Phone is buzzing since morning. Hence this thread. Re The Ken’s piece on us, which unfortunately carries a false, misguided narrative.

^ Despite hours of calls, things explained to last detail, the ‘set narrative’ stayed. Despite ‘properly fleshed out comments, team told “can’t be carried” last evening .. of course, because it would distort the ‘set narrative’

Regardless, given we did the work, to share the truth, might as well put it here too:

1/n First, “Australia”, from which the piece starts it’s biased with-malintent narrative:

Yup, we announced entry in March 2022, which was well after the applications for its July 2022 intake were done for, and the next intake to look forward to would be February 2023.

^ without explaining how the “study abroad” business works, a higher education business which has seasonalities, the narrative does what it wants to, aka misguiding the reader

It doesn’t talk about how we were only the 2nd company in last two decades to crack hundreds of direct contracts with universities in the UK. How we won their trust. Which, took 4 years. It’s enterprise sales + continuously improving the quality of students intake by intake. Takes that time.

But in late 2022/early 2023, the winds towards Australia had already changed. There are dozens of edits by diplomats and consulars and ministers on either side in well-regarded publications that talk reality.

AND, we are a data company, we could see the enquiries go down, while the US destination started to build up after the longest time. So we made that switch. Obvious and simple. Informed our board, learnt ground-up & started to execute differently. That’s how companies run. They foresee, read markets, and change priorities.

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Shrey was fascinated with computers 👨🏽‍💻 & coding right from the start!

So was no surprise that he landed at BMS Munjal University to do his Btech in CS ▶️

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How It Started. How It’s Going. Having co-written multiple research papers 📜 in college, Shrey landed top-tier jobs at @Infosys & @Amdocs, both Fortune 500 companies as a Systems Engineer!

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When Ramasheesh started his engineering 👨🏽‍🔬 course in Dr APJ Abdul Kalam University in 2013, little did he know he would fall in love with “all things data” & end up working for a major consulting firm 📊

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How it started. How it’s going. At @TCS, he got the opportunity to closely work with 👟 the @Nike 🇧🇪 & 🇳🇱 teams, where he discovered the intricacies of data science. It was a match made in heaven! 💭

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When Covid hit, Dr. Nashoma Antao, a homeopath, decided to serve her local community in Goa as a frontline worker 👩🏽‍⚕️ — serving directly under the Government of Goa 🌴

1/n “Having gotten a first hand experience of what a global pandemic looks like, I wasn’t very happy with what I saw while serving my community in Chimbel, Goa” - Nashomi

And hence …

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Deepak Ranjan Pasayat comes from a humble family based out of Rourkela in Odisha 🇮🇳

His education at the National Institute of Science and Technology, & his stint as a Systems Engineer at @Infosys inspired him to pursue a career in the Data Science 📊

1/n Deepak’s coach Ritika says - “he is one of the most ambitious students I have ever mentored! When I started working with him, he came in with a list of 25 universities, almost all set to go guns blazing 💣 - that reflected how much he wanted this to happen”

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Aggregation Theory 👉🏼 @stratechery ⭐️

3 parts to Value Chain: Suppliers, Distributors, Consumers

👆🏼Goal = Monopolize 1, OR combine 2 (& offer vertical solution)

Eg of latter: printed newspapers, where distribution+suppliers integrated (content creation) -> advertising 💰

1/n Book Publishing: distribution capabilities integrated w/ control of authors

Video: broadcast availability integrated w/ purchasing content

Hotels: brand trust integrated w/ vacant rooms

👆🏼- distributors integrated backwards into supply > OWNING supplier relationship is 🏅

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