What challenges did you face converting US consumers of your service?
The real challenge is in how do we make a US parent or student trust us, trust out tutoring capabilities. Secondly, service is always intangible; so how do you make them trust a service brand from India. Will the teacher be good? Will the teacher understand my accent and vice versa? Will technology work? Will I be able to use the computer to learn? Will the teacher be able to use the computer? What if there is no electricity in that part of India where the tutor sits when our children would want an online session with them? These were the questions we have to answer.
So selling an intangible is difficult; selling an intangible over the Internet is doubly difficult and selling an intangible over the Internet from India is three times difficult. So, it's a big challenge. However, the initial response was very encouraging.
How do I create brand value in the US and the UK for an Indian company that did not have any US or UK support? That was my biggest challenge.
In the last 20 years companies like Infosys, Wipro which work with US consumers have worked through a US brand. For example, when Wipro does customer service for Dell it does it as an outsourcer on behalf of Dell. When a US consumer calls Dell, the call comes to Wipro, the agent at the other end says Dell, not Wipro. While the US consumer spends $ 400 for a Dell computer only one dollar comes to Wipro. The US consumer is buying a Dell brand, product and the quality associated with the product. S/he does not know that a Wipro agent is servicing them. The next time a consumer calls Dell's customer service s/he may go to the Philippines.
I wanted to change all that. The question was how will I create a brand from India, sell it in the US and UK markets and capture 100 per cent of the value. That's how TutorVista.com as an idea was started.
How successful have you been in this direction?
We are the first business to consumer Indian company from India that caters to the US market.
Establishing a consumer brand in the US is very difficult. As of now it's still very early and we have just scratched the surface. We may actually take years to build a strong brand but we are on our way. It's not a small game to build an Indian brand in the consciousness of US consumers.
What's the response till now from the US students to TutorVista.com?
Today we service 10,000 students primarily in US and 12 other countries. We have 800 Indian teachers who work from their home in India. We provide one-on-one personalised tutoring on the Internet at a very highly affordable price.
Why would a student in the US or for that matter wherever in the world you offer TutorVista.com's services, take online tuitions from you?
In the US today, private tuitions cost between $ 60 to $ 80 per hour. We, on the other hand, charge just $ 100 per month for unlimited tuitions per month for all subjects. That's the kind of service that we provide. Our aim is to provide education to the masses by combining technology (computers and internet) and humans (the teachers at our end).
Image: A TutorVista.com teacher at work
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