Guidelines
Kindly adhere to the following guidelines prior to submitting your entry:
1. The number of slides in the submission must be restricted to 5 (excluding the cover slide, thank you
slide, and appendices/references).
2. Solutions will be judged on the basis of depth of research, feasibility, and creativity.
3. Referencing of sources is of paramount importance and must be included either in appendices or
references, if not included in the main body of the deck.
4. All assumptions, if any, must be clearly mentioned in the solution.
5. Cross-batch teams are allowed and highly encouraged to ensure knowledge diffusion
6. The naming convention for the final PDF file should be: TeamName_Circles23
7. Submissions should be made only through the Google form linked in the email.
8. Feel free to use ChatGPT (although we are not responsible for hallucinating AI tools!)
The Academic Bizz Case
Overview
With a booming education sector and a shifting focus to professional education (medical, law, management,
and chartered accountancy are all considered professional education), there are an increasing number of
players who are working in this space to attempt to help students out with their placement preparation
journeys through their unique products.
Most of the companies operating in this space are SaaS-based companies productizing their offerings as
cohort-based, live tutor-led, or pre-recorded courses to students. The three formats are explained as follows –
Cohort-based: A minimum number of students must sign up for a particular programme before the
programme begins. In this mode, human instructors typically instruct the cohort of students live over a
virtual platform (similar to how colleges/boot camps work).
Live tutor-led: In this mode, individual students are instructed live in a virtual mode by a human
instructor (similar to private tutoring).
Pre-recorded: In this mode videos are recorded by human instructors and sold on a recurring basis
(similar to how Udemy/Coursera works).
Company Background
RealSkill is a budding start-up based out of Bangalore, India, which is trying to break into the Indian edtech
market with their product which is focused on helping students out with their placement preparation journeys.
Their founder, Biswa George, though acutely aware of the product he wants to build, is confused regarding a
lot of other aspects of his business and has approached you to seek consultancy to help him out with his
journey.
Deliverables
Some of the key confusions he is facing, that you need to address are as follows:
S.No.
Deliverable
1
Identify the exact consumer segment he should target – engineering placements or
management placements.
2
Suggest a product strategy – should the mode be cohort-based, live tutor-led, or pre-recorded
& what are the exact types of programmes that should be offered in the chosen segment.
3
Conduct a competitive analysis of the existing players in the chosen segment & arrive at a
pricing strategy for RealSkill to leverage.
4
Propose a marketing strategy for RealSkill to help them acquire users for their platformPropose
a marketing strategy for RealSkill to help them acquire users for their platform.