Sandeep on India

- Yes, I guess tell me about what's going on in India? - It's very exciting. In some ways we're creating a mini, mini, Khan Academy in India. And themes that would cover content, adoption, partnerships, and it's been a huge effort. It started about almost a year ago with the Yennin (unclear) initially leading the charge in building a partnership with (unclear) Trust to fund us. And then in the beginning it was about the launch of our Indian product and the communications team, and Esther were very involved. And then, where we are now is we are setting up in India entity and we are hiring. We're working across the organization. So from Constantine Village, Justin helping us recruit folks to be all admin side, financial and accounting side helping us get office space, buy computers for these folks, a lot of that stuff. - That's a lot of work. - Yeah, I guess what I'm most excited about is that we have new folks who will start joining us. Probably the first one joining us from June one, and that's going to make it a lot more exciting and less lonely for me here. - Right now it's just you. - Right now it's me, yes, that's right, yeah. - Why are we setting up a separate entity in India versus just kind of doing some of the same things that we're doing in other countries or what we're doing in the U.S. and just expanding that? - Right, I think that's a great question. It helps to also think clearly about why, what kind of activity we should focus on here. There's been a section of users in India. We've been using Khan Academy, we've been growing organically. India is the fifth largest user base for Khan Academy. But if you look at it in an Indian context, we're not even like touching the tip of the iceberg right now. There are huge number of students in the government school systems. Huge number of students in low-cost private schools that we are not able to reach directly at the moment. A way to get to them would be to unlock getting to these users would be to get into partnerships, several partnerships with the states. Would involve running a number of pilots in the beginning to see what works, what can scale. And those are things that are difficult to do from here, from the U.S. and would make sense for us to be here. Even from just a quantum perspective, while we've been used by these existing users for the content we have, if we really want to get to a larger number of people and want Khan Academy to be used more as a core resource, we will need to build a lot of content, fill a lot of gaps, make it align to the curriculum. I think all of that work would require us being here. That is the reason. - So being in India, that helps you partner with other groups in India more easily than if you were here, just a U.S. organization working in India, is that the case? - I would say the entity is less of a reason. The reason for setting up an entity was to receive funds here. Our partners could not fund us directly in the U.S. More money as we build these themes, the content themes, the adoption themes in India, I think that for large markets, and that could hold true for other large markets, international markets as well, you would need people dedicated to those markets on all these different themes. That's the only way we'll be able to capture a larger market share. - Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. You talked about adoption, you talked about content. It's clear how those need to be tailored to India. The curriculum in India is different, the content is different, the language of course, many languages. How about on the product side? It sounds like the plan is to continue using the KA product that we're developing in the U.S. that's internationalized and so forth. Is there going to be some interaction there between what you need and the things we're building? How does what's going on in India align with the rest of the strategy? - Yeah, we're at a very early stage. I think content and adoption themes will be the first thing that we will do. But you're absolutely right. Eventually we will have to look at the product itself. So to give you some examples. On the mobile development side we are getting feedback from carriers on what should be the specs of our mobile app which will actually lead to downloads and usage. But that's just again in some form of localization. But going forward, I think what I see really interesting is to package our product into different ways, like the way we've done in the U.S. where it's aligned to grades. There are missions. You can possibly see a role in which that content gets packaged in many different ways in India. So for example, if bandwidth is a challenge in India, you could potentially have a Khan Academy app which is purely an exercise experience. You've got all your exercises there. That's what you do, and the videos come are on the backside of it. That would be one way to experience that. Or you could turn the content into grade specific missions, like something for teachers to test the competency to see the level of their teaching. Those are some very initial ideas, but I think as we start thinking about the market from a product perspective, and doing user research, getting that feedback, I think that will be exciting. Another second phase of that exciting journey to build something specifically for India. - Fascinating, so what are some of the other initiatives that you guys are working on? - There are a few things that we are working on right now. One is, we are trying to test partnership with a large state, state of Rajasthan, that we will be entering into an MOU with. It's a fairly large school system. They came to work with us. We're trying to see what will be the best way in which they can use Khan Academy in schools. One of the things we realize is that there are a lot of non-profits, foundations, and tech players chasing these users. And from a school's perspective the time on the calendar is limited. One of the things we've done there in Rajasthan is come up with a few different ways in which Khan Academy can be used. For a small section of students broadcast methods, for teachers. And we're trying to see if there are existing partners who are working in different schools, can they take one of these implementation models and do it themselves rather than us trying to carve out another space in that time table. So Rajasthan MOU is a big one. The expectation is to learn a lot from it the first year. Figure out what works and what could scale. Then take it to other states. Another way, interesting initiative, very early stage is working with village-level entrepreneurs. So, the government of India, what it has done is it has a program called Common Service Centers which basically, think of them as internet kiosks. They've set them up, 150,000 of them, in every small village. These are connected with computers. I think this number will go up to about 250,000. We're meeting some of these entrepreneurs next week talking to them about Khan Academy and trying to see if there is a model that they can build on it. Use Khan Academy, maybe charge for the internet access, but go and talk to students and bring them to use Khan Academy. Early stage but huge fight for us to get to the areas that we would not be able to get to otherwise. That would be another thing. Then I think the third, another area is the mobile partnerships and having discussions with mobile carriers to help us push Khan Academy out especially as we have our mobile app ready with exercises. - Have you been talking at all about zero rating? I know that can be another touchy subject in India. - No, there's no zero rating possible at all. It's actually, it is turning into a little bit strange situation where there is some loophole around it where a carrier can create some sort of intranet. So if we license to them they can say this is within our intranet and therefore we can do whatever with it. But I think we'll stay away from zero rating in India. - The data, and would be integrated I imagine, yeah. Cool, that's exciting, so you've got a number of adoption programs. And I guess the content's the other big thrust and sustainability. Sounds like you've got your hands full. - Yeah, yeah. - Cool, well thanks.