlocked, you know, a lot for
our.
You know, calls with users,right, so that unlocked, you
know a lot for our.
You know, earlier we never hadcalls, weirdly enough.
(50:34):
Right, for the first couple ofyears, you would.
You know, for all the talkabout customer centricity, it
was all through supportinteractions, right, but then as
we started, you know, buildingmore, we started wanting to go
deeper and understanding, youknow how the systems work there,
and that unlocked the nextlevel of growth for us.
Right, the next set offunctionality where a lot of you
know our current strategy andyou know wins have come from, is
(50:57):
conversations with teachers,right, so that's a big thing.
Now, again, you know, like, aswe get more resources, we are
able to do more, right?
So now we partnered with a lotof schools where our team goes
and actually observes theclassroom and they learn a lot
of things about, you know, theyou know practical realities of
being in a class, right,sometimes we think that we'll
build this great functionalityand, you know, teachers will,
(51:20):
you know, use it this way andthat way, and then we go to a
classroom and all that isdemolished, you know, and we see
, you know, just to get the kidsto sit down, they took 10
minutes, you know.
And now I'm thinking that theywill, you know, make them jump
all these hoops and it's notpractical.
So I think that's one coreaspect of our culture, I think
is just, you know, how do wekeep being close to our users?
(51:40):
And now, with users indifferent countries, and you
know, we've actually, you know,today we have, you know, people,
I think, in you know eightcountries now, right, and we
hope to, you know, build further, you know, in roads that way.
So that's a big part, I think.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
The other so I'll pause you there.
You know there's one particularmetric that everybody looks at,
which is NPS right, and what isthe history of Quizzes NPS been
and what is it at now and howlow did it ever go?
Speaker 2 (52:11):
yeah, I think you know, upper 70s is the lowest
we've gone.
I think today we have a redround ET, nps and yeah, I think,
something we're always proud of.
But I think something we alwayssay.
You know, we always feel like,you know, we're a bit skeptical
about that number.
So we're always trying to say,you know, let's get it higher,
(52:33):
because we see, I recall when itwas it once dropped he's being
very humble here.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
It was never below 80 for the longest time.
It once dropped to 77 and thetwo of them almost had tears in
their face saying our nps hasdropped, has crashed or whatever
.
And you know, I think mostcompanies would give an arm and
a leg to have a 77 NPS.
And kudos to you guys for beingso focused and obsessed with
you know making customers happy,especially when you have both
(53:02):
the teachers and the students.
And to me, one of the mostgratifying things is to see some
tweets where kids are tweetingoh, today is quizzes day, yeah,
right.
So, um, deepak, you know, youand ankit have done an
extraordinary job.
I think, at a time when theworld says, uh, edtech is, uh,
(53:22):
isn't the place to be, I thinkyou have stuck through an
incredible time and come out,you know.
Even so, kudos to the entireteam at Quizzes and to the two
of you for your thoughtleadership and, you know, silent
, extraordinary execution.
And we're, of course, rootingfor bigger things for Quizzes in
(53:43):
the future.
So congrats, and of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
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(54:15):
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
They have caught lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Pre-pandemic, we were at roughly you know, I think 25
million monthly active users.
Today we sit at around over 70million monthly active users.
Looking back, I don't think weknew anything about anything.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
How come you guys are not thinking about monetization
.
And then we'd come out of themeeting saying, wow, they're
growing so fast.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Those, you know, five years that we weren't making
any money.
These were probably the winsthat you know kept us going
right.
Not a day that goes by, when atleast quizzes used in 150
distinct countries essentiallysummarizes, make learning fun
bombarded with so much, you know, stimulating content.
While we had built it for kidsto use was actually teachers who
(00:43):
were driving the adoption rightGiving teachers a fun way to
conduct an assessment with theirkids, but letting them feed in
the content.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Hi everybody, sanjay Swamy here, and I'm here with
Deepak, one of the co-foundersof what today is known as
Quizzes.
But when we met Deepak, heconstituted 50% of the company
and his co-founder, ankit, wasthe other 50%, a company called
Wizen World, and we met themsometime in early February.
(01:17):
They had this game and thenthey came back two weeks later
and said well, there's this newthing we have started and it
seems to be getting some moretraction and we think you should
take a look at it.
And that was the start of anamazing journey we have had over
the last nine and a half years,close to 10 years now.
(01:39):
So, deepak, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thanks, sanjay, glad to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So maybe we can start right there.
Deepak, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Sanjay, Glad to be here, so maybe we can start right
there.
Deepak, right, what got you andAnkit together and what got you
started?
What was your initialmotivation to be in this sector
and how have you know, maybe thefirst part of the journey of
what led to Quizzes itself?
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, sure, and I think, yeah, yeah, so me and
ankit, you know, we actually uh,met each other for the first
time in college.
You know it was quite acoincidence that, you know, out
of 800 kids, we got paired asroommates.
And that's when you know, uh,at bits, yeah, it's palani and
uh, we also happen to be in thesame branch, which is also a
(02:24):
nice coincidence.
It doesn't usually happen.
So so, yeah, we were togetherthe whole four years in college
and I think, you know we bothenjoyed, you know, playing
around with little apps and wedid projects together, and so I
think that's, you know, how weinitially got to know each other
and knew each other for likefour years in college and it was
(02:44):
around two years after wegraduated.
You know we were both working.
I was at Amazon, ankit was at acompany called Opera Solutions
and we, you know, ankit actuallycame to visit me, just
generally, you know, for acatch-up in.
I was at Hyderabad, he was inDelhi.
So you know we hung out andthat's when, you know, ankit
(03:06):
said you know, why don't youknow, do you want to think about
doing something together?
And I was like, yeah, why not?
You know, uh, you know better.
You know, now is as good a timeas any, I suppose, uh, and I
think, looking back, I don'tthink we knew anything about
anything.
So we, we were just, you know,probably pumped to build
something, and at Amazon,definitely while I learned a lot
(03:29):
from my short time theredefinitely not a place where you
can build anything.
You want pretty big company.
So I think I look forward tothat.
And so we actually didn't reallyhave education as the only
domain we wanted to be in.
We actually explored a bunch ofideas for the next couple of
(03:50):
months.
We would just chat on the phoneand uh, but interestingly, when
we, you know, hit upon, youknow, edtech and thought about,
you know, building somethingwhich you could essentially
summarize as make learning fun,I think that idea just appealed
to us, you know, I think it feltlike something we would enjoy
building.
We, you know, looked at whatwas out there in the market and
it felt like there was a bigneed.
(04:11):
You know, kids were beingbombarded with so much, you know
, stimulating content, you know,whether it's social media.
Oh, we never really felt therewas a big risk or anything.
You know, I think that was onenice thing out of, you know,
sitting in interviews, I feltlike I'll, you know, even after
a year, I think I can pass aninterview, you can get a job.
So with that confidence, we,and just with this seed of an
(04:33):
idea, we quit.
And I think we knew that wedidn't know much about this
field and I think one of thesmart things we did early on was
go to a school and, just, youknow, use that as our test bed,
right, so we would every weeksort of build something and show
it to a small group of kidsthere and I think a lot of our
learnings came from that.
(04:54):
Actually, versus you know,sitting in your you know
apartment or whatever anddreaming up big things, you know
, every week, you know, justmaking little progress and
showing it and seeing whatworked didn't work but okay so.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So that was like sort of the early discovery,
interacting with the end user,was the, the kids and and so on.
And then, um, how long was thatphase?
And then what led to you knowwhat the real start of of a
product?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
uh, the first really interesting learning was we saw
that, while we had built it forkids to use, it was actually
teachers who were driving theadoption.
Right, teachers found it and wecould see, right, like we would,
uh, you know, obsess over ourgoogle analytics in those days
and just see, uh like, oh,there's a new user in the us or
australia or whatever, and uh,we would always see them pop up
(05:45):
in like a group of 20, 25devices in one place, and we
could, you know, we were able toconnect the dots and see that
teachers are, you know, usingthis with kids.
And so I think, from that pointon, a lot of our journey was
really around empoweringteachers, right, and what we
realized is, while we had setoff to essentially, you know,
make kids eat their veggies froma learning point of view, right
(06:09):
, that, uh, we thought, you know, we'll make these veggies so
tasty that they'll come, and youknow skip the sweets and nice
analogy but what we realized isyou know, if you put somebody in
with the tastiest veggies andsweets and cakes and you know,
donuts, they will eat all of itespecially if it's kids who are
you know yet to learn the valueof you know some of these.
(06:31):
You know delayed gratificationin the other things, and so what
we realized is why do kids eatveggies?
is because their parents makethem and force the kids to eat
them, right, and so if we canmake that easy, right, like,
essentially, you know, give theteachers a few easy recipes,
then maybe that's what willreally work.
And so from that point on, westarted building it around
(06:55):
teachers and that's what reallyled to the pivot uh, for quizzes
as well.
Right, because with wise andworld and you know, you had met
us even in the Wizenworld daysand the big sort of bottleneck
to that product's growth wasthat we were the gatekeepers of
content In a way.
We were really limiting howmuch teachers could do with that
(07:16):
product and we were, in ourview, building it really fast.
We were doing automations andwhatnot.
But the reality is, lookingback, we had built probably,
like you know, 0.1% of what youknow, or not even that much of
what exists or probably existedon quizzes you know.
A year later, right, becauseunlocking it for teachers, and
(07:38):
that's when really the genesisof quizzes was giving teachers a
fun way to conduct anassessment with their kids, but
letting them feed in the content, right, and yeah, you know,
that's sort of the seed that Ithink you know very quickly we
could see that this was really agame changer, right Like just
opening it up to teachers andthen we just followed their lead
(07:59):
, you know, in terms of whatthey asked.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
At some point.
You know, I know when we met,we did a reference call with one
of the teachers, I think in theuk, and she used this
extraordinary expression sayingthey have caught lightning in
the bottle and I think at thetime quizzes probably had 20
teachers and maybe 400 kids onthe platform using it.
So it's probably two to threeweeks old at the time.
(08:24):
And recently I was talking withAnkit and he said that teacher
is still using quizzes and stilla big goal fan.
So it kind of felt likesomething magical was happening
here and, of course, when youuse the product, you could see
that it was just a lot of funand very playful in the way in
(08:45):
which it's done right.
And of course, as I mentioned atthe start of this podcast, it
was you and Ankit at the timeand I think when we invested, I
think you hired one engineer andthat also continued for quite
some time.
I mean, we used to keep sayingwhere is the rest of the team?
And we said, okay, we have onehire, right.
But what used to keep happeningis we used to meet almost
(09:07):
weekly I think at the time, andthese guys would have
extraordinary analytics andcharts and graphs and beautiful
visuals, which I think was acore competency that someone
between the two of you, you know, you all had.
Yeah.
Ankit is really great.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Ankit is great.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
Okay, now we know who writes the code and who makes
it look good.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
But you know, I think there was something magical
about how you know that keptworking.
And one anecdote is you know,we used to always push the team
saying, hey, you need to startsome monetization.
And they would say yeah, yeah,yeah, we'll do that, we'll do
that.
And they'd come back the nextweek and say no monetization.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
but we grew 30% week on week and that would happen
week after week after week, andwe'd go in at the start of the
meeting saying, how come youguys are not thinking about
monetization?
And then we'd come out of themeeting saying, wow, they're
growing so fast.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
But I think one of the keys was you kept the team
very lean and your coststructure really low.
Right, so you were able.
So tell us a little bit aboutthat thinking.
And that continued even postthe series a when nexus came in,
and I think for a good four tofive years you just stayed ultra
lean and just kept growing.
Share a little bit about those,the thinking there and and the
journey yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
So I think, uh, I think, at least with me and
ankit, I think we always justran it in a way that made sense
to us first principles, right.
So when we were, I think we sawthe value in kind of the growth
we were getting for the littleburn we had right, and we felt
like it was a good choice tokeep that running as far as we
(10:45):
could do it.
But we also realized that weweren't making any money right,
so we didn't want to throw themoney away and essentially, you
know, we said let's stay leanand let's see how long we can
really be a product like growthcompany and we really did feel
like we had, you know, the rightsize team to build that product
right.
(11:05):
And I think, you know,initially we really struggled
with hiring.
But you know, I think within ayear or so we were around a 1520
member team.
Our second hire was a recruiterand that helped us get to that
you know reasonable threshold ina pretty short time.
And then we felt like we haveyou, you know, a solid team that
(11:26):
can do this.
And it was really a very younggroup, a lot of kids out of
college and uh, but I think youknow, we were all really
passionate about what we werebuilding and that worked well
and I think it allowed us toactually build, you know, even,
a lot of the brand we have today.
Of right, you know, being veryteacher first and I think that's
what you know carries us eventill now, uh, but, yeah, it was
(11:47):
sort of a choice based out ofthe constraints we had.
Right like today people, youknow, like one of our, you know,
nice claims is that we grewwith zero marketing and you know
, uh, performance marketingspent and the reason is we had
no money to do performancemarketing but we found ways to
then keep that growth happening,uh, but that definitely meant
(12:09):
that we couldn't waste money on,you know, things like that.
Yeah, so that journey, I wouldsay through until almost the
series b uh, was a good sixyears yeah, I'd say five plus
yeah, and I think the last twoyears of that five years, we
were actually working onmonetization.
(12:29):
So, you know, if you recall, wetried ad revenue.
We tried, you know, premiumcontent for students.
We tried even, you know,tutoring as a service,
connecting, you know, teachersto students.
We tried, you like, you knoweven gamification, you know,
seeing if kids would pay for,you know, like a fun element, or
parents would pay.
(12:50):
So we tried a lot of things butultimately we settled on, you
know, what ended up being ourcore model, which is the
subscription based revenue modelwhere teachers and now, you
know, schools pay for, you know,access to, you know, the full
breadth of quizzes,functionality.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
So, deepak, maybe before we get into that phase,
let's talk a little bit aboutthe scale you all got to right,
even as a free product, I thinkour seed round was a little more
than half a million dollars,and then I think the series A
round was also not that big.
It was like three, three anda.5 million type of a thing and
you hadn't even spent probablymore than half of that, like $2
(13:30):
million spent over five, sixyears with an ultra-lean team
and no marketing.
But you know you were stillseeing a lot of love with the
teacher community.
I remember you guys would go toSXSW and you know the teachers
would be jumping over each otherwanting to show how they were
using quizzes and stuff.
So you know, during that phase,you know you saw extraordinary
(13:56):
growth.
Right, tell us a little bit sopeople understand.
You know what scale you wereoperating at.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, I think, you know, probably around four years
into it we had gotten to, Iremember, like you know, three
months into our journey, we gotto students solving a million
questions on the platform rightIn March, which was, you know,
just around the time you werespeaking, you know, just around
(14:25):
the time you were speaking andthose were, you know, pretty
insane numbers compared to whatwe had seen with, you know,
weisenwald, just because it hadjust opened up the floodgates
when we let teachers do whatthey wanted with it, right, uh,
but as you mentioned that, Ifelt I always look back at it as
we had a very steady butconsistent growth, right.
So, because it was largelydriven through word of mouth, it
(14:46):
wasn't that, you know, one daywe were looking at it, so the
growth happened, and next monthwe were focusing somewhere else,
so it, you know, dipped it.
We just really focused onbuilding the product and, you
know, rapidly improving that andthat led to, essentially, you
know, like every month it was abigger base that was championing
(15:07):
you Right, and so you know thatcompounding effect really added
up over the years and so, whileI don't think we ever had like
a viral growth, I do feel wewere able to sort of have this
very steady and, you know, uh,fairly good sort of, you know,
like a monthly growth numberthat we were able to really
maintain.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
What scale, in terms of absolute number of MAUs, did
you hit?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, so you know, pre-pandemic, we were at roughly
, you know I think, 25 millionmonthly active users and that is
, I think you know, like a goodprobably, maybe you know 0.5% of
the total market you can hit.
And if you talk about likepeople with devices and all that
(15:55):
, probably you know 4, 5, 10% ofyou know the addressable market
in those days.
So, but yeah, that's where wewere and today we sit at around,
you know, uh, over 70 millionmonthly active users wow, so
maybe we can talk, step back alittle bit and explain to our
listeners what does quizzes do?
Speaker 1 (16:17):
yeah, right, so in fact, that's a thing that has
evolved quite a bit, yeah, butI'm saying at that stage right,
and you had the 25 million maus,and then we can come to the so,
uh, at that stage, yeah, Ithink our uh, you know, I think,
where quiz was really workingwas in the us in particular.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Right, where, even in those days, around half the
schools in the us had teachersactively using quizzes.
Right, at least some teachersusing our product, uh and uh.
So, yeah, what it didessentially was allow a teacher
to conduct an assessment withtheir students in a really fun
(16:56):
way, right.
And now, uh, I see assessmentand a lot of people might think
you know when, you know,depending on where you're from,
you know, quiz or assessment,all these things have different
connotations, but essentially itwas used in multiple ways.
Right, it was used as a, youknow, self-paced, you know
classwork assignment.
It was used as a homework, itwas used as a fun friday
(17:18):
activity.
It was used in all theseinteresting ways because, if you
really boil down, you know whathappens in a school.
It is essentially, you know,half of it is consuming content,
which sometimes the teacher isdelivering.
Sometimes you're reading a book, sometimes you're watching a
video, and the other half isapplying those learnings, which,
in more often than not, boilsdown to answering a question.
(17:40):
Right, and so that's where youknow, while it seems like such a
simple idea?
Uh, it actually is a thing thathappens a lot in every
classroom or anywhere wherelearning is happening.
Right is, you are applyingthose learnings, and that's
where quizzes came in,essentially, and became a real
mainstay for a lot of teachersgot it got.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So the first phase, I would say till that 2019-2020
phase, was really ramping up theusage for in-classroom for the
most part and then slowlybleeding to the home and, of
course, one of the biggestinteresting challenges you all
had was people did not haveconnected devices in the
classroom, although I rememberthe state of Texas was probably
(18:22):
the first one or amongst thefirst.
But I remember the state ofTexas was probably the first one
or amongst the first and wecould almost draw.
If you drew a timeline of wherequizzes was adopted.
It probably mirrored the adventof the internet into the
classrooms or connected devicesfor children.
So that was sort of the firstphase, largely US-focused, maybe
some more developed countrieshaving it.
(18:45):
But you used to seeextraordinary love from the
students, from the teachers.
You know you'd see Twitterstuff.
So explain a little bit of howthat made you all feel right.
Because none of it wasnecessarily solicited.
People are just sharing theirlove for the product and the
company.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
Yeah, I think you know when we those, you know
five years that we weren'tmaking any money, these were the
wins that you know kept usgoing right, because numbers
will only motivate you so much,uh, especially when they're, you
know, non-monetary, so, uh, butyeah, I think you know what
helped us.
You know some of the you knowhard lessons we learned.
(19:26):
You know building those gamesfor students in the wizen world.
You know the year and a half wedid that.
I think that gave us a reallygood instinct, for you know what
kids like, right, and it wasactually very interesting
because you know, initiallyyou'll, you know you make one
game and then you know you makesomething simple and it works
and your obvious next thought ismake something more fancy,
(19:46):
right, like, add more bells andwhistles.
And one thing we learned reallyearly on is that actually
doesn't help.
You know, take a game likechess right, it hasn't changed
for you know, like thousands ofyears, right, and it's still
such a popular game and it'sbecause of the other person,
right, like that format supports.
You know, this greatinteraction, right, and that's
(20:09):
kind of what we learned withquizzes as well is really we are
there to create these momentsin a classroom, right, like a
moment of a kid answering aquestion and getting a kick out
of it.
You know, a leaderboard thatyou know brings some sort of
competition and we found ways tosort of blend, you know, uh,
like this fun activity withsomething that actually, you
(20:29):
know, solved a lot of the coreproblems that teachers were
grappling with, which was one is, you know, kids are just not
interested in doing this boringcontent, right, but the moment
you, you know, if you just tellthe kid, hey, run, you know it's
not really fun.
But if you put five kidstogether and say let's see who
gets to the end fastest, it's avery different feeling, right.
(20:52):
So that worked for some kind,some set of, you know, say, the
competitive kids, right, thenthere is a big segment of kids
who are afraid of, you know,maybe even being heard in a
classroom.
Right, this gave them a way to,you know, engage, right, like
it's very different when ateacher says you know who knows
the answer to this?
So always the same usualsuspects that raise their hands.
But this gave every kid achance to try.
(21:12):
Okay, if they get it wrong, youknow it'll show them a funny
image and say you know, tryagain, right.
And those were some of the coredynamics that really actually
teachers appreciate it Right.
We built in, like you know, veryorganic ways for kids to who
get it wrong, to reattempt aquestion and cover for that.
So it was never built as a wayto label a child but rather a
(21:33):
way for a child to practice and,you know, overcome some of
their hesitation and, you know,make it a lot more of an
inviting experience.
And I think that's whatteachers also realized and what
they really appreciated was thatenergy that they could see
right both from.
You know the toppers of theclass, if you know, if you put
(21:53):
it that way but along, but alsoyou know the bot, the other, you
know the main segment of theclass that is often not super
pumped about.
You know academics and theydon't necessarily see it as
their strength, right, uh, butmaking you know something that
even they found enjoyable Ithink was a huge unlock for
teachers because otherwise itputs it's a lot of pressure to
(22:14):
try to create that yourselfright, and that is one of the
places I think education reallysolves that need of helping.
You know, I think if there's oneteacher and one student, you
don't need quizzes, you know alot of tech really is not needed
.
You can do well with just awhiteboard, but the moment you
have five kids itself it'salmost an impossible task.
(22:34):
You know.
Two kids itself is twice astough.
But 25, 30, 50 kids, that'swhen it becomes really just
impossible and that's wheresomething you know, that's where
technology can actually come inand help that teacher.
Really, you know, engage thisbroad group at you know their
own level in a way.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Yeah, so that sort of summarizes the first phase, um,
the second phase was, let's say, a little bit about the
monetization phase, or the earlymonetization, the experiments
you did, etc.
And then probably the thirdphase, which is now, is probably
just this whole advent of AIand how we all have been
(23:13):
leveraging it, and then we cantalk perhaps a little bit about
the future.
Beyond that, and the secondphase sort of also sadly
coincided with the pandemic, andyou know, obviously that was a
very exciting time from aquizzes product and, you know,
opportunity perspective, butobviously a lot of other
(23:34):
challenges.
How did you all make the switch?
I do recall one anecdote whichwe had discussed, that you know,
of course the parents will payfor this, but when you try to go
down that path, you know youwere told, well, you know this
is only going to favor the richkids and you should not think so
.
That became a sort of anon-starter um.
(23:55):
And so tell us a little bitabout how you know you did some
experiments and how did youarrive at a viable you know,
financial model for the company?
Speaker 2 (24:04):
yeah.
So I think, uh, when it youknow, yeah, I would say even you
know, uh, when it you know,yeah, I would say even you know,
till date, you know, havinginfrared devices, internet in a
classroom is something that is arequirement, you know, to
really use quizzes.
But I think, yeah, so thepandemic definitely, you know,
really flipped the tables in away, because suddenly everybody
(24:27):
had the internet and devices,because they were at home and or
, if they didn't, then they wereessentially not there, right,
uh, but people did, you know,thankfully, you know, most
people were able to somehow, youknow, get, even if it's on a
mobile phone, uh, access to, youknow, their kids to learn this
(24:47):
way.
And that is where I think wewere also lucky that, as you
know, engineers and productbuilders, I don't think we ever
anticipated I mean, I am sure wedidn't anticipate a pandemic,
but we, we had actually built itin a way to support these
diverse needs right.
So we always built it in a waythat if a kid is at home, it
should work, you know, justbecause I think, as engineers,
(25:10):
we thought, you know, we shouldsupport it right.
And that really served us wellwhen the pandemic happened,
because suddenly we were justready to, you know, capitalize
on that.
You know this what we call thenthe new normal right, and so
teachers all over the world wereable to just pick it up.
And the other thing that wealways focused on was which it
(25:31):
should be super easy to use.
Teachers should not need anysort of training, and again,
that helped because of all theoptions they had, teachers found
that quizzes at least is usableand so it picked up like crazy,
you know, like you know, say, atypical school maybe has you
know, 50, 100, maybe a fewhundred teachers in those days,
(25:51):
I think every week we would have, you know, around 20 000
teachers sign up on quizzes.
You know new teachers and youknow we had essentially one
person doing support and thateventually became all of us
doing support with that person,because it was just crazy, right
, the amount of like every day.
It's like, you know, like acouple of hundred schools are
(26:14):
picking up your productessentially and not, you know,
and it's actually worse than acouple of hundred because people
from every country, every youknow background you can imagine,
and uh, so it was, yeah,definitely like a very
challenging but I'd say superexciting time for all of us.
You know who, who doesn't.
It's a good problem to havePlus.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
you also, as a team, are certainly working remotely
and distributed and all of thatstuff.
So one thing I don't mean tosay anything to jinx you all,
but I've never heard anybodycomplain about oh, there's some
downtime at quizzes, or thesystem is, you know, not
functioning to things, etc.
Or the system is, you know, notfunctioning to things, etc.
Some you know this is notsomething where a company with
(26:56):
like 50, 60, 70 million monthlyactive users right, typically
will go through some ups anddowns.
So what did you all get?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
right, I think that was probably just a consequence
of having engineers at the helm,right, I think we always you
know, uh, you know, for whateverdownsides it might have.
Right, it took us five, sixyears to monetize and things
like you know, little issueslike that.
But uh, we, uh, that wassomething we were always, you
(27:29):
know, very much in control of,right, and we had our eyes.
I mean, we didn't have to workreally hard to know what it took
to have a stable system.
And, to, you know, build thesescalable systems came very
naturally to us.
And you know the new teammembers, you know you're able to
work with them and you know,because we were very frugal and
all of that, right, like youknow, we didn't.
(27:51):
You know, cloud hosting wasn'tan expense for us for a couple
of years.
Right, we just managed on freecredits and we were, you know, I
think, the kind of things wewere doing, though at the scale
we had, probably a lot of peoplewould spend five or even 10
times you know the amount oncloud hosting.
But I mean, like you know, whenyou funded us, I think maybe a
(28:13):
month before, that was when weactually switched from our free
tier, which is like the smallestyou know machine.
You can have like that,whatever T1 micro instance of
AWS.
But till then the Wizen worldwas running totally on two free
accounts of AWS, right, and thatitself had like 50,000, you
know, registered users and allof that.
(28:35):
So we were, I think we knew howto you know build those systems
and I think we've, you know,tried to maintain that.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Very cool, you know, but still, these things you know
can be taken for granted, butthey're not insignificant, right
?
There's the system stabilityand uptime.
There's the data issues dataprivacy.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
You're having learning information around,
millions of children around theworld, Even being able to
support these many users forfree right Like only could
happen because we were quitelean.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Very cool, very cool.
For free, right like only couldhappen because we were quite
clean.
Yeah, very cool, very cool.
So, uh, the monetization uhexperiment started also around
the same time as the pandemic,when you're seeing crazy growth,
growth at number of users.
I recall there were a couple offinancing rounds that happened
back to back at the time, which,um, would have also been a bit
of a distraction, would probablyuh, helped, um, so what's the
model now?
What's the financial model ofthe company?
How would have also been a bitof a distraction, would probably
(29:32):
help.
So what's the model now?
What's the financial model ofthe company?
How does it make money?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Yeah, so essentially we sell a subscription product
to schools, right, and teachers,and when we first started it
you know, soon, like on theheels of the pandemic pretty
much, which was actually a coinlike or a thing we were working
on.
In fact, you know, from thebeginning of that year, 2020,
even before the pandemic reallykicked in, we had sort of
(30:01):
decided that we will do this youknow subscription model and we
had timed it for basically, youknow, september 2020, which is
when schools open up in the US.
So we said we'll be ready forit for the new school year with
this subscription product and sothat you know, we decided also
that we won't take anything awayfrom our free product and we'll
(30:23):
only add new things.
So then we were furiouslybuilding enough so that people
found value in you knowupgrading and then launched it
on you know the timeline we haddecided and.
But the great thing was, I think, from day zero I mean, I think
basically I could say a weekafter we launched this product
(30:44):
we were profitable, you know,and we've been able to be
profitable since then.
I think probably by the end ofthat year, we had recuperated
all our funding till date.
Till that day, uh and uh.
You know, uh, and we also had alittle money in the bank, so
you know we were in good shapeand we could see a path to
growing it and all of that, uh,but yeah, essentially today,
(31:05):
what has evolved since, you know, 2020 is that we built out sort
of the school side of thisproduct as well, and we continue
to build that, and so today,the majority of our revenue
comes from schools and evensometimes governments you know,
ministries of educationessentially buying quizzes to
support all their teachers.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, and are all the customers, the or the paying
customers, uh, still in the us,or do you have also
international customers?
Speaker 2 (31:31):
So we've actually been able to diversify that as
well, and I think we're reallybullish on the potential of
quizzes outside of the US aswell.
Right, so I think in our earlyyears, I think two things have.
You know.
It's been, you know, nine plusyears, so I think even the world
has evolved a little since then.
But in those days, I think, andeven till today, the US is very
(31:53):
, you know, is very fertileground, I'd say, for like a
product led growth company, youknow, especially in edtech.
But the pandemic was sort of,you know, you know the jolt that
a lot of, I think countriesneeded to look seriously at
technology in the classroom andyou know it exposed a lot of
people to the benefits as well.
(32:14):
I think countries needed tolook seriously at technology in
the classroom and you know itexposed a lot of people to the
benefits as well.
And so, while you know again, alot of them went back to their
old ways.
After the pandemic it was still, you know, multiples more than
was pre-pandemic right, andsince then we've seen a steady
growth Now with the you know,advent or you know, popularity
of AI since 2022 and 3, eventhat has again forced a lot of
(32:37):
people to think about that.
They need to equip theirschools and students and
teachers with the righttechnology if they expect to be
relevant in the future.
So I think, uh, we've had some,really, I think, sort of.
What is very heartening to seeis a lot of our success again
(32:57):
has been on the back of, youknow, this product working right
.
It's not been a lot ofmarketing or, uh, you know, in
fact, most of our marketingefforts go into community
development, right, we just tryto, you know, be there with our
teachers, you know, try, youknow a lot of that helps us both
learn from them about theirevolving needs are, uh, but also
(33:20):
, you know, helps us create anice buzz around you know, what
we're doing and that, you know,being present at events and
things like that has been, youknow, the backbone of our
strategy and even supportingteachers to actually organize
learning events in their schoolsand that drives a lot of our
growth and a lot of you know say, for example, one of our big
success stories is, you know, astate in Brazil that pretty much
(33:43):
, you know, exclusively usesquizzes for all their
assignments and homework and ithas been, you know, a tremendous
success there, right, one ofthe few edtech implementations
that has not only met but farexceeded their expectations.
And you know, today we are inconversation with multiple other
states, in brazil as well, onthe back of this success.
But you know they've well over,you know, I think, doubled or
(34:08):
tripled.
You know, the expectations theyhad in that state.
Wonderful, yeah so.
And you know now we are seeing,for example, you know, good
growth in Taiwan, for example,and in Indonesia.
You know UK, you know Canada,Australia.
So while quizzes fortunatetoday to actually be, you know,
present in pretty much, you knowthere's not a day that goes by
(34:30):
when, at least you know quizzesused in 150, you know, present
in pretty much, you know there'snot a day that goes by when, at
least you know quizzes used in150,.
You know distinct countries, youknow, by teachers there, and
you know, I think you know, asyou mentioned, right, we're, you
know, we've always been good atgrowth and we're still learning
.
You know how to monetize andyou know find the right products
and you know in differentcountries, you know find the
(34:51):
right products.
And you know, in differentcountries, though, the
monetization strategy we'verealized will vary, right and uh
, while bottoms up works reallywell in the us right, where
teachers have a voice and theydrive a lot of these decisions,
uh, but even in the us, forexample, a lot of decisions are
also top down right and so sortof you know getting closer to
administrators and so sort ofyou know getting closer to
(35:12):
administrators and building outsort of a product that really
solves important needs for themas well is something that you
know is evolving at Quizzes andwe believe will be a big part of
you know our global growthstory.
But we're already, you know,I'd say, seeing you know 15
percent, 20 percent of ourrevenues coming outside of the
(35:35):
us.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, in terms of usage, where does india stand?
And you know how has the growthbeen in in india itself.
I know y'all don't make aconscious effort on any specific
geography, perhaps other thanthe us, um, but yeah, I love to
hear you know.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
So India has been interesting.
I'd say India is probably oneof the countries that we've made
multiple attempts at growing,you know like, in different ways
.
Sure, yeah, of course, right,we would love to see quizzes
being used more.
I think quizzes it'sinteresting, like recently I'd
gone to, you know sort of ayoung entrepreneur budding
(36:13):
entrepreneur event at you know,my alma mater, BITS in Goa, and
there were around 190 kids whohad come for this, you know,
from schools all over India andprobably you know good schools,
I'm guessing.
And you know, before I spoke, Ijust thought I'll ask them how
many of you have heard ofquizzes and I thought maybe you
know five.
I spoke, I just thought I'llask them how many of you have
(36:33):
heard of quizzes and I thoughtmaybe you know five.
Ten will raise their hands butinterestingly, I think at least
80 percent of the kids raisedtheir hands and all of them said
we used it during the pandemic.
So that's, I think you know,maybe a summary of our sort of
story here is, I think, postpandemic.
Most schools have gone back tosort of the you know traditional
(36:54):
ways.
We, you know pen and paper andall of that and I think india is
still sort of, you know,finding its feet in terms of how
to leverage technology.
I think it gets used in a lotof other, like basically on
admin and you know, for markingattendance and maybe sharing
reports, but when it comes toactually learning, a lot of that
(37:15):
still happens.
You know the old way and sothat's sort of my observation so
far, and you know we'veactually built out, you know,
unique technologies to actuallysupport classrooms that don't
have devices.
You know, you might know aboutsort of paper mode where
essentially kids can answerquestions with, you know, QR
code itself and teachers can,you know, quickly scan that and
(37:35):
while it works pretty well, Ithink it is more of a mindset
thing, I feel, more than infrathing.
I think you know the Indiansystem is still sort of very.
You know we are so resultoriented, right, that I think
what works works and you know we, you know people are a little
(37:56):
hesitant to try things and Ithink for good reason, because
there's so much at stake for,you know, these competitive
exams and all of that.
Until we have that sort ofsystem, I think you know people
will tread lightly with, youknow, experimenting, whereas a
lot of other countries where,say, your performance on a test
is only part of your, say,ticket to getting into a college
(38:17):
.
Right, there is your you know,your projects and your you know
score in your you know school,you know, you know assessments
and so many things that you knowan essay and all these things
that go into it, Whereas inIndia it's so you know, focused
on you know, just like sometimesone exam right and so people
then you know.
Maybe the right thing for thatsystem is to really zone in on
(38:41):
what that needs.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, so last couple of years has been an interesting
time also with the advent ofGen AI, and I know you used to
do a lot of controlledexperiments around it.
But you know, suddenly therewas a strong impetus and we have
(39:03):
seen a lot of exciting demos.
Maybe you can talk a little bitabout how the product has
evolved in this whole AI world,and in some ways you know AI
world and, uh uh, in some waysyou know what.
What are some of the new thingsy'all are working on?
And and?
Speaker 2 (39:17):
so on.
Uh, so I think, when you know,I think the whole world got
really excited about AI whenchat GPT came out, Right I think
.
I don't know years ago, yeahright, yeah so, uh, I think we
saw that and I think all of usrealized that.
You know, if we don't be at theforefront of this wave, then
(39:38):
we'll, you know, be going under,right, that wave, and you know
that still, I think, is a verystrong sentiment.
Uh, at quizzes today, right,where, I think, a few months
after that, you know weessentially, you know sort of
you know listed down all theseways that AI can, you know,
support, you know what we'redoing at quizzes, and I don't
(40:00):
think there was anything whereAI didn't feel like it could be
a game changer, right, whetherit's creating content, whether
(40:22):
it's adapting content that'sthere whether it's grading,
whether it's, you know, studentsupport, whether it's
differentiation, like and Ithink it again stems from, you
know, the core problem of oneteacher has to cater to 30, 40,
50 kids, right, and that is, youknow, impossible for a human to
do, right, and that's where webelieve, you know, ai is going
(40:42):
to make a huge impact in allthese aspects.
And so I think a big part ofour early journey was around
content creation.
And you know, you know building, building, you know this AI
tool like functionality in a waythat empowered a teacher to
adapt what they are doing.
Right, it wasn't really, again,you know, like, while in the
(41:02):
early days, and you know, evennow, I think AI does a great
demo, right, like you can make avideo, that's mind, you know,
like with SORA.
You know, these AI generatedvideos are mind blowing, right,
a lot of these.
But ultimately, you know, it'snot that that video is like the
ad that you put out at the SuperBowl, you know, or even on TV,
(41:23):
yeah Right, there is a lot ofwork to get it ready and I think
we all see that in a couple ofyears, that'll probably all be
different, right, but today, andyou know when I you know, even
in 2023, I think our realizationwas that we need to help
teachers to use ai.
That's again, you know what isthe need, because it's only a
(41:43):
teacher who will be able to makeit fit the syllabus.
It's only a teacher that'sgoing to be able to know what
you know.
A kid who is struggling reallyneeds to be seeing you know, or
what they need in their classtomorrow.
And you know, I think webelieve that quizzes is really
in a sweet spot, because we'vegot these millions of users and
(42:03):
we've got this technology thatreally needs them to make it
work and, as you know, we getbetter.
I think you know we'll usethose learnings to make it
better and better and we'll seehow things evolve.
But really, today, that's whatwe are pumped about.
Right Is, how do we make thiswork for teachers and, you know,
leverage their help to actuallybring this to a classroom?
(42:27):
Right, because today it's notthat anybody is making their
textbook from ai, that thistextbook is still there, and
it's about, you know, using aito pick from there and create an
assessment, create, you know, alesson plan for tomorrow, and
that's where you know we arefocused on.
You know what can save teacherstime and leveraging their
(42:47):
judgment to know where to youknow, pick up the reins from ai
and, you know, take things intotheir own hands.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, and I'd seen some early demos of you know
point to a YouTube video andthen you can use the quizzes
database to like, if it's atopic on American history or
something like that, then youknow you can read the video and
then immediately look at yourdatabase and come up with an
awesome relevant quiz and thingslike that.
Then you can read the video andthen immediately look at your
database and come up with anawesome relevant quiz and things
like that.
Very cool.
So that's sort of the journeyso far, which has obviously been
(43:18):
super exciting, and I think itwas fascinating as I was
entering the building to seesix-floor building, almost all
the floors having quizzes onthem, and it's been quite a
journey.
But of course the best is yetto come.
So, uh, what is the strategic?
Speaker 2 (43:38):
direction in which you see quizzes evolving, um,
yeah, so I think, in fact, thebiggest change that we've been
working on for the past in factyear or two, right, is that, you
know, we've realized that we've, you know, built a core
competency in terms of how tomake, you know how to bring
technology, you know, make itaccessible for a teacher and a
(43:58):
student, right, and you know westarted, and you know I think
there's a lot of depth in the,you know, quiz assessment, you
know, practice space.
But we're also looking at how dowe support other jobs to be
done, right, like how do we takea lesson and make that
something that you know isenjoyable for a student to
consume and that you know allowsa teacher to maybe take a, you
(44:21):
know, maybe, what wouldotherwise be a one-way broadcast
and, you know, pull studentsinto that experience, right.
So you know deliveringinstruction, different
modalities of learning, right,like sometimes you learn from,
you know, text, right, like apassage or an article.
Sometimes you learn by watchinga video.
So how do we support theseformats?
(44:42):
And, again, you know, you knowbring that fun element and that
interactive element to it sothat, you know, even if they are
veggies, at least you knowthey're made, uh, you know, uh,
lightly fried and tasty, astasty as you can, yeah, yeah
right, and so that's been a lotof the last year of our journey
(45:04):
is, you know, supporting newformats, supporting really all
the ways in which a teacher youknow tries to deliver
instruction.
And then you know sort of thatwhole how we describe it as you
know the teacher, you know theyhave an I do, a we do and a you
do.
So first the teacher does it, Ido it, I'll show you how it's
done.
And there again, you know youcan bring a bit of interactivity
(45:28):
into that as well, so thatyou're not just having kids zone
out after 30 minutes ofsomebody talking to them but,
you know, pop in a littlequestion, interactive activity,
so that you know they are pulledback into the instruction.
Then there is the we do where ateacher is maybe going through
a problem and showing them howit's done and then handing
(45:49):
slowly, you know giving thereins to the kids, but you know
supporting it.
And then there is the you dowhere a teacher says, okay, now
you know, do your best.
And that's when a teacher needs,uh, basically eyes and ears on
what's happening, right.
And again it's a thing wherequizzes can help, right, where
spotty kids doing, you know,their own assignments on their
(46:09):
own screens spotty kids doing,you know, their own assignments
on their own screens.
A teacher can, uh, kind of seewhich five kids really need help
and go work with them, whereasthe kids who are, you know,
doing really well quizzes, youknow, and that too, and now with
the help of ai, can actuallymaybe give them another
assignment.
And the kids who are, you know,sort of on track, you know, it
works for them.
And now a teacher can just befree of all of that and focus on
(46:30):
these five kids which no ai canteach, you know, on track, you
know it works for them.
And now a teacher can just befree of all of that, yeah, and
focus on these five kids which,no, ai can teach, you know.
But they really need to notjust show them the material but
probably, you know, work withthem emotionally as well, right,
like, encourage them a little,you know, give them a little
treat to you know, get them toyou know, give something a try
which you know they probablyfeel like they can't do.
Speaker 1 (46:49):
I also noticed you've added like accommodations and
lots of capabilities in theproduct as well.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah right, A lot of ways for teachers to support the
varied learning needs and theways that students want to, you
know, express themselves.
So you know, universal designfor learning accommodations.
These are things that, again,we really believe.
Tech is a big enabler for itand I think we see ourselves as
being at the forefront of thatwave as well.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
yeah, cool so, uh, look, I think all this has been
awesome.
Maybe we can talk a little bitas we uh wrap up on the, the
culture of the team, the company, how we all have uh fun.
You know how you stay so closeto the customer despite being,
you know, neither the theprototype customer nor in the
(47:35):
same geography, and a little bitabout you know you and ankith
have become avid runners.
Uh, you know the culture that'scome into the company around
that.
You know, um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
So I think, uh, I think one of the big unlocks for
us early on, you know, wasreally how, if we just listen to
teachers, you know, a lot ofproblems get solved.
Or, you know, listen to ourusers, you know, teachers,
students or, you know, now evenadmins and principals.
So I think that has really beenclose to our hearts, right.
Even when we hire and look forpeople who will be leaders, we
(48:09):
look for people who haveinternalized that right that if
you are guided by your users andnot by, you know, trying to do
something cool or showing themhow it's done, it is really, you
know, a service mindset in thatsense, and I think we invest a
lot in terms of opening up newchannels, right, I think, being
a, you know, product developmentcompany, largely, you know,
(48:31):
sitting out of india, out ofIndia, I think we've, in fact,
gotten a lot of leverage fromactually having some people on
the ground as well.
We have a sizable marketing andsales team in the US that keeps
bringing in.
Most of those people areactually people who were
teachers earlier and we'veintensely tried to keep it that
(48:51):
way, and so we, you know, likebeing close to our customers is
something we very actively workon Right, so we've, you know,
every year I think, we come upwith new ways to get you know,
evolving it for our evolvingcompany as well.
Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very.
(49:11):
You know, evolving it for ourevolving company as well.
Right, when there were 20 of us, you know we were all very.
You know every ticket everybodyknew about, right, because
support person would make surethat.
You know that happened and I, Ithink, more than a support, I
think they acted as a championfor users, right, and we all
really listened also, and youknow, so that was our main
(49:32):
channel.
For example, right, even fromday zero, you know we would work
all day and then we would be upat night doing support chats,
you know, and that gave us mostof our early conversations and
you know the person you spoke toin those days.
You know we, we had that personbecause you know they had
connected with us over this, youknow, for a support query,
(49:53):
right, and so, uh, but over theyears, you know, like, as we got
bigger, we realized, hey, weneed to find a way to get the
aggregated opinions also ofpeople.
Right, we'll never.
You know, support is good toknow their pain points today,
but what do they want tomorrow?
Right, like so then we madelike a forum where teachers
would vote on what they wantedand you know, so you'll put an
(50:14):
idea and others can vote on it,right, so now we have this great
resource where we can see whatare the top requests from
teachers, you know, aggregatedover months and years now.
Similarly, you know, then westarted having, you know, calls
with users, right, so thatunlocked, you know, a lot for
our.
You know, calls with users,right, so that unlocked, you
know a lot for our.
You know, earlier we never hadcalls, weirdly enough.
(50:34):
Right, for the first couple ofyears, you would.
You know, for all the talkabout customer centricity, it
was all through supportinteractions, right, but then as
we started, you know, buildingmore, we started wanting to go
deeper and understanding, youknow how the systems work there,
and that unlocked the nextlevel of growth for us.
Right, the next set offunctionality where a lot of you
know our current strategy andyou know wins have come from, is
(50:57):
conversations with teachers,right, so that's a big thing.
Now, again, you know, like, aswe get more resources, we are
able to do more, right?
So now we partnered with a lotof schools where our team goes
and actually observes theclassroom and they learn a lot
of things about, you know, theyou know practical realities of
being in a class, right,sometimes we think that we'll
build this great functionalityand, you know, teachers will,
(51:20):
you know, use it this way andthat way, and then we go to a
classroom and all that isdemolished, you know, and we see
, you know, just to get the kidsto sit down, they took 10
minutes, you know.
And now I'm thinking that theywill, you know, make them jump
all these hoops and it's notpractical.
So I think that's one coreaspect of our culture, I think
is just, you know, how do wekeep being close to our users?
(51:40):
And now, with users indifferent countries, and you
know, we've actually, you know,today we have, you know, people,
I think, in you know eightcountries now, right, and we
hope to, you know, build further, you know, in roads that way.
So that's a big part, I think.
Speaker 1 (51:54):
The other so I'll pause you there.
You know there's one particularmetric that everybody looks at,
which is NPS right, and what isthe history of Quizzes NPS been
and what is it at now and howlow did it ever go?
Speaker 2 (52:11):
yeah, I think you know, upper 70s is the lowest
we've gone.
I think today we have a redround ET, nps and yeah, I think,
something we're always proud of.
But I think something we alwayssay.
You know, we always feel like,you know, we're a bit skeptical
about that number.
So we're always trying to say,you know, let's get it higher,
(52:33):
because we see, I recall when itwas it once dropped he's being
very humble here.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
It was never below 80 for the longest time.
It once dropped to 77 and thetwo of them almost had tears in
their face saying our nps hasdropped, has crashed or whatever
.
And you know, I think mostcompanies would give an arm and
a leg to have a 77 NPS.
And kudos to you guys for beingso focused and obsessed with
you know making customers happy,especially when you have both
(53:02):
the teachers and the students.
And to me, one of the mostgratifying things is to see some
tweets where kids are tweetingoh, today is quizzes day, yeah,
right.
So, um, deepak, you know, youand ankit have done an
extraordinary job.
I think, at a time when theworld says, uh, edtech is, uh,
(53:22):
isn't the place to be, I thinkyou have stuck through an
incredible time and come out,you know.
Even so, kudos to the entireteam at Quizzes and to the two
of you for your thoughtleadership and, you know, silent
, extraordinary execution.
And we're, of course, rootingfor bigger things for Quizzes in
(53:43):
the future.
So congrats, and of the podcast.
Speaker 4 (53:53):
Subscribe now on your favorite podcast app for free
and you'll be the first one toknow when new episodes are
available.
Just search for Prime VenturePartners Podcast in Apple
Podcast, spotify, castbox orhowever you get your podcasts.
Then hit subscribe and if youhave enjoyed the show, we would
be really grateful if you leaveus a review on Apple podcast.
(54:15):
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
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