Hemant Sahal, Founder & CEO of Digii, on transforming education and building a profitable edtech firm

Digii (formerly CollPoll) is a mobile-first, AI-powered SaaS platform for digital transformation of universities and educational institutions. It works with 160+ top educational institutions across the country, servicing over 2 lakh students. 

In this podcast episode, Amit Somani one of the first institutional investors in Digii, unpacks how to build a startup in the highly relevant and complex edech sector in India.

Hemant Sahal, Founder & CEO of Digii, a missionary entrepreneur, is extremely convincing and takes us through his personal motivations for entrepreneurship that were ignited during his college days at VIT. His multifaceted experiences as a student, teacher, and administrator shaped his realisation of the significant gap in technology that educational institutions faced, which led to the inception of Digii.

Furthermore, the episode delves into the evolving landscape of Indian higher education, the National Education Policy (NEP, 2020), and the impact of the policy on both students and institutions, providing a nuanced understanding of the higher education ecosystem in India. Technology's role in higher education is another crucial topic addressed in this episode where Sahal gives his opinion on the elephant in the room about ‘not selling education in India’, a technique popularised by other edtech startups in the recent past. 

CollPoll to Digii: the pivot

Interestingly, Digii started as ‘CollPoll’, an abbreviation for ‘collaboration & polling’. It was built as a platform for educational institutions on the lines of WhatsApp to induce better communication and use technology to simplify manual tasks. 

Sahal narrates, "And in that journey, institutions absolutely loved our product. They said, 'Hey, we love the user experience, we love the mobile first experience.' And they said, 'Hey, but can't you digitise the fees collection for me? Can't you also help me with digitisation of admissions?'

"That was a moment of epiphany for us; we realised there's a bigger, fundamental problem. We were trying to provide a gulab jamun (dessert) in a market where people are hungry and they want main course first. And hence we went back to the drawing board, built a full operating system, and delivered a bigger and a stronger value to institutions, giving birth to Digii."

Education landscape in India 

According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), there are 1,261 universities, 50,560 colleges, and 13,137 standalone institutions in India. Sahal’s unique insight about this landscape is that the National Education Policy (NEP, 2020) is recommending that, in the long term, there will be no affiliated institutions. It’s extremely interesting as today the largest segment is ‘affiliated colleges’ in the above categorisation.

From his personal interactions, he quotes, "There is a huge shift in terms of institutions looking at themselves saying I need to either become a university or autonomous in the next few years."

National Education Policy

National Education Policy, 2020 (NEP) envisions a massive transformation in education through "an education system rooted in Indian ethos that contributes directly to transforming India, that is Bharat, sustainably into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high quality education to all, thereby making India a global knowledge superpower."

Sahal dissects the NEP and provides specific valuable takeaways for both institutions and students.

He says, "NEP is so broad and I think it's also a little abstract, which is the right thing, because it leaves a lot of thinking and execution at the institution level, which is great, because that's where the good to great differentiation happens."

Certain changes that are visible specifically to students are the flexibility in curriculum where one could actually get interdisciplinary education, where the student could actually be studying mechanical engineering along with life sciences together and that might end up forming a great career.

Another interesting example he talks about is that NEP is allowing multiple entry-exit for students which means, a student can actually leave an institution in the first year or second year and go to another in the corresponding year based on preference and interest.

Insights on educational institutions as customers

Sahal breaks the norm by saying education is a misunderstood space, and education institutions are almost similar to enterprises with just a few differences.

He says, "Institutions are saying I want to give the best student experience at my institution and are keen on employing technology to improve their processes and provide the best user experience like any other enterprise."

When asked what the key challenges are, he says, "Same, like how any enterprise has. Onboarding is a challenge. Change management is a challenge, right? Change in process is a challenge. Probably when you're looking at a large enterprise, software decision making at the institutional level is a challenge, just like any. If you go to a large enterprise and say we want to bring an HRMS to you, same decision making process, right? So I think it's exactly the same."

How does the sales and marketing process look like for Digii?

Sahal, in a calm demeanour, provides the most valuable insight for entrepreneurs building a startup in the edtech sector.

He says, "Till today, we don't have a dedicated sales team. We don't sell, which is almost opposite to how usually anybody who's dealing with education today. We believe that, in this market, don't go and sell, because anything in education when you are trying to sell, people look at you with suspicion. You have to take a partnership approach; understand their problems and help improve their return on investment. That’s what works beautifully for us."

Sahal closes the episode with an inspiring couplet for all entrepreneurs from an Indian poem, "Koshish bhi kar, umeed bhi rakh, raasta bhi chun, phir is ke baad thoda muqaddar talash kar." This translates to, "Try, keep hope, choose a path. Then, after this, search a little for destiny."

Timestamps

0:00 -  Entrepreneurship in edtech for India

7:10 -  Education institutions in India

12:20 - Transformation and future of higher education

23:05 - Technology adoption in Indian institutions

32:13 -  How to sell edtech in India

35:57 -  Lessons learned in entrepreneurship journey