Last week I had the opportunity of doing an interview with SocialProma. Here are some excerpts:
1) What was the idea behind starting Learnnovators?
I had been working in the learning/training business for about a dozen years when I got bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. So in 2003, I started C2 Workshop along with another colleague, Srividya Kumar. In June 2013, we rebranded C2 Workshop as Learnnovators. When we began our entrepreneurial journey, e-learning was a new (infact, almost unknown) concept in India and there weren’t too many players in the market. But Vidya and I were convinced that e-learning was the future of learning. This belief is what prompted us to step out and start on our own.
2) Please brief us about your business model?
Learnnovators, as the name suggests, is all about learning and innovation. We are in the business of helping people learn.
Let’s say an organization wants to train 150 of their customer-facing staff to handle irate customers. We study the scene, speak to the staff, understand the gaps in skill and comprehension, and come up with one or more training courses that can help improve their performance in this area. Such training courses can mostly be taken up online by staff at their own pace and time, thereby saving the organization the trouble and costs of arranging face-to-face training sessions.
This is just one example. The same, or similar, solutions can be applied to several different performance related problems. Depending on the problem and the context, we come up with innovative solutions to help improve learning and performance.
3) Tell us about your core team.
The founding team comprises of Srividya Kumar and me. Vidya comes with over a decade and a half of experience in the e-learning industry, having worked her way up from being an Instructional designer to project manager and onto an entrepreneur. She handles development and delivery at Learnnovators, while I handle business development and HR.
We have a team of instructional designers, graphic designers, programmers, QC specialists and project managers handling project and client requirements on a day-to-day basis. We, at Learnnovators, believe that every single individual on our team plays a crucial role in adding value to our stakeholders, and is therefore a part of the ‘core’ team!
4) Tell us about your three most successful user acquisition methodology?
Our most successful user acquisition mode has been through client referrals. Which means that our clients have been our best salespeople. And I say this with immense pride and gratitude. You can check out some of our client testimonials at http://learnnovators.com/testimonials/
Our second most successful business acquisition mode has been through social media marketing. We are very active on social media platforms such as YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
We also have our own LinkedIn group which is of, and for, learning professionals who are passionate about bringing innovation to learning. The group’s objective is to help members engage in stimulating discussions around this topic. Activities of the group include exchanging of thoughts, ideas, experiences, news, tools, tips, trends, case studies, strategies, processes, best practices, etc. that would help the learning community create amazing learning experiences.
Also, we recently launched our own newspaper called ‘Learnobytes’ – it’s a weekly online newspaper that carries the best e-learning news from across the world. The newspaper’s objective is to help readers be up-to-date on the most recent news from the world of Learning and Development (L&D). ‘Learnobytes’ is available at http://learnobytes.learnnovators.com/. And our blog is one of the most popular e-learning blogs in the world. Infact, we recently launched a ‘Guest Blog’, where we have even our competitors contributing articles on our site.
As an industry thought leader, we believe it is our responsibility to build a learning community which can share knowledge, ideas and experiences with each other. This indirectly helps in business acquisition not only for us, but also for others involved in the community.
Check out the full interview HERE.
