Sandeep Singh is the Co-Founder and Head of Business Development at Spayee, an end-to-end, white-labelled course delivery platform which empowers educators and trainers with the highest quality, affordable and scalable technologies. An influencer, entrepreneur, and tireless hustler, Sandeep’s customer-centric approach has helped Spayee grow into the brand it is today. His current focus is turning Spayee into a global brand, with a vision of empowering content creators from around the world with the most affordable and scalable technology platform. In an interaction with Higher Education Digest, Sandeep talks about unique products and services that Spayee offers to the educators, the secret behind becoming a trusted brand in India, his plans for expansion and many more.
The Indian EdTech sector is currently booming due to the pandemic. As a B2B player in this sector, how is Spayee helping content creators, trainers, institutes and educators?
Spayee is a platform for anyone who can teach and anything that can be taught.
Keeping in line with our vision of helping content creators with the highest quality, affordable and scalable technologies, Spayee offers an all-in-one white-label course platform for content creators to create, market & sell their courses.
Our product is being used by more than 1000 customers in India, and we have helped them generate more than INR 200 crores with online courses in the last 2 years.
What are the unique products and services Spayee offers to educators and trainers? How does the company intend to stand out from the crowd?
Spayee’s white-label platform helps content creators create & launch custom-built websites and supporting mobile apps for hosting, marketing & selling their courses.
The platform allows creators to create course content in the form of audio and video tutorials, pdf documents, quizzes, assignments, and live classes along with automated payment gateways, sales & marketing funnels.
The platform allows creators to create a flexible pricing structure for courses, with the option to offer discounted rates, distribute coupon codes and choose between multiple validity pricing options as well as hassle-free payment integrations with country-specific pricing and multi-currency support.
Spayees’s user-engagement and management tools, including live chats, discussion forums, and push notifications to help customers engage their audience and upsell their courses.
We are focused on the B2B segment. Here we have customers from different segments of Learning like Test prep, Skill development, Financial institutes, Yoga & Wellness Centers, Films & Music Training companies, Individual Coaches, Corporate trainers, Youtubers and other niche categories. Having an all in one online course delivery platform allows us to also go beyond ed-tech.
We believe that we have positioned ourselves quite well in the market as a premium product, and that is why we have been able to stand out among the competition.
What inspired you to start Spayee in 2018? How have your objectives and goals changed since the company has grown?
Spayee began as an attempt to build India’s first intelligent e-book platform. But with the advent of Jio, the consumption of video content boomed in India. We realised the need for an end-to-end online course platform— a platform which wouldn’t just support e-books but play host to the entire gamut of multimedia content.
As the team we worked on revamping Spayee, we came to the realisation that the market for online course platforms in India was almost completely dominated by global brands. This meant that there was a gap for a company dedicated to recognising and resolving the unique challenges faced by content creators in the Indian ecosystem.
Spayee launched its comprehensive Online Course Platform in 2018, it had achieved its true potential: helping course creators with the highest quality, affordable and scalable technologies, while directly addressing and overcoming the longstanding pain points of Indian course creators.
How did you manage to become a trusted brand in India?
Our customer-centric approach has helped us generate the trust of our customers. We value every customer. We train and guide our customers at every step and make sure that they are successful. Our customers too, have supported us a lot and helped us in our growth. 95% of customers always recommend Spayee to another course creator.
What are the marketing strategies Spayee using now and would recommend to other B2B EdTech startups?
We believe that our Customers are our Best Marketers. Word of mouth and recommendation from our existing customers has helped us a lot in our growth. Other than that, we have also used traditional marketing channels of email marketing & PPC campaigns to reach out to potential customers.
Recently, you raised a $150K seed round from one of your top customers. What are your plans for expansion?
We raised this fund last year in 2019, we have used this fund to build the team and marketing of the product. As of September 2020, Spayee has helped its customers generate over INR 200 crores in revenue through the sale of an enormous array of courses.
Over the next year, we want to help our customers generate over 1000 Crores in course sales revenue and get 5000 paid customers onboard by the end of 2021.
What are some of the most innovative technologies in Ed-Tech right now? What are the key trends of e-learning to follow in 2021?
Currently, the two major technologies which are impacting ed-tech are:
- Learning Analytics and Prediction: With the help of Machine learning, Individual learners can have their own unique personalised learning paths. Also, every learner needs a different engagement level, and the teachers can be easily notified when a particular learner needs more attention to understand a topic.
- Interactive Live Teaching: With the on-going pandemic, Interactive live teaching techniques have proven useful for both learners and teachers.
For 2021, we see a combination of AR and VR will be taking the ed-tech to the next level. We believe that learners using classroom enabled AR/VR tech will have a better understanding of content and long-term memory retention.
What are the exciting things can we expect from Spayee in the next 12 months?
We are launching one of India’s biggest affiliate programs in the 3rd week of October 2020. On the product front, we are launching membership sites and apps. Which will allow our customers to build a subscription-based platform for delivering courses and OTT content. We are working towards creating an exclusive B2B marketplace for Spayee customers, where content creators can collaborate among themselves and generate more sales.