Kaustubh Khade, Co-founder, Spark Studio, on the requisites for holistic development and future success of today’s young generation
The journey of Spark Studio has been quite exciting. They started in 2021 and soon got selected by YCombinator. Starting with 4 courses, they now offer 14 courses and have above 60,000 students from over 10 countries learning with them. They have expanded beyond live online classes and have launched a game-based English learning app. “It’s been a great validation that customer demand or attendance and renewal rates didn’t go down post-Covid, which shows that it’s a large market with a deep consumer need and that our model is offering unparalleled convenience with a great learning experience,” says Kaustubh Khade, Co-Founder, Spark Studio. They are launching their courses in the US now and have tied up with 41 schools to offer their courses to 7,200 students through a B2B model as well.
Spark Studio was a medal winner in the ‘Best E-Learning/Online Tutoring’ award category. “We’re honoured to have won this award and stoked to be in the august company of other great edtech brands,” expresses Khade on receiving the award. He believes that what made them stand out is their great metrics on retention, completion rates and customer happiness and the fact that they are addressing a large gap in the Indian education system that schools haven’t been able to cater to.
Addressing the gap
While schools fulfil a critical role, learning is not limited to what schools can offer. “Schools cannot customise learning for different interests or different pace of learning. This is where skill-based or interest-based edtech is filling the gap,” says Khade.
As per him, success in life is not necessarily correlated with marks in school. Confidence, creativity, critical thinking, leadership are stronger drivers of success. A study by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research Centre showed that 85 per cent of job success comes from well-developed soft and people skills and only 15 per cent from technical skills and knowledge. Kids have never been taught this till now, which skill-based techs are finally offering.
The edtech platform has positioned itself as a player focussed on high-quality outcome-focussed learning in English, communication skills, music and art. The company is a global player with presence in 10 countries and they are building teacher supply from several countries and have partnered with global institutions such as TEDEd and Trinity College, London.
