Avanti: The startup revolutionizing the way India learns science and math

“Oh, I did terribly. Rank 2527. Don’t worry — there are others at Avanti who did much better.” Krishna beams at a young man sitting next to a computer, he puts a hand on his shoulder and continues, “Rahul here is a 331, Abbas who you just met from curriculum is a 420!”

I am at Avanti Learning Centre’s headquarters in Mumbai discussing the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance exam; Avanti is a company founded to provide high quality, affordable test preparation for the exam. Everyone in the office knows their number or ‘rank’ as it is called here. The rank is vital; for aspiring engineers in India, it is the only thing that matters. This one number signifies your performance ranked in order in the entire country on the JEE Advanced, the most competitive and challenging engineering exam in the world. In 2016, 1.2M Indian students took the JEE Mains (the first exam) with only 20% qualifying for the second year JEE-Advanced test. From JEE-Advanced comes the rank from 1 to 200,000 — with only the top 10,000 spots qualifying for admission to an IIT university. Each incremental increase in rank opens doors, each drop closes off opportunities.

“How do they differentiate between ranks? Why aren’t there more ties?” I inquire, beginning to feel naïve. “Well the exam is so hard, 60% is a top score. If there are ties, they break them by giving the harder subjects more weight.” I’m told by Krishna. Many education institutions like to brag about their low admission rates — but there is no institution in the world more demanding and competitive than the IIT.

My involvement with Avanti began in 2013. The previous year I had co-founded the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund, a $65M venture fund that makes investments in fast-growing, emerging market education companies that demonstrated high learning outcomes. We seek companies with strong founding teams who have a focus on quality and a vision for scale. When we launched the fund, we made our first investment in a school chain in Ghana. Soon after, we realized we couldn’t ignore the biggest, most competitive education sector on the planet: India. As our sourcing process began, two names kept on popping up: Krishna Ramkumar and Akshay Saxena, a pair of ‘kind of crazy’ IIT alums who had finished their first jobs at a top tier consulting firm, one had dropped out of Harvard Business School and together both were now on a mission to bring high quality STEM education and IIT exam prep to the masses. No one in India could understand why they would give up their high powered jobs and prestigious education. I needed to go and see their work in person.

Krishna Ramkumar & Akshay Saxena — Avanti Founders

I landed and drove straight to the IIT campus in south Delhi — the taxi was hopelessly driving loops around the campus when a frantic Akshay ran out into the middle of the street waving us over. Akshay took me to a nondescript building — there IIT student volunteers were screening low income students for the potential to study for the JEE. Above the screening process room was Avanti’s first office, in an old attic. The office was windowless, with exposed wires and barren walls — but there was an unmistakable energy here. Full-hearted, mission-driven IIT student volunteers were toiling away on curriculum and exam-marking. Only one student that day might be selected to join the cohort to study for the test taken by 1,200,000 others. Only 12,000 will get into an IIT. Less than 1%.

The Avanti founders are both bounding with energy and vision, in completely complementary ways. For this reason, they’ve built and maintained a stellar and motivated team. Krishna is more intense and driven — maybe what you’d expect from a gifted engineer and still clearly motivated by the higher mission. He came from a small city and after BCG had started to tutor kids. He manages operations, overseeing the team and keeping track of finances. Akshay is the free spirit and big thinker. He thinks and cares deeply about the Indian education system and has made his life mission bringing a peaceful India into the 21st century. I think to myself that Akshay must be some sort of genius to pass the IIT exams because I’ve never seen him sit still. He manages investors, marketing and product. Avanti wouldn’t be a success without them together as a team. Avanti is their joint brainchild.

They had been successful getting low income students high marks, but it wasn’t enough. Akshay and Krishna wanted to do something transformative at scale. They started a for profit entity, attracted a few high net worth angels and were raising seed capital. Impressed by the energy and drive of the founders, coupled with a deep alignment on pedagogy, business plan and market understanding, I jumped at the opportunity to be their first institutional investor. Avanti became our second fund investment and first foray into India.

We’ve now seen Avanti through Series A and latest Series B — a $5M investment led by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Asha Impact.

Avanti has grown tremendously since 2013. Back then Avanti was a relatively small non profit — working with a few hundred students a year. Now, they have 50+ Centres serving ~3,000 students in 25+ cities.

What does an Avanti classroom look and feel like?

I’ve now visited many an Avanti classroom. All share commonalities — 11th and 12th graders gather into the classroom. They are seated on benches in rows. There is an instructor in the front of the class. (S)he guides the room through a lesson as described by the Avanti curriculum. The instructor asks the students to work on a problem, or a ConcepTest in Avanti terminology. After several minutes (s)he asks the students to hold up a colored card, A, B, C, or D to indicate their answer. Then they debate any differences in answers in groups and hold up cards again. At the end the instructor or a student will explain the answers. After the explanation, depending on the understanding in the class, the instructor will show an Avanti video on the content area that explains the concepts. The videos bear a resemblance to Khan Academy, with neat visuals and in English with an Indian accent so the students can understand.

Avanti peer learning model

At the heart of Avanti is a focus on pedagogy — the method of teaching. Traditionally, Indian students are taught by lecture and problem sets or, if you can afford it, 1 to 1 tutoring. There is little in between. Akshay and Krishna had seen a science pedagogy promoted by a Harvard Physics Professor, Eric Mazur. Professor Mazur has published a book called Peer Instruction: A Handbook and further articles published in journals on academic data from 10 years worth of students. The takeaway is that learning in the classroom happens from problem solving and engagement, most effectively through peer-to-peer challenge. With a proven pedagogy, Akshay and Krishna set out to develop the learning systems and centres to ensure effective implementation and results for their students.

Why will Avanti be successful?

Tutoring and test prep is a gigantic business in India — estimates of the market size are $11B and growing 11–12% a year. The supplementary education market in India for school students is estimated to be close to $25 billion and is expected to touch $30 billion by 2020. Traditionally the tutoring market has been very fragmented with each ‘star’ tutor setting up their own mini business. Recently, Indian start ups are trying to tackle the tutoring market with technology and scale. Some tech-first tutoring start-ups have raised eye-watering rounds — Byju’s with $150 raised over several rounds, Toppr, Embibe, Vedantu, Brainnr to new a few. Will enough students pay for these tech solutions? Only time will tell.

Education is a long-term game. Brands are not built over night. Entrepreneurs and investors who come to this market to make a quick buck (or rupee!), will be disappointed — quality always wins and that takes time. Not all high impact learning can happen online only and it’s hard to attribute. Avanti’s results so far have been tremendously impressive — their students dramatically out-performed national average with 40% pass rate on the JEE main vs 10% national average.

Akshay and Krishna are 100% dedicated and focused to Avanti, you can tell that this is their life work. They’ve built an impressive second layer — with several other IITians, including a few who they consider essentially founders who’ve been with them from the start. These entrepreneurs know that it will take time and they are honest and analytical about what pivots and compromises need to be made to make the business viable.

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One of Avanti’s key success stories is a student from a family in rural India, Ayush Sharma, who is now beginning his sophomore year at MIT — obviously one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. For internationals, this is a huge deal — everyone at Pearson was very excited and Ayush has even taught our CEO, John Fallon, a physics lesson when John visited MIT’s campus last spring! However, since Ayush was accepted to MIT before the JEE advanced exam, he never took the test. Admission to MIT will no doubt be game changing for Ayush but it won’t do much to convince Indian parents of Avanti’s quality. They want to see one thing — Toppers (those that rank over 500)! Krishna remarks on our trip to Nashik, outside of Mumbai “What numbers am I going to put on the advertisement?! We can’t expand if we don’t have the ranks!”

A number today for a future tomorrow

“Test prep? Are you sure that’s a market with real impact?” People sometimes ask. It’s an important question; in the US, when people hear test prep, they think SAT tips and tricks. JEE mains are different. The questions aren’t gimmicky to create a curve, they are content and application rich to find the most talented science and math students. To study for the JEE is to master 50+ chapters of tough physics, math and chemistry content and devote 2 years to studying. Of course, it requires a thorough understanding of a broad spectrum of physics, chemistry and mathematics. But to do well enough to get into IIT you have to be able to apply what you’ve learned to new and difficult problems. A fantastic score is 60%.

To truly appreciate the exam, you have to understand its place in Indian society. Every education system is steeped in culture and the history of each country. The IIT’s are one of the most respected and important institutions in the country. In a country full of loopholes and backdoors, IIT is a rock solid meritocracy. Your admission, selection of major and credibility is 100% based upon your JEE Advanced score. The most wealthy students don’t even take the JEE exams — it’s much easier to gain entrance to a University abroad. However, going abroad for school is a luxury only the very few can afford. The upper middle class has hires near full time tutors and expensive resources to prepare for the JEEs. The rest are left with few options.

In India almost everything is a hierarchy, IIT is no different and you can proxy scores by major and campus. All the IIT’s are ranked by prestige — the oldest are the best, so Bombay and Delhi. Then by branch or major — Computer Science is the hardest. You have to be in the top 50 — called the closing rank, or the lowest rank you can be to get into the major. The top engineers in India are truly world-class. Sundar Pichai CEO of Google is an IIT graduate — demonstrating the global leadership of the degree. As software continues to eat the world, IIT graduates will continue in their global presence in the technology industry.

Now, this may all seem highly intimidating and that is because it is. Excellence at the top of the education system drives the aspiration and standard for the rest. Since there are fixed number of spots at IIT (~12,000 across 19 campuses), most Avanti students will not get into an IIT. However, the rigor of studying for the exam will ensure that most will get into a strong STEM college and career — maybe at the NIT universities or a state engineering college. Avanti believes it’s okay not to be a topper — they help students of all abilities and backgrounds improve their scores to improve their prospects. But if your ambition is to get into a top engineering college, they are going to do their best! They’ll also do career counseling and admission advice for those who might not make a nearly impossible bar.

How do you bridge the India of tomorrow with the India of the past?

Avanti has a bright future: India needs many more skilled workers. The team has built and tested an initial product that starts in grade 9 and 10 — partnering with schools to build a stronger pipeline, earlier. Other trial products include a career and pathways advising service and working with top JEE Advanced coaches. They’ve also started their first government partnership pilot, opening up access to their curriculum and training for government school children. Each of these pilots has great potential, and growth to date has been encouraging. The market is huge and Avanti has opportunity to be in every state.

As India grows and develops, its higher education system will need to evolve. The IIT institutions will need to adapt and additional centers of excellence in higher education will be necessary. The JEE rank will continue to be a stepping stone for many. Maybe an Avanti student will be the next CEO of Apple or the founder of a huge AI technology company. The future will need more talented technologists and that opportunity shouldn’t be limited based on income. As Avanti grows, so will accessibility to high quality STEM education. We are excited to be with you along the way.